It took me all of 65 minutes to resist buying something from the new Mac App Store. But all this minimal resolve crumbled when I lit upon LittleFin's home inventory program, Compartments. I've been looking for a good inventory app for a long time and the £5.99 price tag seemed reasonable*. But apart from the capabilities of Compartments (of which more when I've given it a road test), I was mainly interested in the process of buying.
As with the iOS App Store, buying is a simple one-click affair and the app is instantly downloaded and added to the Dock. No longer do we have to visit a web site, pay with a credit card, download, install to Applications and then wait for an email to confirm the registration code. Everything is now so simple that Mac owners won't hesitate to press that button.
After earlier rumours that Apple would control the database location, I was expecting some problems in sharing the information over Dropbox; but I needn't have worried. In Compartment's setting there is an option to re-locate the database and I simply clicked on Dropbox as the new location. The program installed a folder with supporting files inside my Dropbox folder.
I then turned to my 11in MacBook Air. How to get Compartments installed and linked with Dropbox? Again, dead easy. In the Mac App Store you go to the Purchases tab and click on the install button next to Compartments (or whichever program you've purchased). Within seconds it is sitting in the Applications folder. All I had to do then was go to the advanced settings in Compartment's Preferences pane and point the program to the data on Dropbox. Works like a charm.
Now for a comprehensive inventory of MacFilos Towers and to see if I can find any problems in the software. See you (much) later.
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* I checked the price for the download-and-install-it-yourself version on the LittleFin website and it was £6.65, all of 66 pence more expensive than in the Mac App Store. Interesting.