Bowtie Beta Released
On a whim yesterday, in order to satisfy the numerous people who kept on asking me for a beta copy of Bowtie, I posted my latest build to the Bowtie website, with a link on the running MacThemes thread about the app.
You can imagine that I was a little surprised when I looked at the stats as they started rolling in via Mint. I’ve had some pretty decent download turnouts before, but never approaching 2,000 downloads and 4,000 website hits in well under the first 24 hours. 
So needless to say, the app, though still in first beta, has been a relative success, especially thanks to Laurent’s Bowtie Theme Starter Pack, which contains some very sexy starter themes. Beyond that, several artists have already started releasing themes for Bowtie.
I see big things for this app, and can’t wait to continue working on it! As soon as Façade is done, of course. 
November 20th, 2008 at 3:51am Great program, love it and I love the wonderful themes. if you're open to suggestions (if you havent already though of this yourself), then i would say when it goes in desktop mode that it becomes locked to the desktop, and thus when using expose it would stay on the desktop when you clear it. don't know if this is possible, but definitely something that would greatly improve it (especially for themes like the vinyl.
wonderful job, though. ive been looking for such a good program to use for last.fm!
November 20th, 2008 at 11:28pm Wow! This program is amazing! The only thing I want is for it to live in the Menu Bar instead of the Dock. I'm a hardcore iTunes guy, and I usually don't find helper programs appealing, but this is great!
My favorite theme is Tab Horizontal Mini cuz it saves precious screen space on a 13" MacBook.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:44pm Hey, I have a quick question about Bowtie.
Would it be difficult to add Quartz Composer image processing to the images you grabbed from iTunes for cover art? Javascript is limited in its ability to transform these images, and I'd like to put together a coverflow theme.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:48pm Toutes mes felicitations pour cette excellente application et qui repond enfin a toutes mes attentes... !
Coup de chapeau pour les differentes idees de themes !
All my congratulations for this excellent application which responds to all my
expectations ... !
Hats off to the different ideas of themes!
Excellent !
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:55pm Wonderful app for a beta 1 release. This is what I wanted a free version of CoverSutra. I do not need search or any thing like that, I just want a nice album art image for my desktop. I have two small feature requests:
1. Please make it live in the menubar, not in the dock. It just takes up more space (or better yet, give users a choice).
2. I have Bowtie set to "hide when iTunes is closed". There is only one problem, when I launch iTunes and play a song, Bowtie is moved somewhere else on the desktop (it's default position). I moved it to the upper-left hand corner and every time iTunes is launched it keeps moving to somewhere near the middle. Please allow the app to keep the location that the user set.
(Also it is taking about 23MB of RAM - not really going up/down, just around there) That is not bad, but any optimizations will always be welcome.
Great job for a beta 1 release and I can't wait to see this turn into a wonderful app. Good job and good luck!
November 25th, 2008 at 2:44pm Hello Matt,
where can i post a "feature-request" ??? Well, i try it here. there is an old <a href="http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=arttoichat">script from doug</a> and it would be great, if this would be a feature of bowtie.
Great app!
December 6th, 2008 at 12:13pm Hey Matt,
GREAT program
really outshines all the other itunes controllers, even in its first beta stage
the only thing keeping me from thinking this app is absolutely perfect (i LOVE the wetfloor skin by the way) is the fact that it resides in the dock
It would be so much more streamlined and easy to use if it was just a little icon in the menubar when it's running
I wouldn't be surprised if this is a common request, as most other itunes controllers live in the menubar as well
if this feature could be implemented, nothing could stop me from telling all my friends about this and enlighten them (:
looking forward to future releases,
Sam
Thanks matt
December 7th, 2008 at 1:01pm I am gonna go ahead and throw in my 2¢ on a request to kill the dock icon for a menubar icon. Otherwise this is awesome.
Thanks for a great little app!
December 7th, 2008 at 1:24pm Great app, I fell in love with it the moment I opened it. Do you think an additional window behaviour? I'd like it if it worked like some other "float on top" windows, where it's on top of windows, but not above fullscreen windows like quicktime player and VLC. Also, I'm not sure if it's just the style, but when no song is selected I jumps to JS "undefined" strings. Besides that it's a great app and in the process of making my own theme.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:06pm Hi Matt,
Cool app, love the themes and simplicity. Opened up activity monitor to see how much CPU its using, and noticed it uses about 0.4% pretty consistently on my MBP 2.4GHz. I did a little profiling with Shark and saw that all of the 'idle' work is being done on a timer which is calling the monitorCycle method on your BTController. I am assuming this is necessary because there is no way for itunes to send you any type of notiication when tracks change, oh well. Anyways in your monitorCycle method more than half of the time is spent inside of the iTunesRunning method of BTEyeTunes. To get rid of all of this periodic work you should be able to check whether or not iTunes is runnning when Bowtie is launched and then register for the appropriate NSWorkspace Notifications to update the state of whether iTunes is running only when necessary. The appropriate notifications would be NSWorkspaceDidTerminateApplicationNotification and NSWorkspaceWillLaunchApplicationNotification. Shoot me an email if you want to discuss further.
December 9th, 2008 at 10:31pm First of all, Bowtie is awesome! I have been contemplating purchasing CoverSutra for quite a while, but the lack of customization and high price tag kept me from buying it. Bowtie is "almost" perfect, but I do have a few suggestions... Since it is still a beta you may already have some of this on your list to do anyways, but I thought I would share my thoughts.
1. Option for running in the menu bar, dock, or both at the same time
2. When Window Behavior is set to "desktop-level" have Bowtie embedded to the desktop so that when you "Show Desktop" (Fn-F11 or with Expose) it is there for quick access without having to keep Bowtie "always on top".
3. Open with iTunes
December 16th, 2008 at 11:39am This is a great little application. The forward button seems to have the same functionality as the rewind button. Otherwise a great desktop enhancement for me.
December 21st, 2008 at 5:28am Bowtie is such a great app that I installed it on all my computers and told my friends about it. Though effective, and provides all it's supposed to, it takes up precious on-screen real estate. My recommendation?
Let the user use it like quicksilver (The app launcher..). First, let the user eliminate the dock icon; though the Bowtie icon is great, users don't want another "active app" icon, esp in the app switching menu. One icon may take up more space than we want to. Second, hide the app. Like QS, the user will not require it all the time, and it may get in the way. Third, when the app is hidden, have a universal (by that I mean on a system-level) keyboard combination to bring it up. Lastly, you might want it to pop up when the song changes
(The theme Horizontal Tab Mini really does it fine but I'd like to see this to apply to all the themes)
December 21st, 2008 at 5:28am Bowtie is such a great app that I installed it on all my computers and told my friends about it. Though effective, and provides all it's supposed to, it takes up precious on-screen real estate. My recommendation?
Let the user use it like quicksilver (The app launcher..). First, let the user eliminate the dock icon; though the Bowtie icon is great, users don't want another "active app" icon, esp in the app switching menu. One icon may take up more space than we want to. Second, hide the app. Like QS, the user will not require it all the time, and it may get in the way. Third, when the app is hidden, have a universal (by that I mean on a system-level) keyboard combination to bring it up. Lastly, you might want it to pop up when the song changes
(The theme Horizontal Tab Mini really does it fine but I'd like to see this to apply to all the themes)
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:59am I have looked at both Cover Stream and Bowtie and it appears that Bowtie will do most of what Cover Stream will, except for CoverFlow and smart searching -- is this true? I have purchased CS, but since I don't use either of those features (I use the menu item occasionally, hotkeys, and the visual on the desktop), will Bowtie suit my needs (with the additional ability to apply skins)?
Thank you.
December 27th, 2008 at 8:18am Hi Matt, I've noticed that Bowtie is stuffing around with Exposé when you set it to run at the desktop level. I found a simple way to fix this: http://tonyarnold.com/entries/fixing-an-annoying-expose-bug-with-nswindows/ -- you'll need to execute this fix on your window every time it is shown - it resets the flag each time the window is ordered out or hidden.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:16pm Hi Matt, I am interested in localizing Bowtie into German. Can you send me the Source Code with an e-mai? Bowtie contains only compiled nib files. I'm keen in Translations and would like to share Bowtie with German users who can't speak English.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:03am Hi! I really like bowtieapp. On the new year, bowtie don't scrobb on last.fm. I'm from Slovakia - Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 / MacBook 13" Aluminium.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:01pm Please add fetch & view lyric for now playing song
February 7th, 2009 at 7:53am Great app, but it would be cool with plugin support or an simple API. I would love to be able to control iTunes from another computer with Bowtie, maybe with Tunage protocol or even bether, DACP! Now I'm using a python script and dcap but that's not so macish, feels a little to geeky and it could be easier
February 21st, 2009 at 6:29am Good morning,
Thanks for this software, really beautiful !
I just wanted to ask you something :
Would it be possible to fix a position for the "Bowtie Window" ?
Each time I reboot my computer, she appears somwhere on the middle of the screen, I'd like to see her always on the top left on my desktop !
I can lock the position, but it don't lock the position for a so long time
Thanks !
March 16th, 2009 at 12:15pm any chance that beta 3 is usable with spotify?