MacGourmet News

Macworld just reviewed MacGourmet as a "Mac Gem" giving it 4.5 mice out of 5!

According to the reviewer:

If you’re a recipe geek and need a place to store, organize, and categorize your current and potential meals, look no further than MacGourmet. From the program’s recipe box metaphor to its flexible visuals, plug-in architecture, auto import functions, and smart searching, this is one of the most versatile and extensible programs available for any cook.

The review is pretty extensive and hits on just about everything. It's a great read for even current users: you may find out about things in the product you didn't even know were there!

The reviewer sums up her review with:

If you work extensively at cooking or event planning, or you’re just intensely organized and interested in exploring the subject, MacGourmet should be in your shopping cart. Its functionality and extensibility add convenience and ease to tasks that can become mundane over time. Its automated features and flexible presentation are appealing, and the core program is priced attractively. If you want to add features like nutritional information, meal planning, and cookbook publishing, you can add on the items you’re interested in piecemeal or just purchase the Deluxe version.

You can read the entire review here: MacGourmet organizes and helps find new recipes

Just a quick note: the optional Food & Wine site importer has been updated to version 1.1.2. You can download the latest version from the web site importer page.

This new version accommodates changes made in their latest site redesign.

Released today are updates to all 3 MacGourmet add-on plug-ins:

Mealplan 1.1 is now available. It resolves printing issues for Leopard users, and fixes a handful of issues. For a full list of the changes, please see the release notes.

MacGourmet:Mealplan can be downloaded from the Mealplan page.

Cookbook 1.1 is now available. It resolves some cookbook creation problems, an occasional crasher and fixes a handful of issues. For a full list of the changes, please see the release notes.

MacGourmet:Cookbook can be downloaded from the Cookbook page.

Nutrition 1.3 is now available. It fixes a couple of calculation errors. For a full list of the changes, please see the release notes.

MacGourmet:Nutrition can be downloaded from the Nutrition page.

For MacGourmet Deluxe users, you don't need to worry about these individual updates. You will be able to receive Deluxe 1.2 using the built-in software updater, or from Mariner Software when it becomes available shortly.

There's a LOT of really cool things in the MacGourmet pipeline, and to that end, I've created the MacGourmet Twitter account, so that those interested can get "tweets" about some of the new things being worked on.

To follow along, just click the Twitter logo or this link to become a follower.

Ok, so it's only installed on the iPhone in the ad, but I think it's still pretty darned cool...

The latest versions of Mealplan, Cookbook and Nutrition are now available for testing in the Test Kitchen. The details can be found on the main Test Kitchen page.

So If you're interested in helping test the new versions, just head on over to the Test Kitchen and grab the files. If you find any problems, please send a quick report to macgourmet [at] advenio.com. Thanks!

I've submitted 1.0.2 to Apple, typical turnaround has been 5 days or so. It includes bug fixes for the following:

• - The "+ icon can now be tapped to add a new shopping list item.


• - When editing a new item, the blinking cursor now shows that an editing session has been started.


• - Shopping list aisle items are now sorted in a case-insensitive manner.


• - More than one sync per session should be now possible without quitting or leaving the sync tab.


• - Search now works over all item text fields, instead of just the item names.


• - New shopping lists now start with a default item, allowing other items to be added without adding a recipe.


• - Shopping list items now have disclosure buttons that allow the detail to be seen when not editing.


• - Minor user interface and graphical tweaks for usability.

You should get notified of the update when it's available.

The "chef view" in MacGourmet touch was kind of added in at the last minute, and I'm not sure that I'm happy with it.

I'd like some opinions, does this version work any better for people?

Note that the ingredients and directions scroll separately in this version, and that the directions text is also now larger, and the ingredients text smaller.

I understand that while some people are having few or no issues getting their data from their Mac to their iPhone, others are having various kinds of issues.

I'm doing my best to resolve them, and I am in the process of trying to add another means of transferring your data, one that will also work for Mac OS X 10.4 users, but please remember that this is the very first version of the product and even though I filled all of the beta slots during testing and did a pretty extensive beta test, with the way Apple does things right now, we're not really allowed to do a proper (by my standards) closed or even open beta. So the first time a lot of people see an app, there are bound to be issues.

It doesn't help that Apple also doesn't give us a way to let you try before you buy, which is really unfortunate if for some reason you can't get things to work with your configuration.

That said, here are some tips and tricks that may resolve problems you may be having:

Transferring your Data from Your Mac to Your iPhone/iPod touch

To sync your data with an existing Wi-Fi network:

1. Start up MacGourmet 2.4 or Deluxe 1.1


2. Open Preferences > Sharing


3. Make sure sharing is set to be enabled at start up.


4. Specify each list that you want to sync by selecting the list from each pop up menu.


5. Close Preferences. You should be set to sync now.

To sync your data:

1. Open MacGourmet touch and select the Sync tab.


2. Select or unselect each list by clicking on its entry in the table.


3. Choose the name of the Mac running MacGourmet from the sync source list to begin your data transfer.


4. You should see each of your selected lists synced one at a time, until all are completed. Once complete, you should be able to find your that your data has replaced the sample data in each section.

If for some reason syncing doesn't seem to work, restarting both MacGourmet and MacGourmet Touch and trying again should fix things.

Congratulations! You should now have your MacGourmet data on your iPhone or iPod!

Creating a Wireless Network for Syncing

If you don't have a wireless network, or you are having issues transferring your data, but you do have a wireless Mac, you can create a limited wireless network for syncing.

1. Go into System Preferences > Network and turn Airport on if it's not on, and check "Show Airport status in menu bar"


2. Close System Preferences and go to the Airport status menu in your menu bar. Choose "Create Network..." to create your own network. Now you should be able to follow the instructions above, under "Transferring Your Data".

Note: If you already have MacGourmet running when you do this, it won't work. So create the network and THEN start MacGourmet.

Resolving Firewall Issues

The following error:

Error 47: Operations could not be completed. Address family not supported by protocol family

is usually a firewall issue that can be resolved by either turning the firewall off if you don't need it on, or by allowing MacGourmet to get through it and not blocking connections from it.

Other Problems and Solutions

Sometimes, and I'm not sure why, uninstalling and reinstalling the app will resolve problems. Version 1.0 also has a couple of crashing issues, but those should be resolved by the 1.0.1 version that will be out as soon as it's approved by Apple for release.

There are also some solutions to problems listed on the MacGourmet touch FAQ page (which will eventually get updated with this information as well.

Please note the images FAQ item in particular. For some reason, you might need to reduce the image quality to do your transfer, you'll probably have to do this if your sync seems to get hung up on a particular recipe.

Finally you can find some additional setup information, with images, starting here: MacGourmet touch Setup.

I had a surprising (to me anyway) amount of interest in retaining the sample recipes that come with MacGourmet touch. I included them in the touch build for demo purposes, but I've received a lot of requests from people who wanted to keep them. Because of this, I'm making them available to everyone to load into MacGourmet, after which you can sync the ones you like to your phone in the current manner.

First, let me remind people of the free sample packs already available at macgourmet.com. They include a vegan recipe pack, ice cream recipes, and one of the packs used in the iPhone sample pack the "Pork: The Other White Meat" pack.

The other sample recipes are made up of selections from the following additional packs:

National Chicken Cooking Contest 2003
Winning chicken recipes from the 2003 National Chicken Cooking Contest. (51 recipes)
[Download]

National Beef Cook-Off 2005
Winning beef recipes from the 2005 National Beef Cook-Off (20 recipes)
[Download]

The rest already come with a copy of MacGourmet, so you should already have them. If not, they can be found as parts of the various packs available on the sample page.