We love the Mac App Store. It just makes buying apps easy. We love having our other Mac apps (Galleried and Launch it!) in the store. But, unfortunately, it looks like Concentrate won’t be allowed in any time soon.

Concentrate was denied (thrice) from the Mac App Store due to the fact that it requires root (admin) access to block domains (like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc). If apps have root access, the authors can write malicious code that could hurt your computer – obviously something we’d never do, but Apple doesn’t want to be liable for anything that could go wrong there.

Mac App Store

We feel that blocking domains is at the core of Concentrate, so we brainstormed and attempted three different ways to go about it, but no luck – rejected each time, citing the same issue. We ultimately appealed and talked to a (rather nice) Apple representative who said they are aware of the issue and the fact that it affects a lot of third-party software. He said they would take the issue into more consideration in the future, but for now remains a rule.

So, in all, we are very thankful for the positive feedback we’ve gotten from Concentrate users, which will only be available in the rocket store for the time being. If we have any ingenious ideas how to get around it, we’ll be sure to let everyone know, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. You’ll turn blue.

Concentrate 1.2

What’s new?

• Added ability to hide the dock icon
• Lots of UI improvements
• 64 bit support
• Fixed bugs related to changing desktop pictures on Mac OS 10.6
• Fixed bugs related to how Concentrate works with Spaces

We’re also happy to announce that Dave gave Concentrate a brand new website: http://getconcentrating.com It’s not a complete overhaul like the rocket site got, but it’s a super solid update. Oh, and it includes a fancy new screencast. Check it out!

When I leave home heading in to the office, or leave the office to head home, I like to finish my thought and quit almost all the apps I use regularly. The reason is so I start fresh when I crack open my laptop again. Instead of quitting everything by hand, I setup a Concentrate activity I call ‘Cleanup’ that quits all my apps for me. When it’s done quitting everything I’ve told it to (which is almost everything running) it runs an AppleScript that simply tells Concentrate to stop Concentrating (script here).

What do I allow to keep running? Path Finder, Webnote and Concentrate itself.

I’ve been using this action for a while now and thought I’d share it. Although this isn’t really what we built Concentrate to do, it’s still in line with the goal of removing distractions.

Surely there are plenty of other ways to accomplish this, but since I always have Concentrate at the ready this works best for me. Feel free to share other ideas in the comments.

We just released a minor update to Concentrate. Here’s what’s changed:

• Added support for Choosy as a browser in “Open websites” action.
• Added support for “Do not disturb” status in Skype.
• Concentrate now honors specific spaces specified for applications set in the Spaces preference pane.
• Handle app’s with helpers correctly (previously it would think an app is running just because it’s helper was running).
• Support for Fluid.app app’s.

Enjoy!