I’m not fond of contests and so-called giveaways where contestants have to like some Facebook page or tweet links to some company promotion. They insult consumers’ intelligence and make the product look more like circus sideshows than valuable products in their own right.

Admittedly, Apokalypse has participated in a few promotions, but they tend to be for worthwhile causes. Particularly when those causes aren’t getting the attention they deserve and benefit society. Like helping Colleen Wainwright raise money for WriteGirl, an organization which has been incredibly effective meeting its crucial goal of “bringing the skills and energy of professional women writers to teenage girls who do not otherwise have access to creative writing or mentoring programs.”

So, to help her improve the future of girls through the skills-building organization, WriteGirl, Apokalypse is giving half of the money from every sale of Mori to her fund-raising project. As if that isn’t enough, to encourage more people to participate I’m offering Mori at a discount. A 50% discount. Do you get that? Not only will you save money, but half of the money you spend on yourself at this site will make society better. That’s my 50 and 50 for 50 for 50 offer.

How is WriteGirl crucial to society? Check out their goals (emphasis mine):

• To introduce girls to a wide variety of writing genres;
• To teach a robust set of writing and critical analysis skills;
• To encourage girls to explore and develop their creative talents, both written and oral;
• To nurture girls and promote healthy behaviors and life choices through positive mentoring relationships with women writers;
• To assist girls in preparing for college;
• To inspire girls to pursue careers in writing, such as journalism, public relations,screenwriting, songwriting, corporate communications, publishing, website content producing, editing or creative writing;
• To equip girls with communication tools to confidently navigate the challenges they face; and
• To produce a full slate of program activities throughout the year so that we may serve as many girls as possible (including seven full-day writing workshops annually, a gala public reading and publication of a book each season, college visits and other special outings, and ongoing creative writing mentoring).

How are they effective? 100% of the seniors in their program have gone on to college. One hundred percent. For ten years! “How many seniors is that?” a cynic might sneer. “Ten? Twelve?” I don’t honestly know, and it doesn’t matter to me. Ten or twenty, it makes a difference.

You might think, that’s such an insignificant effort in this big world. But productivity buffs know productivity success isn’t about tackling the tasks which are larger than life. It’s making all tasks into small ones that only require a little effort that over time, day after day, gets things done.

And they’re in LA, which is one of the largest communications hubs in the world. WriteGirl’s efforts cascades into movies, print, radio, music, marketing, and anything else where people put more than two syllables together.

There’s usually a lot of hand-wringing over the under-representation of females in the tech community, and how to help encourage women to enter the field. What a bunch of hooey. Women were at the forefront of modern computing, advancing the field back when the technology was too hard for most male programmers of today. Let people, of whatever gender or other demographic, have the skills and tools of a professional knowledge worker and let them pick the field and specialties of their choice.

WriteGirl does that, and more. If you’ve been waiting for the chance to buy Mori, now’s the time to do it. Half of your investment in your own productivity will be given to Colleen’s 50 for 50 Project. If you need another reason, you’ll save 50% off the new price. If you already have a license for Mori, do yourself a favor and donate to the project.

In case you missed it, I released Mori 1.6.12 for users who were on Lion to deal with changes that were not compatible with previous versions of MOX. It’s a pretty substantial update, as most of the code was originally slated for 1.7. But I don’t believe many would dispute that these changes were overdue.

However, as 1.6.12 has been out for nearly two weeks, at least four significant bugs have been found which merit an updated Mori 1.6.13 ASAP.

• A crasher that sometimes occurs when windows are closed.
• A crasher in background process for Spotlight indexing.
• Documents of the previous session not being opened on Leopard (10.5.8) when Mori restarts.
• Search not functioning on Leopard (10.5.8).

Now, what is the prize for putting up with that kind of excitement? How about these new features:

• Compatible with Lion (but doesn’t yet provide for Lion-specific features).
• LinkBack-client support added. Saved docs now reload with LinkBacks intact. Select multiple LinkBacked items and begin edit sessions for them by clicking one menu item.
• Titles can now be fully displayed, taking up multiple rows in the Source and Entries lists.
• Users can now set different font styles for source and entry lists. Currently this setting affects all docs being displayed.
• Notes can be zoomed in and out either via a pop-up menu on the footer, the new “View > Zoom” menu (and corresponding shortcut keys), and the pinch-to-zoom gesture on supporting devices.
• The background color of notes can be changed in the font panel.
• Searches can be performed with simple partial terms or an advanced term syntax.
• Entries can be sent to Mori from the Terminal app or any shell/BSD invocation.
• Added gestural support: pinch-to-zoom for Apple devices.
• Added gestural support: swipe to navigate entry hierarchy (from any of the three main views).
• Users with a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator can use it to zoom the content view larger and smaller.
• Mori supports document type plugins for importing files dropped into a notebook.
• Entry icons can be customized in the Inspector.
• Added Dutch localization work by Thijs Zandwijk.
• Mori now accepts links to entries in other Mori documents dropped into notes.
• Items dragged into notes keep info related to their originating files, so you can double-click them and have them opened in their default editor or viewer application (similar to LinkBack). Changes aren’t yet reloaded into notebooks in this release. However, they will be in an upcoming one.
• Holding down the control key now creates link(s) instead of copying items dropped into a notebook.
• Updates to the Spotlight and internal search indices now occur in the background, using Daniel Vollmer’s SIWorkManager classes, so they no longer slow down your workflow.
• Status message window no longer pops up into foreground, interrupting you. It is now an activity window that you can show or hide.

Feature Improvements

• All URLs dropped at once into an entry are now accepted.
• New entries are created for every URL dropped at once into the source or entries lists.
• Added files to types of data accepted from services.
• Added code to load the default system icon for those types of documents whose icons are lacking in Mori.
• Entries can be copied and pasted in more ways, both in outlines and notes.
• Updated the General preference pane.
• Handles closing LinkBacks better.
• Added check to Smart Folders to allow matches on any or no tags.
• Better reporting of errors occurring in the Cocoa framework.
• Smart/tag folders auto-update their results when entries are changed.
• Trash folder no longer first selected entry when a notebook is opened.
• Dropping files into a notebook creates separate entries for each with the entries being either the files’ contents or a link (made by holding the control key when the files are dropped).
• Extracting an entry from a section of text will now provide a default title for it taken from the start of the text (works like dropping text into the outline).
• The sheet for titling the extracted text now displays the extracted text in a hide-able view.
• Purge data related to deleted entries when the Trash is emptied just in case “Check notebook” is run.
• Added a “Missing Plugin” message if the appropriate one isn’t found for an entry’s content.
• Warning on beta status only displayed once on newer releases for license holders.
• Crash Reporter Enhancements – Works on Snow Leopard; sends multiple reports; User-settable anonymization reporting; changed all localizations.
• Added column name for table/outline cells’ tooltip display.
• Pre-release now stores Spotlight metadata in a folder separate from the release version.
• Added critical alerts for incorrect number of internal directories in a notebook.
• Branded services menu items so Snow Leopard users can tell which ones are provided by Mori (Oneill).
• Initial credits for developers, testers, localization, etc.
• Added recording/reloading multiple selected entries.
• Added auto-display of the horizontal scrollbar in the content view when the content scales wider than the view.
• Software Update window can now be dismissed with the escape key.
• Changed the behavior of the new up/down multitouch swipe gesture. It now makes the entry which is up a level (the parent or its successor) the current entry when the sibling boundary has been reached.
• Added the missing “Actual Size”, “Fit Width” and “Fit Note”.

Now about the price change. When I started putting together some comparative feature charts as part of an analysis of the competition and where Mori stood, it was pretty plain in which areas Mori was deficient and where it excelled. It isn’t a notepad app, although you can create notebooks which are just filled with notes. Mori isn’t an outliner, although you can create outlines with it. Several, in fact, inside a notebook. The same is true for address book, todo lists, contact loggers and other apps of the Personal Information Manager persuasion.

Now, I admit Mori lacks calendar- and date-specific tools powerful enough to compete with calendaring apps like iCal and Google Calendar at this time. And it lacks the fake notebook paper look and syncing among devices (coming in Mori v1.8), but there’s a reason for that. When Jesse developed it, his focus wasn’t on making a computerized copy of a physical notebook nor replicating the stereotypical functionality of PIMs.

Mori’s minimalist interface belies the presence of a set of tools that let you create notebooks according to your own workflow needs and habits. You’re not tied to just one kind of notebook, be it a notepad, todo list, address book or what-have-you. Smart folders and tag folders aren’t a pre-selected set, locking you into what the developers decided you’re going to have. Nor is the Source List, allowing you to arrange its contents as folders only, entries only, or folders and entries, in any order and with as many columns as you like. You can even hide the Source List. The Entries List too. Give them a staggered arrangement like Mail or widescreen like Address Book. Or even hide them. Selectively.

A Mori notebook window in its default configuration.

A Mori window configured to display its three panes in its widescreen configuration.

A Mori window configured to only display its source list.

A Mori window configured to only display the entries list.

Searching for information is more powerful in Mori too. Jesse made the sophisticated language present in the search engine available right in the search field. A lot of users don’t need that level of sophistication all the time, so I added some settings which have less flexibility. But even in those settings the ability to use that powerful language is still present.

Checkboxes don’t have a set meaning. They can represent anything you want, with a different meaning for each notebook. The same goes for Mori’s tags, flags, labels, and ratings. Combined with its smart folders, there’s almost no limit to the kind of system you can create with Mori.

But the clearest example of the power in Mori is the “Edit Notebook Columns…” feature, which makes the Core Data technology underlying Mori accessible to users. Edit columns to create specially-crafted notebooks best suited for a particular type of use. For example, I’ve created feature roadmap notebooks for my products with category, priority and target columns to indicate the part of the product (eg, user interface, import/export, file format) affected by the described feature (or bug), relative importance over other entries in the same category, and the version in which it’s expected to be present; three columns which aren’t normally required in all notebooks. Or the two fields, Director and Genre, added to the fictional Mori Movie notebook shown above.

All of these factors, and more, add up to the best reason to get Mori: the ability to create notebooks that conform to your own expectations. Where you make the final decision on what works, and what doesn’t. A very valuable proposition indeed.

My sincerest apologies to anyone attempting to contact me recently. Close to two weeks ago, my iMac G5 began to shut itself off. What happens is that as it boots, sometime after loading its kernel extensions, it will power itself off. This has happened a couple times before, but not as long as this time. The last time, it had just turned Spring. Now that it happened when the cold weather set in here in North Florida, I suspect its climate-related. I plan on relocating to South Florida at the end of the month in hope that it will correct this problem, but it’s no guarantee that it will.

In the meantime, I’m using an old PC running Linux to access the Internet. And I’m really annoyed to find that a lot of sites have some terrible incompatibilities with five year-old browser technology. I cannot access my email, nor my Twitter nor Facebook accounts. So there’s now a customer service phone line, (626) 667-4285, for you to reach me in addition to leaving comments on this blog or the user forums. For now, these are the only means I have to respond to anyone’s attempts to contact me.

I’m attempting both to fully upgrade this machine to current versions of Linux and get a working installation of MOX so I can continue work on Mori for a release before the end of the year. I apologize for the inconvenience in delays once again, and will provide additional information as the situation improves.

As you can see, another bevy of announcements all bunched up in one. Did you feel like it was time to unwind? Nope. Me neither!

First off, an announcement that I put off while other things had to be wrapped up: Apokalypse Software Corp. has acquired the rights and the code to bitShifter, the file encryption utility initially developed and marketed by MemSculpt and then ForgEdit. As with prior acquisitions, the current licensees’ purchases will be honored, updates will be made, etc. I’m still trying to understand what some of these licenses were (perpetual what, now?), but they won’t be problematic as the key is in gaining more licensees rather than bleeding the current userbase dry with the nickel-and-dime tactics I despise so much.

However, the name and logo will need to be changed, as the original developer cannot relinquish them…or something. (bitShifter is vague and ambiguous or too techie sounding, anyway.) It is being revamped, and will be re-launched shortly as an Apokalypse product. The price will likely remain $99 USD if I can figure out what type of license that bought. (Perpetual what, again?)

Now that Apokalypse has encryption technology, I’m putting Mori 1.7 out with encryption ASAP. Unfortunately, this means some of the really cool features I originally planned to incorporate in the release will be delayed until 1.8, including enumerated entries, and continuous text. What’s still in? LinkBack, customized labels, font settings for source & entry views, better keyboard navigation, outlining improvements, self-downloading updates, and now encryption.

I’ve also gone over the features of quite a few of Mori’s competitors, and realize how undervalued Mori is. So I’ll be creating a version with fewer capabilities at the current price to stay at the lower end, and the price of the full-featured version will be raised to $99.95 USD. On top of that, a Pro version will be released at $199.95 USD. Mori licensees will automatically be bumped up to the Pro license when the update is released; so as I promised you before, you won’t have to pay extra for the 1.7 upgrades. In fact, as I’m still planning to put out a 1.8 release, current licensees won’t have to pay for any 1.X upgrades.

Next on the list is the big project I had been working on when I purchased Mori and Clockwork from Jesse. It’s a programming system based on the Smalltalk programming language and it’s called Cocoalogue. What’s so special about it? It’s an interpretive system, with programs written in a shebang-prefixed text file like most scripting languages available on UNIX-like platforms. The Smalltalk-based syntax is virtually identical to Smalltalk-80 with extensions for declaring classes, methods and data types (with strong- and static-typing). It supports dynamic run-time features including blocks, automatic garbage-collection and data translation. And it has, as the name Cocoalogue would indicate, a bridge to Mac’s Cocoa frameworks. I’ll go into greater detail on these features and Cocoalogue’s current limitations in my next post. This product hasn’t been released yet, and will be priced at $129 when it is.

But I’m making the announcement now for a very good reason. You’ll be able to get a licensed copy of Cocoalogue today before it’s made available anywhere else, including the Apokalypse website, through the PMC Software Build Your Own Bundle program. Seth Dillingham, another indie Mac developer, has put together a special bundle where you can purchase Cocoalogue, Mori, Clockwork or a family pack at discounted prices. You could even get a discount on over 120 other fabulous programs from Mac indie developers as well! Not that you want to.

So go on to the bundle site, remembering that it’s the only way to get in on Cocoalogue now, and for the substantial savings you’ll get on Mori Pro 1.7 by getting a Mori license today.

And don’t forget: these sales are going to fund cancer research and treatment, so please don’t be stingy on what are already terrific deals. A lot of folks are counting on you!

Just a simple reminder, if you’ve got questions or suggestions regarding any Apokalypse products, I invite you to post them at the forums if they’ll be of benefit and/or interest to the communities which use the products.

Post feature requests and bug reports so I keep track of what needs to be done to keep these products relevant to the work you do. The issue tracking system even has a polling feature which allows you to vote on the most important issues for you.

For any communication which doesn’t apply to the community of users here, I invite you to contact me via private correspondence or iChat/AIM/IRC (huperniketes).

However, if you just want to know what’s currently transpiring, and what’s going on in-between the lengthy times between my irregular posts (I’ve got a huge backlog of unfinished posts, I do apologize), there’s another way to see what I’m up to. That technique is through the Twitter service.

Here’s a simple description of how Twitter is useful for me to keep you aware of what’s going on:

Ed Yourdon, whose Techniques of Program Structure and Design revolutionized my thinking and methods in developing software, has written a great example of why I use Twitter.

I invite you to follow my tweets, or those for Mori and Clockwork product info. I also invite you to sign up and send your own message to any of those accounts.

Because of the difficulties fixing the toolbar bugs and getting Leopard compatibility complete (or reasonably so), Mori has quickly approached version 1.6.10 (not yet, only 1.6.7 has been released so far, but bear with me). This has some odd psychological barrier attached to it, as we seem to recognize it as a significant occasion, a hurdle we do not wish to cross.

I’ve been collecting fixes into a single release, attempting to conserve version numbers. There’s currently improved “Check and Repair Notebook”, more cautious handling of user preferences, improved Italian localization, a fix on the Drag and Drop stall, clearing of compiler warnings, some refactorings, and more unit tests. A couple more fixes I’d like to incorporate into this one: fixed word count (whether it’s in English or Greek), correct Smart Folder behavior and making wildcards optional in search terms.

But anything.10 is an artificial milestone, rather than a significant one. And MOX has already passed it and even gone on to 10.4.11, so what’s troublesome about it now? And with the new versioning class I added to Mori back in 1.6.4 or so, it should be able to handle even version 1.6.99 if necessary!

So I’ll be trying to post new updates more frequently. I’m not certain how frequently it’ll be, but I’d like to get to the point where there was a nightly build, like the Safari team provides. That’s too frequent for most users, of course, but then you’d be able to skip a few interim releases until something you need is included. The other benefit it would provide is allow me to move all the apps forward a little bit at a time, rather than doing continuous development on one app for weeks at a stretch before rotating development to the others.

This morning a visitor to my blog posted a rather interesting comment as a reaction to my purchase of Mori and Clockwork from Jesse of Hog Bay Software. The writer isn’t a current customer, nor was he aware when the transaction occurred. So being in the market for notepad and organizer software (digital notebook), he was naturally cautious regarding which product to purchase. The reasons why I’m publishing his comment as this blog entry rather than leave it as a comment are, first of all, he’s expressing a sentiment shared by many visitors which I wanted to address again to reiterate my commitment to the products purchased from Hog Bay Software, and secondarily, he expresses a rather alarming state of mind which technology purchasers now have and which I wanted to bring to your attention: customers are quite gun-shy when it comes to making technology purchases in this day and age, expecting very little in terms of stability, lifetime, and service and support by the provider.

Here’s his comment. My reply follows.

A new comment on the post #44 “Apokalypse Software Corp. Acquires Mori, Clockwork from Hog Bay Software” is waiting for your approval

http://apokalypsesoftware.com/news/apokalypse-software-corp-acquires-mori-clockwork-from-hog-bay-software/

Author : Don (IP: n.n.n.n , dslnnn-nnn-nnn.xxxx.xxx.X.net)
E-mail : email withheld
URL : URL withheld pending response
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=64.81.88.250
Comment: Just discovered Mori. Looks great on first glance. But I’m hesitant to spend $39 on an app that’s just changed hands. And even more important than the money is the possibility ones “life” – notes about an enormous myriad of stuff, could become useless in the future. It wouldn’t be the first time such a change went well and smoothly, perhaps even improving substantially over time, but it also wouldn’t be the first time one didn’t (or even that an app went downhill in both functionality and level of bugs).

I had such an experience, about eight years ago, when the makers of PaperPort and the software that went with it (I should have guessed that having one company make the hardware and another the software was a recipe for disaster) failed to to offer software for the then-new OS X. This was after I invested in several copies and we converted our office, as much as possible, to scanning and filing all paper documents using the system. Many hundreds of hours went down the drain with their self-serving decision, and our easy access to the old data went with it. And we had to go back to dealing with paper.

There were a number of similarly worrisome user comments in your forum. My take: Good, that you were willing to leave them there – shows integrity. But your “base” is going to be mighty nervous until you (1) answer all relevant posts promptly and (2) actually get a track record in moving forward on product updates and bug fixes. And inheriting a product that apparently has as part of its plusses an expectation that it will be modified by user consensus makes the weight all the more heavy!

So I’ll watch to see what happens in the next 30 days before I decide to migrate our ways of organizing much of our data toward Mori.

It looks promising. Good luck to you. I wish you success.

I certainly understand your apprehension in risking an investment in time and effort in moving your firm to a software product, let alone one which recently changed hands, and is now published by a tiny, tiny software outfit (microISV). Considering the issues certainly is a demonstration of wisdom on your part and requires a disclosure of the facts on mine.

I purchased Mori from Jesse because it represented a savings of substantial time on my part in developing a system I have had in development for some time. So I’m not abandoning the vision of my ideal system (which Mori is still quite short of) by dropping the product or not furthering its development.

The actual risk assumed by Mori’s customers (as with any microISV) is that I am somehow incapable of continuing development and my heirs are unable or unwilling to do so in my stead. The saving grace in such circumstances is that ownership of Mori and Clockwork will revert to Hog Bay Software. This is quite a distinction that Mori enjoys over comparable offerings, in that its survival is assured by contract.

Issues of future compatability have always been a concern for technology. While the differences between Tiger and Leopard are much smaller than those between Mac OS 9 and X, current releases of Mori and Clockwork are known not to work on Leopard and won’t be rectified until the night of its release, at the earliest. (Let’s pray there are enough copies of Leopard available on its release date so I don’t have to physically harm anyone to deprive them of same.)

The question of our expectations for future technology persists through any purchase cycle. It was present when I decided Jesse’s work on Mori and Clockwork sufficiently corresponded to my goals to make the investment. It is present when someone selects the software on which to run a website (Apokalypse has four main CMS packages, with several versions, on which its various web properties are run, so I understand the frustration caused by a lack of interoperability and upgradeability.), purchases a new computer system, etc. It is a sad fact of the current state of technology that until it’s advanced enough to adapt itself, we cannot hope to be certain that our choices will continue to match future needs. The best course of action is to select technology which will serve our needs for the present and next three to five years, and ensure that there is some bridge to preserve our investment should we find that the chosen technology has hit an evolutionary dead-end.

To address that issue, and overcome such objections, Mori will have better export options in the post-v1.7 future. As for the present, my continued development of Oneill (Mori v1.7) has revealed further bugs in the v1.6 branch which will see an additional bug release to rectify them for current users. This v1.6.4 release will ship before Leopard, but I don’t expect it to resolve the incompatibilities with it.

You’re welcome to continue monitoring the progress of Apokalypse’s products. Honest questions and discussions are welcome here and the forums. It’s unreasonable to expect customers to have confidence in what a company does if its employees and principals don’t, which is why I make rare exception to letting comments remain on the forum which aren’t euphoric or gushingly pro-Apokalypse. As the line in 1776 goes, “The king is a tyrant whether we say so or not. We might as well say so.” Public perception of my commitment to my offerings will be echoed through other locations on the Internet regardless of any posturing on my part. So I might as well permit them here, where I (and hopefully future employees) have a duty to read and respond to them, and those who’ve invested their time, effort and money in support of Mori and Clockwork (and all future Apokalypse products) can trust their concerns and sentiments are reproduced accurately and honestly and answered in a similar spirit, respecting their intelligence and value to the community. Thus I won’t attempt to dismiss the forum postings which you characterize as worrisome as I recognize their concerns as legitimate when it seems as if there’s noone responding to customer needs. To that end, I’ve made my contact information more publicly accessible. (Now I just need to remember to properly set my status messages as necessary!)

A brief update on developments as more customers have been querying, via private correspondence, the status of Mori and Clockwork.

What’s Going On?

Besides cooperating with other small Mac software developers on the MacToSchool software bundle (get over $300USD worth of great software at $49.95 for school, research or just work) and its promotion, I’ve been trying to kill that continuing bug of the disappearing toolbar icons. Its solution has eluded me, but I’m either going to get it corrected today via a hack, or correct it in a restructuring of the Blocks plugin support as part of the v1.7 update.

The v1.7 update is two months past my original release plan and I’m not prolonging it any further. I will be posting the development versions in a special projects version called oneill, where the brave may play with it and see how it’s progressing. While the features promised in the plan are still scheduled for inclusion, the main emphasis on the first releases in this branch is on improving the UI and outlining features.

Clockwork v1.5 is also overdue for an update, but my ambitions for that release are not as great. Support for regular alarm clock functionality will be paramount, as will UI enhancements.

I still have my own project which I was preparing to release when the opportunity to take over development of Mori and Clockwork arose. More news next week.

Where Am I?

If you need to get in touch with me, there are the fora and email. However, I can also be found online on the Freenode IRC network inhabiting #macsb. My nick is huperniketes.

What Just Happened?

VersionTracker has been bought by CNET, the folks who survived the dotcom burst by doing a lot of consumer electronics stuff and turning into the online version of the seedy classifieds of an alternative paper. They also run the software sites download.com and shareware.com. It’s to be expected that a large public company tries to reduce the competitive landscape to enhance its properties. They might even be able to achieve success in the Mac market as a result of this purchase.

Unfortunately, the history of large companies buying smaller ones typically ends in misery for the smaller firm’s customers. (A concern voiced by this blogger’s customers after acquiring Mori and Clockwork from Hog Bay Software. However, Jesse’s organization is slightly larger as I have no cats.) Changes are made to meet parent company objectives and offerings are cancelled or shuttered to keep from cannibalizing sales from the parent’s main operations.

Why this concern over VT’s sell-out? Software publishers gain new customers due to publicity found on news sites, blogs and most of the time, software directories such as VT. Their traffic is over twice that of MacUpdate, which is more than twice that of iusethis.

In addition, CNET doesn’t provide its database of software as a resource for users and developers to be a good corporate citizen. It’s a profit center. And sometimes, profit centers enact policies to increase revenues at the expense of its community. Not only does CNET derive ad revenue from download.com and its sister site shareware.com, but they’re happy to charge developers up to $100USD per month to update their software listings. That’s for overnight updates, mind you. It’s free if you’re willing to wait, but it can take up to six weeks according to their promotional packages page.

Many VT paying customers have expressed their displeasure, stating they’ll not renew their subscriptions. My coopetitors in the #macsb channel on IRC consider download.com to be a non-issue, but with its traffic being more than seven times VT’s, and its larger resources, it will affect the distribution channel. In short, CNET is aiming to expand its involvement in the Mac market in a big way, and taking out the biggest third-party resource for Mac software is the way to do it.

We’ll see how this pans out.

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.”