LIFXstyle has relied on LIFX's own development kit for Mac, which has long been unsupported and has gone out of date.
So we chose to put a lot of time into LIFXstyle, writing our own code from the ground up to communicate via LIFXs LAN protocol (using their cloud system was never an option, even though it would have been an easier development journey). In early testing this seems reliable and responsive.
We've also made some well-overdue improvements to the interface. You can see from the early screenshots here that there's better navigation, allowing you to choose to view lamps / groups / locations / tags. The status bar menu is improved, giving you more information and control up there in the status bar. There's a new minimalist layout, making four options for the layout of the interface. For changing the colour or warmth, we've made our own custom colour picker geared towards smartbulbs.
It still contains powerful features like scheduling, presets, the drag-and-drop effects designer, control of groups and locations (which will be in sync with the official phone app) and Applescript support. No price increase is planned and the new version will be a simple and free upgrade to existing LIFXstyle users.
Support for the new multi-zone strips and other enhancements are planned shortly.
Our Hue app, Hue-topia will inherit these interface changes after beta testing them. This new version of LIFXstyle is now available for download as a beta.
