Download Snowplane

December 21st, 2006

Snowplane icon

Snowplane is now available for download! If you don't have a Mac and want to see a small, poorly-encoded demo movie, I do believe I can accommodate you.

If you vote for it, you'll be donating to Child's Play, a charity that helps children's hospitals by donating toys and games. If we get $1,000 or more donations to Child's Play, we can even get mentioned on their website. Wouldn't you love to tell your friends that the guys from Penny Arcade have heard of you? ;)

Note for Jaguar and Panther users: the binary in the download is compiled for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer only; the source code should compile and run on 10.2 and 10.3 (with the appropriate settings changes in Xcode, of course.) I don't have any Macs running 10.2 or 10.3, though, so I can't make any guarantees it'll work. Sorry!

Edit: Moved Snowplane off my iDisk, which has had all its bandwidth gobbled up.

Posted by Jonathan Grynspan

17 Responses to “Download Snowplane”

  1. I really like this. Subtle, but beautiful with lots of cool detail like blowing the flakes everywhere when you mousedown. Nice job.
    Posted by Dustin MacDonald on December 21st, 2006 at 07:36 AM
  2. Very nice work on the physics! Maybe different sized show? Or randomly have an elf fall from the top of the screen every once in a while?
    Posted by Ernest Liu on December 21st, 2006 at 08:08 AM
  3. Thank you, Dustin. :) Ernest, I don't have any art skeelz, so elves and santas and... planes... were out of the question. There was, for a while, a feature that let you make the snow zoom in or out, but large snowflakes posed performance issues and the feature had to be cut. :(
    Posted by Jonathan Grynspan on December 21st, 2006 at 11:37 AM
  4. While others were goofier or more useful, this one got my vote in more than one way. I donated to the charity, yes, but also, after downloading each of the (available) apps, all of which made me grin in appreciation and envy your skills, this is the only still running on my Mac an hour later. I just love having the snow back there.
    Posted by Simone on December 21st, 2006 at 02:24 PM
  5. This is just great. There is a soft place in my heart for Mac snow programs. What I especially love is the restraint. You note your lack of art skills, but it really does a service here, and looks like a strength to me. The simplicity is the charm of the app. I can see myself using this for a long time. Thanks!
    Posted by Andre Behrens on December 22nd, 2006 at 04:34 AM
  6. Please make a version that is tilt sensor aware! very cool.
    Posted by Jason on December 22nd, 2006 at 07:18 AM
  7. I don't have any notebooks with tilt sensors, so I wouldn't be able to test such a feature, Jason. However, it's open source, so others are free to add it themselves. :)
    Posted by Jonathan Grynspan on December 22nd, 2006 at 08:29 AM
  8. Looks great! At my parents house for the holidays and showed it off to them. They liked it a lot. Maybe it's a dumb question, but how do you close it?
    Posted by Matt on December 22nd, 2006 at 02:03 PM
  9. You should really mention somewhere what this app _does_! Firstly I'd like to figure out whether I'd like to try it out before I download it, and secondly, in some situations (desktop background of just the wrong colour, or a few windows covering the entire screen [very common on 12" notebooks]), it doesn't appear to do anything. There's no Dock icon, it's not in the "Force Quit" App list, there's no menu item. The App itself is cool, though. I'd vote for it if the snow settled on top of windows (and moving them would shake it off again), or if the flakes appeared in front of all windows except the one that has focus; preferably, it should have both features :-)
    Posted by nex on December 22nd, 2006 at 02:08 PM
  10. Matt and nex: try the Snowplane status item, in the right half of your menu bar. nex: I've said several times it's basically a flat snowglobe. :P If you want to "try before you buy," try viewing the demo movie. I don't know what desktop colour would make it ineffective, so you'll have to enlighten me. And we had three days to code our projects; I'm sorry it's not as complex as you would have liked. You can always add the features yourself, since it's open source. ;)
    Posted by Jonathan Grynspan on December 22nd, 2006 at 02:18 PM
  11. I'm sorry, I'm a dummy. Apparently Snowplane changes the desktop background and I didn't notice, because my desktop is just a very dark grey. I didn't see the status item either, because it is invisible. Yes, I admit it, my menu bar is also a very dark grey ... I can see all the other icons up there just fine, but well ... there's a first time for everything :-)
    Posted by nex on December 22nd, 2006 at 02:50 PM
  12. Ummm... I can't figure out what this app does. Please elaborate.
    Posted by umijin on December 22nd, 2006 at 06:10 PM
  13. Check your desktop, umijin. :P
    Posted by Jonathan Grynspan on December 22nd, 2006 at 07:54 PM
  14. Great app. I like how its responsive to icon movements. Your the best!
    Posted by Kish on December 22nd, 2006 at 11:32 PM
  15. This is definitely the best app here. Just the fact that it has it's own icon makes it one of the best here. I love the menubar access and how you can interact with the snowflakes. I really hope to see this developed into a full app, with, darkness settings, thickness settings and many other settings!!!
    Posted by Abram on December 23rd, 2006 at 05:47 AM
  16. I love this, I gave it to all my family without them knowing. It was an awesome winterval surprise!
    Posted by orta on December 24th, 2006 at 01:46 PM
  17. I love love love this. It might be the coolest screensaver thingy i have seen
    Posted by turquoisefish on December 25th, 2006 at 01:07 AM