Undercover 5 is here

It's great to introduce Undercover 5, the long awaited new version of our theft recovery app. Undercover 5 now adds key logging, as well as the ability to snap photos, screenshots or location data in real-time. In addition, we have completely rewritten the Undercover web interface: it's now easier than ever to manage all your Macs.

Because Undercover 5 is such a big upgrade from version 4, we have given it a new virtual home: http://www.undercoverhq.com. With this new home comes a new account system, so your Undercover 4 credentials won't work with http://www.undercoverhq.com. If you are still on Undercover 4 (or earlier), please contact support@orbicule.com. We'll send you a coupon code to purchase Undercover 5 for free if you have bought after September 23 2010, or for just $19 if you purchased Undercover before that date.

Undercover 4 and the http://undercovercenter.com web app will continue to work until the end of 2013. We highly recommend all our users to switch to Undercover 5 as soon as possible.

Undercover on Mountain Lion

In our New Year's resolutions blog post, we promised to release Undercover 5 in the first half of this year. Obviously we did not meet that deadline. The reason for this delay is quite simple: we added much more functionality and polish to Undercover 5 than we could have anticipated in January. The delay won't last too much longer, however, as we are planning to release Undercover 5 in August. It will be the biggest upgrade yet, giving our competitors a lot more stuff to copy.

In the meantime, Mountain Lion is just around the corner and as with every previous OS X release, we want to be ready on day 1. That's why we released an intermediate 4.8 update that is fully compatible with Mountain Lion. Of course, it also runs on Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. We had to drop Tiger support for 4.8, but Undercover 4.7.1 is still compatible with Tiger.

You may download Undercover 4.8 on the Undercover Mac home page. For Tiger users, Undercover 4.7.1 is available here.

Witness 2 is here

We are proud to introduce Witness 2, a major upgrade to our home alarm system for Mac and iOS. Based on feedback we received from our users, version 2 has the following new features:

• Sneak Peek: watch live images from any active Mac in your alarm system.
• Auto-activation: Witness uses the location of your iOS device to automatically arm the alarm when leaving your house, and disarm it upon your return. It's magic!
• Face detection: you can now setup Witness to only detect motion if it detects a human face. This may come in handy when you have pets running around the house.
• Motion detection sensitivity: optimize camera settings for a specific environment.
• Multiple cameras: connect and use up to 3 cameras per Mac, making it easier to cover larger areas.
• Applescript support: it's now possible to have AppleScripts executed when arming and disarming the alarm, or when motion is detected.

Grab your update now from the revamped Witness website.

New Year's resolutions

From the Orbicule headquarters, we wish you a very happy, healthy and safe New Year!

We have some awesome stuff in store for you in 2012. First and foremost, we will unveil Undercover 5. This is not just an upgrade: it's a complete rewrite of our critically acclaimed theft-recovery software. We have taken everything we have learned from 6 years of theft-recovery experience and started from scratch with a brand new system. No single line of code from version 4 remains untouched - literally! Undercover 5 will set a new bar for theft-recovery software. In addition, it will add exciting new features, and it will be even easier to set up. We are well on track to release Undercover 5 in the first half of this year.

Undercover 5 is not the only project we are working on, however. Since the launch of Witness in March 2011, thousands of Mac user have chosen to protect their homes, businesses or dorm rooms with a Witness alarm system. Not without success: Witness already assisted in catching a hospital thief in Virginia, US: http://www.orbicule.com/witness/success

As I'm writing this, we are putting the finishing touches on Witness 2, a major upgrade to our Mac-based home alarm system. Based on the feedback you have sent us, we have added the following features to Witness 2:

• Sneak Peek: watch live images from any active Mac in your alarm system.
• Auto-activation: Witness uses the location of your iOS device to automatically arm the alarm when leaving your house, and disarm it upon your return. It's magic!
• Face detection: you can now setup Witness to only detect motion if it detects a human face. This may come in handy when you have pets running around the house.
• Motion detection sensitivity: optimize camera settings for a specific environment.
• Multiple cameras: connect and use up to 3 cameras per Mac, making it easier to cover larger areas.
• Applescript support: it's now possible to have AppleScripts executed when arming and disarming the alarm, or when motion is detected.

As you can see, Witness 2 is a landmark upgrade. It will be released later this month and best of all it will be free for all registered Witness users. It's our way to say thank you to our early adopters.

We love you, Steve!

A lot has been written about Steve's life and death over the past six weeks, and rightly so. His vision and clear thinking have guided thousands of people and companies across the globe. Orbicule is definitely one of them. 'No respect for the status quo', our company's tagline, has literally been 'taken' from the Think Different campaign Steve launched upon his return to Apple in 1997.

It's not just about slogans though, we try to let the Steve-mindset and attention to detail permeate everything we do. It's even safe to say that without Steve, Orbicule would not even exist. That's quite an accomplishment for someone we never met in person. Fortunately we were lucky enough to attend and enjoy many of his Stevenotes, being in the same room with the reality distortion field.

Needless to say, we were deeply saddened when we learned about Steve's passing and we felt we should do something to remember him. Just hours after the news broke, the Belgian national television asked us to participate in a short movie to remember and honor Steve. Of course, we accepted immediately.

As a tribute to Steve, we are posting the resulting movie below. Part of it was filmed at Orbicule, and you might recognize the entire Orbicule team in the final shot.

It's our way to say: "thank you Steve, we love you!'.