As promised earlier this week, here’s a new version of my free multi-purpose utility Mints. There are two additions to its toolset.

The first is accessible through the new App Store button in its main window. This opens a log browser which will fetch entries in the Unified log which show what’s going on during obtaining, downloading, installing and updating apps from the App Store.

As with the other log tools in Mints, log entries are shown in colour according to the sub-system which generated them. In the case of the App Store, these include:

• com.apple.AppStore, which are the top-level processes during Store transactions (black/white);
• com.apple.AppleMediaServices, which does much of the work (red);
• com.apple.appstored, which is the daemon which does most of the heavy lifting (blue);
• the Other category includes the kernel, and com.apple.JetEngine whose role isn’t entirely clear at present (green).

This should save you a lot of time and trouble devising your own predicates in Ulbow or Consolation, and helps you see how the different parts interact.

The other new feature is up in the Window menu, which now has an item Data… leading to one sub-command. At present, this first entry runs some checks on floating point maths using Doubles. I’ve already discussed these here. Although of limited value, I intend extending the types of data covered in future. The next should be Unicode strings, with particular reference to normalization – a feature of my existing app Apfelstrudel, which will be absorbed into Mints and brought up to date.

Mints version 1.4 is now available from here: mints14a
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and through its auto-update mechanism.

Enjoy!