Ambrosia's WireTap Studio, WireTap Anywhere and Snapz Pro X are three utility apps that offer various forms of audio and video recording, featuring the most complete array of options. Ambrosia Software. January 28, 2013. The Mac Observer awards iToner 3 a 'Solid' rating of 3.5 out of 5! Read the full review here: Purchasing individual ringtones from Apple can quickly become expensive. Thankfully, iToner from Ambrosia allows users to easily create and customize iPhone ringtones, but only those who want to create dozens of.
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, video games |
| Founded | August 18, 1993; 27 years ago |
| Defunct | July 19, 2019; 2 years ago[citation needed] |
| Headquarters | Rochester, New York, U.S. |
| Andrew Welch | |
| Products | Sharewarevideo games and utilities |
| Website | http://www.ambrosiasw.com |
Ambrosia Software was a predominantly Macintoshsoftware company founded in 1993 and located in Rochester, New York, U.S. Ambrosia Software was best known for its Macintosh remakes of older arcade games, which began with a 1992 version of Atari, Inc.'s Asteroids from 1979. The company also published utility software. Its products were distributed as shareware; demo versions could be downloaded and used for up to 30 days. Later the company released some products for iOS. Ambrosia's best-selling program was the utility Snapz Pro X,[1][2] according to a 2002 interview with company president Andrew Welch.
In 2017, customers reported on Ambrosia's Facebook page that attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful and they were unable to make new purchases.[3] As of July 2019, the website is offline. As of May 2021, the website resolves but leads to a domain parking page with ads unconnected to the company.
History
Months after OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion shipped, Ambrosia Software has finally updated the popular Snapz Pro X screen capture utility to be compatible with Apple’s current operating system. Snapz Pro X 2.5 has been rebuilt from scratch and is compatible with only 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.7 Lion; it also gains support for MacBooks with Retina displays.
There aren’t many improvements to Snapz Pro X’s still image capture support. Most notably, screenshots can include full alpha masks (transparency) and optional shadows when windows are captured using the Object tool, and that tool can also capture windows that are partially obscured by other windows. On the downside, the Object tool can no longer capture menus, as it could in the previous version, nor can it capture individual icons on the Dock or the Desktop, since Mac OS X no longer treats those icons as
individual windows. In both cases, the workaround is to use the Selection tool, which requires manually dragging out a rectangle and getting it positioned exactly right. The Selection tool does offer better feedback for height and width numbers, and an improved magnifying glass that even shows the hex value of the pixel in the middle. Unfortunately, the Selection tool no longer remembers positions on secondary monitors, and window borders can no longer be added automatically.
Snapz Pro X 2.5 also features a rewritten video capture engine that promises additional features and performance. Notably, Ambrosia says that recorded movies are now compatible with video applications like Final Cut Pro, and movies with both microphone and Mac audio tracks can be saved such that the two audio tracks are either mixed together or kept separate. Finally, a new preference lets you select a scratch folder to be used when recording movies.
Other changes include a preference for setting the volume of Snapz Pro X’s interface sounds, a new Save As option in the Send To menu that prompts the user with a Save dialog for each capture, and a new Help tab. Snapz Pro X 2.5 requires Mac OS X 10.7.4 or later, and costs $69 with movie capture capabilities (Snapz Pro X was previously available for only $29 if you didn’t want the movie capture capabilities; that option seems to have disappeared from Ambrosia’s Web site). It’s a free update for users of Snapz Pro X 2.x.
Ambrosia Software Snapz Pro
Frankly, this update is a bit disappointing for those of us who have long relied on Snapz Pro X for screenshots. The previous version crashed when using the Object tool under Mountain Lion, rendering it significantly less useful for professional authors working in Mountain Lion. Many fell back on Mac OS X’s internal Command-Shift-4 screenshot capabilities, which can capture menus and windows as objects, and Mac OS X’s included Grab utility, which can do timed captures, different cursors, and captures of sheet-based dialogs. Others started looking into alternative utilities, such as Global Delight’s Voila, which offers image management and editing
capabilities, and Layers from Wuonm, which captures everything on screen as a layered Photoshop document.
Ambrosia Software Snapz Pro X
Snapz Pro X’s newfound Mountain Lion compatibility may reduce the need for an alternative for many people, but if you’ve found another screen capture utility effective for your needs, let us know about it in the comments.
Comments are closed.