You probably had the same thoughts we did while watching Mountain Lion’s Notification Center open up on the desktop in Apple’s new preview videos. The first thing that crossed our mind was, “Growl is screwed.” As it turns out, the Growl team doesn’t think they’re that bad off, and instead of abandoning its project, the company is looking to integrate Growl into Notification Center. Yup, notifications in your notifications.
In a blog post titled, Welcome to the party, we were worried that we were being stood up, the Growl team gives us some of its thoughts on the new Mountain Lion feature:
Growl will work for applications both in and outside of the app store. Any application that implements Growl support, gets Growl support … Growl is still awesome for customizing your notifications. Making Capster display with the Nano display and GrowlTunes display with Music Video display is a great example of just one of the many ways that you can customize Growl notifications. It does not appear that Notification Center is intended to allow you to customize anything about how the information is presented to you.
They have a bit of a point in that we still have no idea how developers will be able to use Notification Center across their apps. And, it’s almost a foregone conclusion at this point that Notification Center will only be supported by applications that are in the Mac App Store. While some of us still prefer to purchase our applications from developers directly, the majority of consumers are heading to App Stores to get their software titles. The more that happens, the less there will be a need for Growl. As a case in point, I’ve been transitioning, albeit quite slowly, to having all of my applications downloaded and managed from the App Store, including the current Growl application. It’s only a matter of time until I stop using Growl and start using Notification Center. Heck, should Notification Center give me the ability to get my iOS notifications directly to my MacBook Pro, that transition would be immediate.
We’ve loved Growl for a long time. Hopefully Notification Center doesn’t spell the end for the application, but we have a really hard time seeing a world where that doesn’t happen, especially if everything remains as it does today.
