Mavericks, Evernote, and Curio

OS X Mavericks (aka 10.9) has been released from Apple and Curio 8 is ready for it. With the latest release, Curio 8.6.3, we're not aware of any compatibility issues with Mavericks.

Here are some notes regarding some of the more recent changes made to Curio to get it ready for Mavericks.

Mavericks and PDF Views
Back in July, when Mavericks was first released as a beta, we noticed that Apple made a change to PDF Views in Mavericks which impacts Curio when you annotate a PDF figure directly on an idea space. While the PDF View works perfectly if the idea space is zoomed to 100% actual size, if you zoom in or out then the PDF View will not scale and the area is littered with graphical garbage artifacts.

Note that zooming in/out when not in annotation mode works perfectly since that's a dynamically rendered PDF image and not a live PDF View.

We contacted Apple (radar #14244334) and this is due to a scrolling optimization change they are making to PDF View which is incompatible with Curio's view hierarchy.

If you attempt to annotate a PDF figure in a zoomed idea space Curio on Mavericks will now ask if you'd like to either zoom to actual size and then annotate or open the PDF to annotate it within Preview. When you close Preview the PDF image within Curio will automatically update itself to reflect the new annotations.


Mavericks and Curio's Evernote Shelf
We also fixed a minor issue that prevented Curio's Evernote OAuth authentication from working correctly on Mavericks. With Curio 8.6.3 it now works with no problems.

Evernote's 3rd Party App Rate Limits
On a related note, we had to make an important change to our Evernote integration.

Evernote has announced that they're imposing rate limits on all 3rd party apps starting November 1st. These new restrictions will limit the number of calls a 3rd party app can make to the Evernote cloud within a 1-hour period. Therefore several changes were made to Curio's Evernote shelf so we greatly reduce the number of calls made to the Evernote cloud.
  1. Curio will no longer automatically download all notes in the selected notebook to the local cache.
  2. Instead we will only auto-download the first 5 notes in the result list. There is now an advanced setting if you wish to increase this value, although don't make it too high or you could hit the rate limit.
  3. When you select any note in the result list, if it isn't already local, Curio will then immediately download it from the cloud, as shown below.


  4. A note will now clearly indicate if it is on the Evernote cloud, is being downloaded, or is in the local cache.
  5. Instead of downloading the note's resources and recognition data as separate calls to the cloud the entire note is grabbed with a single call which is much more efficient.
  6. Once a note is local you can hit spacebar to preview it, double-click to open it, or drag it to an idea space to embed a copy of the note in your project.
Evernote hasn't provided any specifics so we don't know exactly what these limits are or if the limits are the same for regular vs. premium users. However, with these changes we have optimized Curio's Evernote integration as much as possible to greatly reduce the chance that you'll hit the limit within 1-hour periods.

It's almost time for NaNoWriMo!

As this recent customer post reminded me, we're coming up on National Novel Writing Month otherwise known as NaNoWriMo.

We have many customers that use the super-fantastic Scrivener app for writing their novels along with Curio for their brainstorming needs.

With Curio you can create mind maps and free flow connected diagrams to quickly generate and connect ideas together. You can also manage and organize all your thoughts, character photo collages, and associated files and weblinks all in a single handy project.

To all writers entering the NaNoWriMo competition beginning November 1st, we wish you the best of success and hope you find inspiration everywhere around you!

Blog Subscription

Blog Search


Archives