MarsEdit is a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

post editor for the Mac made by Red Sweater Software. It can be used to write, edit, and publish blog posts, and supports many popular blogging services, such as

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

Blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

ger, and

Movable Type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

History

MarsEdit was originally developed by Brent Simmons as a component of

NetNewsWire NetNewsWire is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source news aggregator for macOS and iOS. It was introduced by Brent and Sheila Simmons on July 12, 2002, under their company Ranchero Software. History NetNewsWire was developed by B ...

, a popular news aggregator for Mac OS X, which, in the 1.0 series, included a simple weblog editor. During the development of NetNewsWire 2.0, the developers decided to move the blog editor functionality to a new application. With the acquisition of NetNewsWire by NewsGator in 2005, the future of MarsEdit was uncertain for a time. Simmons considered abandoning the app, or open-sourcing it to let other developers work on it, but after a "strong reaction from users", he announced at the October 2005 DrunkenBlog conference that development would continue. On November 4 of 2005, he revealed that MarsEdit development would be continued by Gus Mueller of Flying Meat. In February 2007, MarsEdit was purchased by Red Sweater Software, and development was taken over by Red Sweater's owner, Daniel Jalkut. Support for the popular

blog service was added to MarsEdit 2.3 after Jalkut worked with Tumblr developer

Marco Arment Marco Arment (born June 11, 1982) is an American iOS developer and web developer, podcaster, technology writer and former magazine editor. As a developer, he is best known for being chief technology officer for Tumblr and creating Instapaper and ...

. In 2010, an iOS version was planned, but was not released. In 2018, MarsEdit creator Daniel Jalkut co-formed a group called the "Developer Union" protesting Apple's developer policies. He had previously complained about the Mac App Store taking away developers' control over their app sales. MarsEdit joined the

Setapp Setapp is a subscription-based service for macOS and iOS applications released by the Ukrainian software company MacPaw in 2017. It provides access to a growing collection of software from different developers for a fixed monthly fee. App catego ...

subscription package in 2019.

Reception

Reviews of initial versions of MarsEdit were positive, but pointed out bugs. Version 2 received a 4 out of 5 star review by

Macworld ''Macworld'' is a website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc. It started life as a print magazine in 1984 and had the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macint ...

magazine, while Ars Technica's David Chartier said it lacked ecto's support for Amazon affiliate links and the built-in Mac OS X Media Browser. In 2007, ''

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editori ...

'''s Scott McNulty called it "fantastic" in comparison to Blogger's web interface, and ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'''s Jacqui Cheng described it as a "popular blogging tool among Mac users". Scott Gilbertson noted that the app was popular among "a number of" writers for ''Wired'' magazine. Weighing the need for MarsEdit compared to using Tumblr's web interface, Christina Warren said that the lower risk of data loss (through saved drafts) and the ease of writing long posts made the app "superior". Macworld praised the new WYSIWYG features version 3.1, but noted that there was missing documentation for self-hosted Movable Type blogs. In 2018, Macworld gave version 4.1 their Editor's Choice award, and rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars; AppleInsider was also positive. In December 2022, Apple blogger

John Gruber John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and one of the inventors of the Markdown markup language. History Gruber is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel Unive ...

History

Reception

Release history

References

External links