Thank you, Internet Archive

When I upgraded my Mac last October, Apple's Migration Assistant utility migrated most of my applications to the new computer. As I wrote in December, the various applications all migrated with differing degrees of success.dfsdfgsdfg

One application where I spoke too soon was Snapz Pro X. Despite MacWorld's lackluster review of version 2.5.1, it is still a very good screen capture utility that I consider superior in many ways to the one built-in to macOS.

When I wrote my review in December, I didn't really test Snapz Pro X. I launched it, saw that the menu appeared, then I quit it and assumed that it worked. I was wrong.

When I later on tried to actually capture something with it, I got system errors from macOS. Needless to say, this makes the program less than useful. Since Ambrosia Software went out of business in 2019 (nearly two years ago), I figured I'm just out of luck getting an update.

But today, I got curious. I found that the version I was running (2.5.1) was not the latest. In September 2016, Ambrosia software released version 2.6.1, which fixes several bugs including signing the kernel extension so it will work properly on modern versions of macOS.

It appears that I should have upgraded to this version years ago, since the upgrade was needed for macOS Sierra, which is what my older Macs are running, but I clearly didn't use Snapz Pro X very much.

If you do a web search for Snapz Pro X, you find many web sites that offer it for download. Nevertheless, I don't want to download from a random site, because there is a real risk of downloading malware, but just for kicks, I decided to visit the Internet Archive's copy of the Snapz Pro X product page.

As it turns out, Ambrosia placed the application outside of any paywall for download (it installs an evaluation/trial copy if you don't have a license). I clicked on the link and much to my surprise, was able to download the installer image from the Internet Archive. The installer was genuine (signed with Ambrosia's since-expired developer certificate) and I was able to install version 2.6.1 using it. My existing license key was recognized and the app ran normally.

Version 2.6.1 is still not 100% compatible with Catalina. It can't perform a video capture (it just quits if you try), but all of its image-capture (screen, object or region) capabilities work perfectly.

So, in short, thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to download a five year old software update from a company that closed up shop two years ago and it worked.

Thank you, Internet Archive!