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.”

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”.

There’s a flurry of activity on the macsb mailing list regarding product activation for software as a result of this post. It seems the purchaser of an RSS reader was denied the ability to re-install the program on his computer because he had done so too many times.

Product activation is one technique some software publishers use to reduce the theft of their products. Other techniques have been hardware-based, such as the dongle, and software-based, such as serial numbers, entering data from the printed documentation, etc.

And the problem, insofar as Charles Miller relates, is when legitimate users are penalized because the publisher or his server is afraid one legally purchased copy of the product has become thousands of stolen copies. It is always at the discretion of a businessman to decide what person he would like to do business with. It is also at the discretion of a person to decide what type of company will get his business. Some things you accept as a cost of the relationship, be they qualities of the software, customer support or payments.

A software publisher must decide a multitude of issues that relate to his customers: the features in his software, technical support, sales and distribution channels and how to combat product tampering and theft.

Anti-theft measures, such as serial numbers and product activation, generally operate by disabling functionality unless proof of ownership is demonstrated. For an RSS reader, which requires Internet access to begin with, it’s reasonable for the program to require validation with the publisher’s database of purchasers. However, it’s also reasonable for a purchaser to be able to re-install the software on at least the same machine as often as his needs dictate.

Now, given the choices between entering a serial number and your email address to activate a program, it seems to me to be easier to remember your email address. But then it’s also easier for a thief to guess at as well. And figuring out who holds a license for your products versus who’s broken into them requires additional manpower and overhead. Is the amount of sales that are protected worth the cost of one-upping the determined thief and degrading my customer’s experience, albeit slightly?

This was one of the bigger issues I’ve wrestled with as my own product nears completion, and when I began writing this entry I was determined to ship it with a product activation scheme as a theft deterrent. However, given its product category, the resources and delays associated with incorporating and maintaining some anti-theft scheme I’ve decided to forego adding one.

Not only do I want to remove every impediment to my customers’ enjoyment of the software, I want to reduce the friction and suspiciousness which every customer touchpoint sustains as a result of the “proof” dance. It makes for a better experience for my customers and myself.

Purchasers will be able to download a copy of the product they licensed, and the updates, as often as they need to, whenever they need to and whereever they need to without having to activate or register the software to use it. (After all, they’ve already purchased a license so I should know they’re registered, right?)

The only requirement for running the software is to have a copy of it. It won’t be keyed to a particular machine and it won’t report a customer’s activities back to HQ. The only mechanism that will be in place, and I’m explaining my planned implementation now in the interest of privacy advocacy, is licensees will need to use a licensed email address to download the initial purchased version or an update. The program will only submit the email address (as well as machine type and MOX version) when checking for updates, and the default setting for automatic checking is off.

In addition, customers will be able to track their downloads and, if they so desire, create an optional password to restrict access to downloads

What about the thieves? Well, the determined thief will have stolen regardless of company policy. The casual thief won’t find it as tough to steal from me as he would from others, but I hope my software is considered so valuable to potential customers that they would still consider it a bargain at several times its price.

Neither, it appears, do New Media folks.

Here’s one who does, though. (This lesson may also apply to developers tied too closely to the Mac platform.)