[filmgirlcw]

Growl was one of the projects that made me fall in love with the Mac. The themes, the ability to script to it in the PWA precursors I used to build (SSBs), and the easy way to plug it into your own apps. It was a core part of what made Mac apps in the Delicious Generation so special and so much better than apps on any other OS. I still think apps of that vintage are the height of good desktop application development.

When Growl moved to the Mac App Store, the writing was on the wall. I was so happy the team had a way to support themselves but the changes being made in Mac OS X (then known as OS X), even before Notification Center, definitely made stuff harder. After Notification Center and its adoption/similarity, and with the way macOS continued to restrict kernel extensions/modifications/plugins, it stopped being used as much by others. It ended up becoming difficult to install/run, and I gave up a few years ago, even though that meant some of my custom tools would no longer work the same way.

Huge kudos to the developers and the community. Seventeen years is a hell of a run.