Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Roaring Apps

Does anyone have knowledge about, or experience with, Roaring Apps?

From their webpage they would appear to be okay but when I went to the compatibility page I found, top and bottom, prominent banners for software claiming to clean or optimize Macs. They looked like thinly disguised links to MacKeeper.

Although Roaring Apps appears to be okay, I automatically go into "tread carefully" mode when a site seems to support/endorse anything that looks like MacKeeper.

Interesting, when I access RoaringApps’ Compatibility Table page, I don’t see any banner ads (Safari 8.0.7 with a.o. Ghostery). Apart from that, Roaring Apps is what it proclaims to be, a repository of app compatibility data for Mac OS X versions since Snow Leopard. Very useful to assess the need for app upgrades with new OS versions.

Well, that's interesting. I get very different results. I just went to the site, clicked on Compatibility, and the site briefly downloaded the data before displaying the list of apps. At the top of the page was this banner:

Tired of Slow Mac?
Make your Mac Fast In Seconds. Give your Mac a Free Health Checkup

And, at the bottom of the page, this banner:

Mac Transcriber Software
Download easy to use foot pedal controlled audio player for Mac

Then I left the site and went back, repeating the previous process. This time the banners were different. This banner was at the top and the bottom of the page:

Download Cleaner for Mac
Protect, Secure & Clean Your Mac. High-level Security. Download Now!


I am Safari 6.2.6 using OS 10.8.5




So, as long as one stays away from the banners, the site has value. Thanks.

FWIW I have the same experience as alternaut using Safari 8.0.7 on the Roaring Apps site, no popups no ads. The concept of of a crowd-sourced compatibility database seems to be a good one, and I like the idea a lot better than some of the commercial sites that do the same thing and more. There have been efforts at doing something similar on FineTunedMac and its predecessor but Roaring Apps is a lot more elaborate effort than anything tried here. I do have some observations and reservations…

• IMHO a critical design fault is the lack of application version information on Roaring Apps. It is all well and good to know that Adobe Acrobat is compatible with Yosemite, but without version information this is realistically pretty useless information. What versions of Adobe Acrobat are compatible with Yosemite. You are still left with going to the developer's website for that information and Roaring Apps is simply an extra step.
• The Basic mode does not require registration or the upload/download of data, but does not provide automatic notification of updates.
• The Real Time mode mayprovide version information but that requires uploading and downloading a lot of information. I am reluctant to allow any downloads that I don't know more about.
• I noticed the compatibility database is incomplete. I found several apps that I frequently used in Mavericks and continue to use in Yosemite have no data past Mountain Lion in the Roaring Apps database. The voluntary nature of users updating the Roaring Apps database probably its major weakness.
• In a very brief search, I found two applications that were either not found in the "Basic Compatibility Table" or showed no information for Mavericks or Yosemite but did show up in an application search and/or showed Mavericks and Yosemite compatibility data. This leads me to question the reliability of the site.

Personally I have fewer and fewer non-app store applications and to the best of my ability to determine all the ones I have either check for updates automatically when they open or at the very least the developer sends email notification of updates and upgrades. The App Store apps are updated automatically so I don't worry about them.

if you are seeing banners where you should not, one of two things is likely happening:

1) you clicked to go there from another webiste (other than say, google) and your entire window is encapsulated in an iframe, and the ads you are seeing are being generated by the shell from the previous web page you were on, that you actually are sort of still on.

2) your dns server has been changed (check your network settings)

Those sneaks.


I checked Network Settings and everything seemed okay...although I'm not sure I'd know the difference without a flashing sign that says "There's been a change."

However, I did run a couple of quick tests.

I quit Safari and reloaded it. Then I went directly to Roaringapps.com by typing the URL into the bar. The page did not have the banners but had empty white boxes where the banners would have been.

I again quit Safari and went directly to the FTM site where I logged in and logged out. From the FTM site I went to Roaring Apps by typing the URL into the bar. Again the banners were replaced by empty white boxes.

I visited the Roaring Apps page and saw ads for MacKeeper.

The ads aren't specifically placed by Roaring Apps, nor does Roaring Apps endorse them. The ads are Google ads. MacKeeper buys tons of Google ads.

If you've set up your computer to filter out Google ads, you won't see them.

I'm surprised google still does business with them, considering how far they've encroached on the title of "malware".

It took a lawsuit to get Google to stop placing ads for dodgy prescription-free "pharmacies" run out of Russia that packaged drugs made in illegal labs in India and sold them as if they were coming from Canada. Google's policies seem to be "their money is still green."