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Matterform Announces Sonar-based Product Line
Tue Oct 11 '05

Matterform Media has announced plans for a line of Macintosh software products that leverage Sonar, Matterform’s new real-time file monitoring technology. Matterform has already released two innovative products that use Sonar technology to help home and business users manage their hard drives.
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Matterform Media (www.matterform.com) has announced plans for a line of Macintosh software products that leverage Sonar, Matterform’s new real-time file monitoring technology.

Matterform’s Sonar technology works by automatically detecting file creations, modifications, deletions and more. Sonar makes possible new kinds of file and disk management products, never before possible on the Macintosh platform.

Matterform has already announced two innovative products that use Sonar technology to help home and business users manage their hard drives:

  • Yank (www.matterform.com/yank) is an all-purpose uninstaller that can monitor software installations in real time and uninstall them later. The result is a leaner, faster, and safer Macintosh. Yank is scheduled to ship later in October 2005.
  • Sonar (www.matterform.com/sonar) is also the name of a standalone program that demonstrates the Sonar technology. It is a useful troubleshooting tool and provides a peek at the surprising complexities of the Mac file system. Sonar is shipping now.

“Hard drives get more cluttered every year, but Sonar technology can help users understand and manage that complexity,” said Michael Herrick, president of Matterform Media. “From spyware protection to version control, many new programs can benefit from the file system awareness that Sonar makes possible.” Matterform programmers are working currently on additional Sonar-based products for release later in 2005 and early 2006.

Matterform’s Sonar technology replaces old file system technologies that depended on lengthy sequential indexing. “A program like Yank would be practically impossible without Sonar,” said Matterform’s lead developer Daniel Lyons. “You could program it the old-fashioned way with indexing, but it would be prohibitively slow. Sonar lets us do it in real time, which is a real first.”

The Sonar technology requires Mac OS X Tiger and uses the same low-level file system features that underlie Apple Computer’s new Spotlight technology. Sonar and Yank are built with REALbasic (www.realsoftware.com). Matterform has released portions of its Sonar technology in the open-source program Sandal, distributed by Matterform under the Gnu Public License (GPL), for use by other developers.