This (will be) the fourth Alpha release of There for MacOS. As an Alpha release, it probably has many, many bugs, and may not work at all!
As usual, we’ve submitted the build to Apple for approval, so you won’t see until it’s approved, at which time Alpha testers will be automatically notified.
If you were added for this round of testing you’ll get an email with the subject “Makena Technologies has invited you to test There Alpha.” Follow the instructions in the email and good luck!
As of 06/28/2024, this release is has been approved! Have fun!
Known Bugs and Updates
- “Option – Tab” behavior
One of the ways to switch between windows within a MacOS application is to hit option-tab key.
When you’re using There for MacOS you might be tempted to use this to switch between the World’s window and, say, browser with There Central in it.
Don’t do it.
If you do, There can lose control of the cursor, and no matter what you do, it won’t move. To get out of this, you can hit “option-tab” to get back to the There window and get the cursor again.
If that doesn’t work, hit command-tab to switch to another application, and then click the There window to get back to it.
If you want to switch to the There Central window/browser, just move the cursor to it, and click. This will give focus to the There Central window, and you can click around at will. - “Emotions” shortcut bar is sometimes blank
Sometimes the “Emotions” shortcut bar – where you will normally see “Banter”, “Flirt”, “Gestures”, and “Voice” – will appear blank.
As a workaround go to any seating arrangement and sit down, and the shortcut bar should correct itself. - “Whirling Dervish”
If you hit the left or right arrow your avatar will start turning, and won’t stop, no matter what keys you hit. This is because the There window has “lost focus” and it’s not seeing your arrow keys.
As a workaround, click anywhere in the There view window except the menu bar and hit the down key to key opposite to your rotation.
We’ve applied some fixes for this, so it should happen far less often than before, but we’re not sure we’ve fixed all the cases yet. - Crashes when visiting Funzone, etc, or Teleporting around.
I won’t go into what’s causing this, but people have reported it as random crashes when running around, or teleporting around to different places. Based on the crash reports we’ve seen, we believe we’ve fixed this. - Compass displays invalid headings.
Alpha testers have reported that sometime the compass would display incorrect headings – e.g. you’d think you were going east, but the compass would say south, etc.
This is fixed with this release. - Unable to access the system status page.
Intrepid Alpha testers have reported that trying to access the “System Status” menu item brings up a browser that displays nothing but an error.
This is fixed with this release. - Unable to connect to world.
A few Alpha testers have reported that they are unable to connect to the world. After working with one very helpful tester, we determined this was because they had an “IPV6” DNS server address, while There currently supports “IPV4” addresses.
We believe we’ve fixed this, and if not, have added lots of logging to help us fix it. We also have a workaround which we’ll publish which you can use if this fix didn’t work. - Fixed an issue with the number of “Out There” or browser windows you could open. You’re only allowed to have up to 10 “Out There” or “Browser” windows open at once. Unfortunately we had a bug where we’d count the windows you opened, but did not decrement the count when you closed them. At some point you’d hit a limit, and wouldn’t be able to open any more windows.
This is fixed with this release. - “Cruise Control” doesn’t work as expected
There have been reports that “cruise control” doesn’t work as expected when walking/running, especially in bunny slippers. We’re looking into it.
I am so There 