Welcome to the first public alpha release of Skeleton Key 2.0.

What's new (since 1.3.5)?
-Carbon applications can now be launched
-programs run with Skeleton Key no longer become "Zombie" processes after they terminate
-you can now choose to have Skeleton Key remember your password for the duration of its execution
-documents can be opened under certain circumstances  (see below)
-the OS X terminal application can now be launched as root

What's broken (ie: why is this "alpha")?
-when Skeleton Key tries to open a document, it opens the application for that document twice: once as the normal user and once as the root user.  This is a problem since it then gives the document to the application copy that was launched as the normal user which is not very useful.  If, however, you only have the root copy open, Skeleton Key will open the document with that version.  This will be resolved in a future release.
-the icon is ugly and makes it hard to use Skeleton Key when it is not in the dock:  this icon is one that I just whipped up quickly after getting this working and I acknowledge that it is something that needs to be replaced.
-I can't make Skeleton Key remember my password forever, the option is greyed-out: This is because there are huge security issues with remembering the password and I am not yet sure how to tackle them.  This will be implemented in the future.
-there are no preferences:  That is true.  This version is aware of the preferences from older versions of Skeleton Key and will use those, however, a preference panel did not make it into this release.  Expect that in the next release, however.

Why 2.0 already?
This version includes the features that were promised by the never-release 1.4 version of Skeleton Key (that being support for Carbon).  The reason for the more dramatic name change, however, is that this version is 100% new code.

Skeleton Key 1.0 was written in about 20 minutes one morning and basically just ran the command "sudo open" which worked great and was only a few lines of actual code.  After a security update stopped that method from working, the code was shunted to allow for some functionality to still work but the design was not fixed.  

This was a huge problem with the program going forward.  This version of the code-base was designed with scalability in mind.  This made it VERY different so it was decided that a major version number change was in order.

What else do I need to know?
Skeleton Key allows you to run any program with root (administrator) privileges.  This gives you great power but also great responsibility.  Any program you run with Skeleton Key has the capability to erase or change anything on your system.  Offering this capability is what Skeleton Key was written for, however, you must be very careful to not run programs that could do malicious things to your computer.

Note that by using Skeleton Key, you admit that any damage you do to any system while using this product is your own fault and you will, in no way, hold Spectral Class responsible for the damages.
You have been warned.