The launch has not at all gone smoothly. I had hoped it would proceed without a hitch, and to have the feature releases (Mori v1.7 & Clockwork 1.5) ready so the launch could start with a bang. Unfortunately, it was me and the users who suffered some banging up and getting a little shaken up. No bruises or black-and-blue marks though (I hope. Holla if something’s amiss.) So, I had to settle for releasing a point upgrade, such that it indicates Apokalypse is the new publisher, and properly points to the update appcast.

It’s been a roiling two weeks as I’ve been trying to get things ready for the launch of Mori and Clockwork as Apokalypse products. Besides trying to get the finishing touches on the product I’ve been developing for years, I was trying to familiarize myself with the Mori and Clockwork codebase enough to migrate them to my site.

Oh, the site. I also needed to migrate the relevant portions of Hog Bay Software’s site to my server, and have it looking somewhat like my own, but not completely so the userbase feels somewhat comfortable in their new surroundings. There are still some records that were added since the beginning of the month that need to be migrated, but hopefully everyone will make it through unharmed. Apokalypse was running on WordPress, Hog Bay Software on Drupal. They are joined at /products, and the seams do show. Most users won’t need to register for anything on the WordPress system as of yet, not even to post comments here. In a couple of months both systems will start getting integrated. In the meantime, I’m a tad busy.

Speaking of busy…

Can you tell when the Mori/Clockwork changeover occurred?

So there are release schedules for Mori and Clockwork, and my philosophies for their future direction. Hopefully, the first feature releases will be ready in two weeks.

In the meantime, I’ve got some press releases to put out.

Apokalypse Software Corp. has recently acquired two great productivity apps, Mori and Clockwork, from Jesse Grosjean of Hog Bay Software. Press release here. These apps fit neatly into my dream software environment, so I had to jump at the chance to make them mine. To current Mori and Clockwork owners I say, “Welcome aboard, I think you’re going to love their direction”. To Jesse, their original developer I say, “Thank you for these great apps and the opportunity to adopt them. They’ve got a new great home.”

So it turns out the announcements were not as spectacular as we had hoped for. A lot of the keynote was in fact a repeat of last year’s. What was new was the disclosure that EA and id were developing new games for the Mac, Safari was going to be available on the Windows platform, and that XHTML/AJAX was the API for the iPhone.

Very underwhelming. Very un-spectacular. And very significant.

Gaming for Mac gives less cause for users to run Windows on Mac hardware.

Safari for Windows gives more reason for web developers to support the lowly Mac user, who could otherwise be ignored.

And XHTML/AJAX, or Web2.0, means that the iPhone has no significant programming hurdle for users. You could write up a simple iPhone app using Safari on your Mac or PC, and download it to your iPhone when it’s ready. You could even tweak other apps to your liking. Perhaps Apple will be motivated to release DashCode for Windows as well. But it just goes to show that scripting has already won.

It will also inhibit the adoption of Microsoft’s PopFly!, Silverlight, Adobe’s AIR, and other proprietary “solutions” to ubiquitous, networked apps.

It also means the iPhone has no significant programming differentiator from any other platform. Thus, whatever apps you write for the iPhone will operate with minor modification on the Nokia N90, which also has an embedded WebKit.

And, finally, it means my plans are not only safe, but will carry more weight than I thought.

There was an alpha released last week, and an announcement due this week. However, due to some minor distraction, the news will be postponed for a week and we’ll just release a beta or two instead. Hopefully, that will be sufficient to adjust for any unexpected “secret features”.