The Mac developer scene is loaded with a lot of helpful and supportive developers out there, sharing ideas, code and encouragement with one another. I’ve benefitted from the development community, as have the Mori and Clockwork code. I say this not only as one who’s currently putting new code into them, but seeing the comments Jesse left in the code before me!

So I’d like to drop an idea into your lap you might find useful for the right type of application. As there are different types of software one can develop, e.g., operating systems, utilities, paint programs and the like, they have particular usage characteristics that they encourage. Some, like digital notebooks and desktop timers for example *cough*, tend to remain in operation while the user is logged into his account. Usually, this isn’t a problem for the user. Unless, of course, the user is also someone further developing said software. Then several questions have to be answered, such as, “How do I run unit tests on builds while still running a stable version of my app?” and “How do I try out the latest build without affecting the files which are currently open in my app?”

On operating systems based on more primitive process management, it isn’t troublesome because each built application is fairly independent of others, and often multiple invocations of a single app can be run concurrently. It wasn’t problematic on the Mac either back on MacOS 9 and earlier, and even in the early MOX releases. But now with Launch Services, running test versions of apps you run on an all-day basis can be problematic. It’s best to give that test version some different signature so its defaults and file changes don’t corrupt your normal environment.

Note that this tip doesn’t prevent two versions from munging the same files; even two unrelated apps can mess up a data file if they’re updating it at the same time. What this tip does is provide an alternate identity, if you will, for test builds so MOX doesn’t try to hand it the same data set it gives the release builds of your app. You mustn’t try to open files in the test build that are currently opened by a release build.

Here’s how I do it:

1. In the Info.plist file, use the C pre-processor’s conditional compilation directive to give your app its normal metadata when a release build is made, but a special set of metadata for all other build configurations:

#if defined(Release)
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apokalypsesoftware.Mori</string>
#else
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apokalypsesoftware.Mori-debug</string>
#endif

Update: I forgot to mention that Xcode 3 and later versions now use specialized editors for the Info.plist files. To override this editor selection, bring up the file’s Info window (by selecting the file and pressing cmd-I) or the Inspector window and change the File Type setting from “text.plist.whatever” to “text”. Once you add the conditional to Info.plist you can change File Type back and access Info.plist in its raw form from its target’s Properties tab. That way, you can view it in either mode within Xcode. However, making any changes in Xcode’s plist editor will wipe out any conditional directive in the file, so use it only for reviewing current settings, not for actual editing!

2. In the Target Info window (brought up via the ‘Project > Edit Active Target “Mori”‘ menu item), select the Build tab, specify “All Configurations” for the Configuration pop-up menu, and enter “plist” in the search toolbar widget to bring up the relevant setting items.

3. For the “Info.plist Other Preprocessor Flags” setting, enter -traditional as the value. While not needed to support the test version twin, it will help to prevent any URLs included in the Info.plist from being swallowed up by the pre-processor and possibly causing you sleepless nights because neither MOX nor the Xcode build system have the slightest idea of what the proper format for URLs are, but will behave erratically when it isn’t just so. So it’s best to make it a non-issue from the start. (No charge for that and other tips related to usage of the pre-processor you can find in Technical Note TN2175. Incidentally, TN2175 says to use “-traditional”, but I use “-CC”. Use whatever works for the version you’re on.)

4. For the Info.plist Preprocessor Definitions setting, enter $(CONFIGURATION). Xcode will change the display to read <multiple values>, but that’s okay because the value will vary according to the current build configuration. It will define a value that matches the build configuration that the pre-processor will test against in the Info.plist. (Try switching the setting in the Configuration pop-up menu of the Build tab to watch the value change to match the current setting.) This is what will direct the pre-processor to output the correct value for CFBundleIdentifier.

5. Check the Preprocess Info.plist File checkbox so Xcode invokes the pre-processor on the Info.plist before copying it to the application.

When built, you’ll be able to run the app concurrently with the release version, and without causing conflicts with data files in use by it. Of course, you won’t have your preferences set up, but that’s only a problem until you save preferences for the test version. (Remember, if you try to get around that problem by copying the release version’s defaults file that it also holds the recently opened files. Purge, close or what-have-you as appropriate!)

One of the extra things I attempted to do in this technique was to provide an alternate name for the private builds or test versions so they would be distinctly named for testers. We used to use naming conventions such as “Mori 1.7β3” when distributing such versions back in the pre-MOX days, but including the metadata keys CFBundleExecutable, CFBundleName, and CFBundleDisplayName don’t have any noticeable effect. Any tips in this regard would be greatly welcomed.

I had also attempted to get the pre-processor to generate the bundle identifier with “Mori-$(CONFIGURATION)” that fit whatever build configuration was in effect automatically, which would’ve avoided the use of the #if defined directive. Unfortunately, because the macro expansion would generate Mori-Release that method proved ineffective.

A corresponding idea is to use an alternate icon (via the CFBundleIconFile specifier) to represent the test version of your app. It helps you and your testers realize when odd behavior is due to running the wrong build just by looking at the dock or application-switcher. It’s also fun to double-click a document only to realize the test app is opening vital data meant only for the stable version. Hilarity is sure to ensue. But I’m a professional, don’t you kids try this at home!

If you don’t have the construction guy handy, you can resort to the technique I used before I discovered Info.plist processing: MOX’s own stamping of missing dock files makes for a handy visual guide to your test app. To try it yourself, add the debug version from within your build/Debug folder to your dock items. That’s right, the debug version (or whatever you use for test builds). Now delete it and empty the trash. (You will be building new ones, won’t you?) Now click on the app icon you just added to the dock. It adds a big fat ‘?’ to your lovely icon, doesn’t it? (At least it should if you deleted the correct icon.) Now rebuild your app and run it from within Xcode.

Now bring up the application switcher (cmd-tab). What do you see? A big fat ol’ ‘?’ emblazoned on the debug version of your app! Oh, you don’t? You see the normal icon? Yeah, you’re on Leopard, aren’t you? This trick doesn’t work as well on Leopard because MOX validates the file state more often than Tiger did. Such as, starting the test build from the Dock instead of only within Xcode. On Leopard, clicking on the dock icon when there’s a built debug version of your app in the debug folder will restore its unstamped icon. But anytime the question mark goes away, just delete the debug version, empty the trash, and click on the dock icon again.

Have fun, and keep ‘em flying!

When I purchased Mori, one of the first things I did was generate some documents about its codebase. For this, the main tool I used was Xcode’s Class Model tool to generate charts of the various classes involved. I spent several days laying out the classes on the charts, then printing and then folding and taping the pages together. (This is a process which I am replacing with specific related classes that occupy only one or two pages, so I can keep them in a notebook; or sending a PDF to Kinko’s the next time I need to print the whole chart.) They helped me get an understanding of how code was laid out, and their relationships.

After a while, the tape that held the charts up on the wall would lose their adhesiveness and down they’d come…again and again, eventually falling into disuse. Having gotten a digital camera, I spent a day reassembling the crumpled remains of the charts about a week or so ago, and snapped a few shots which I present here.

There are 33 classes, and 25 protocols defined for the document back-end plugin, and quite a few supplementary category methods extending Cocoa’s foundation classes.

The user interface plugin has 85 classes, 18 protocols, and its own quantity of supplementary category methods.

At least, that’s what Mori’s classes looked like when the shots were taken. Today it looks a tad different.

Oneill, the branch for Mori 1.7 is under active development again and will bring substantial changes to the UI and back-end architecture. You shouldn’t notice any hiccups in the file format, but you should see better functionality and performance.

At least that’s what the testing support should help me do. Thankfully, I make heavy use of the Subversion SCM system. Just in case.

While trying to solve a user’s problem with an mGTD script, I came across a subtle issue that demonstrates some issues that arise when violating a programming philosophy, tackling bugs in other people’s code, and general uncertainty whenever coding in AppleScript.

Working with AppleScript is generally considered iffy, because a lot seems ambiguous and so much is dependent on how the dialect is interpreted and how scriptable apps handle some of the application events which scripting is dependent on. I’ve written scripts before, some I’m pretty awed by (that it works, actually, but also what it does), but I’m still hesitant to tackle some scripting issues. In addition, being a GTD greenhorn, and an mGTD noob made trying to respond to this issue authoritatively very questionable.

Thankfully, BMEGuy, mGTD’s author and all-around community nice guy, tackled the question with a quick solution. But the updated script was still problematic, and so I felt I really needed to participate in coming up with a solution.

Again, being an mGTD noob and all, it took me at least half an hour to figure out how the plugin worked, and the script on top of that. Then, after I was able to get the script to run, it worked for me. Hmm.

But that’s because I was testing with an entry with a date due of today. Once I switched it to later in the week, the entry was still showing up for today. Isn’t that odd? It seemed I had inadvertently left in the date line from the original script. When I removed it, I witnessed the same problem.

It turns out there’s a bug in MOX 10.4.11’s iCal 2.0.5 (I’m guessing it’s present in earlier versions as well) where it doesn’t properly update the calendar display for new events made by the script. You won’t see it in the monthly view. However, you might notice a little oddness in the weekly view.

You can see the event if you add ’show theEvent’ after the script makes a new display alarm for the event (between the 2nd and 3rd ‘end tell’ up from the bottom). This will display it’s properties in the info drawer, but you won’t see the event anywhere on the calendar (in either week or month view) until iCal is restarted.

Running the script in monthly view doesn’t show any artifact in the calendar, but the data is shown in the info drawer.

You could also run the script in the weekly view and then switch to the monthly view, in which case you get this:

So now that the question of the event’s presence in the calendar was settled in my mind, I had to figure out why my faulty script displayed the event, but not the proper one; and how to coax iCal to display it.

Being unfamiliar with mGTD still, I tried to figure out the difference between the attribute name “dateDue” and due date. due date is one of the standard properties for entries in a Mori document. attribute name “dateDue” is a user column added in the example mGTD notebook. You can view them all the user columns by selecting the menu item Edit > Edit Notebook Columns…

Okay, good so far, but why would one cause iCal to display properly and not the other? After moving the due date line about for a while, I checked Script Editor’s Event Log, and saw

The event reply for the due date had a missing value! Mori wasn’t returning a value for the due date property because it wasn’t set (and wouldn’t be in the example notebook). Now I had to find a way to use one of those missing values to make theEvent visible without setting it to the wrong date. And the problem with that is most of the properties used in Mori’s entries aren’t appropriate for an iCal event.

I eventually thought about re-ordering the messages to iCal instead of being so fixated on a change in the messages to Mori or playing with the properties being set in creating the event. What I came up with was a plan to use the messed up missing value date as before to make the event visible first, and then set the date correctly. The code turned out like this:

tell application "Mori"
	tell current entry
		set theDate to (get attribute name "dateDue")
		set faultyDate to due date
		set theName to name
		set theNote to note
	end tell
end tell
tell application "iCal"
	tell calendar "Scramble" -- the user should specify the name of the target calendar here
		set theEvent to make new event at end with properties {description:theNote, summary:theName, start date:faultyDate, allday event:true}
		tell theEvent
			make new display alarm at end with properties {trigger date:theDate}
		end tell
		-- show theEvent
		set theEvent's start date to theDate
	end tell
end tell

And to my surprise, it worked! So as I began gathering the materials together for my reply to the issue, I noticed something in the event’s info drawer that had escaped my attention before:

iCal, that’s just crazy talk! But at least it would explain why it would display traces of an event, if anything at all; and why it wasn’t noticeable earlier: iCal would correct the event data when reading it in when it started (”iCal database, that’s just crazy talk!”). But somebody forgot to add a sanity check when creating a new event from the properties passed to it by our script. (This is an example of why the Once and Only Once principle should be heeded. If there’s only one place where events are synthesized from pre-recorded values, whether those values are from a stored file, a script or the UI, then all those code paths will benefit from any sanity checks added to event creation.)

Knowing this, here’s another means of working around this bug, by sending iCal info that won’t confuse it:

tell application "Mori"
	tell current entry
		set theDate to (get attribute name "dateDue")
		-- set faultyDate to due date
		set theName to name
		set theNote to note
	end tell
end tell
tell application "iCal"
	tell calendar "Scramble" -- the user should specify the name of the target calendar here
		set theEvent to make new event at end with properties {description:theNote, summary:theName, start date:theDate, end date:(theDate + 1), allday event:true}
		tell theEvent
			make new display alarm at end with properties {trigger date:theDate}
		end tell
		-- show theEvent
		-- set theEvent's start date to theDate
	end tell
end tell

Thinking about these two solutions it’s clear that picking the latter one, with well-formed properties, is the safest choice to make. Here’s additional proof: the first solution, the one which plays with the start date to make the event appear, will indeed make the event appear. But if there’s less than 24 hours until the event begins, it will appear on the wrong date and still require iCal to be restarted to appear in the proper location!

It just goes to show you, while you might be able to get away with just the barest minimum, and someone else might normally clean up after you, it’s best if you did the job correctly from the start in case your safety net disappears from under you.

This has taken much longer than I hoped for, and it lacks the features I wanted to add in there, but due to another empty-window bug I’m releasing Mori 1.6.9 today as a stopgap measure.

I had hoped for a quick release to get the fix out to those who are upgrading now (particularly from older, Hog Bay Software versions), but I had upgraded my Xcode installation mid-stream, which is generally a bad idea if you can’t test the effects a tool migration will have on your projects. And Mori is quite unique in the way it’s constructed, being almost entirely plugins, and plugins which run plugins.

It took a week to resolve unit testing problems, some of which were due to Mori’s unique project files, some of which were due to changes in the layout of Xcode’s tools directories and one due to a bug in the unit tests for the ‘Check and Repair Notebooks’ functionality (which I wasn’t going to risk going out with a bug whose cause I hadn’t determined).

Anyway, testing problems aside, I’m packaging the latest for release now. You’ll be able to read the release info shortly.

In case you’re running one of the older releases of Mori, one with a bug in the update mechanism, this is just a brief note to let you know Mori v1.6.8 has now been released!

The fixes include:

• Rewrote user settings handling subsystem (to prevent wayward settings from affecting other operations).
• Improved notebook check and repair functionality to fix orphaned entries and entry data records.
• Fixed stall when dropping items into Mori’s source or entries lists.
• Fixed (or at least improved) Italian localization.
• Fixed faulty version update notification.

The code I had hoped to incorporate into the update, but which didn’t make it (because it was already three weeks or so overdue) included fixes for Smart Folder Rules, non-wildcard searches, and word-count bugs, which are among those to be included in v1.6.9. Also to be included are user-settable font settings in the source and entries views, and the fix for the font prefs for notes.

Work on v1.6.9 has already begun, and my work in v1.6.8 improved the ability to perform testing in new releases. The Beta Test Gang will find the first test version on the site Jan 2nd.

it’s been excessively frustrating and tiring. To cap off the season I was hoping to release the overdue 1.6.8 today, but there are still difficulties in getting the new defaults system working correctly.

The debugger is failing in the middle of an initializer method (self becomes 0×1, and the argument becomes invalid), which typically indicates an invalid pointer, but I’m just using -[NSCharacterScanner scanInt:], which shouldn’t be so problematic. (But it is, after all, Cocoa.) And it turns out that isn’t the correct tactic to use anyway as I want to extract info from the internal version number (MMmmb.bs.rr), not the public (MM.mm.bb[s[rr]]), and Cocoa doesn’t have an API for handling fixed-length records. (Possibly the only functionality from COBOL I actually miss! I mean, there are BCD libraries for C, right?)

So I’ve spent much of the day tussling through docs and links for various RegEx frameworks for Cocoa, and trying to add RegexKit to the Blocks plugin framework; first 0.5beta and then 0.4beta via compilation. Now I’m attempting to use the prebuilt binary, which is problematic because frameworks are normally used by applications, not plugins, so it doesn’t exactly fit right (or run). But as the clock’s been ticking, it looks like it’s time to punt and attempt another tactic by hard-coding a parser for the internal version scheme or using defaults for the optional fields in the public version scheme.

This is just to fix the bugs in the version class I added in an earlier version, which I have to get out of the way to continue fleshing out the revamped defaults system I created with unit tests and component code in order to release! Argh!

It hasn’t been all sweat and tears, though. I went through a period of idea generation (both software and marketing/entrepreneurism) early during the process and also, last night as I was organizing several years of accumulated papers, bills and what-not, found several new UI ideas I had come up with (and forgotten) and the missing FreeHand install CDs.

Now to get these final PITA problems licked so I can continue to move Mori forward!

As I was reviewing the code changes I had made, I slowly realized that the Mac’s user preferences system had a minor philosophical flaw which makes for dangerous situations in the program.

One of the goals of this version is improved recovery from faulty stored values relating to the preferences and UI, so you can continue with only minor inconvenience and perhaps a need to again set preferences to your liking. Not adequately performing this resulted in some of the missing toolbar and empty window problems that were experienced before. (For a more exciting example of cascading faults, read about the 2003 Northeast blackout.)

So after some delays in getting the unit tests for this new component to execute properly, I’m now adding that component into the program. Once I have the Cocoa preferences system replaced, I’ll be releasing 1.6.8. Then I’ll work on the possible fix for the SpotLight ‘odd name’ bug for a quick-turnaround (later today) 1.6.9.

If that particular bug can’t be quickly fixed, I’ll work on some other long-standing issues in Mori for an update that will be released after a few days.

Incidentally, Tobias had a valid concern regarding the update process: “Where does testing feature in this? In olden times an update was a build with only known problems since a few people played with it for a week before it was awarded a version number. WebKit offers a choice between bleeding edge nightly r1234 and release 3.0.”

I plan to continue to rely on the Beta Test Group for testing updates, with a release candidate at least one version ahead of what is shipping. However, at the time of this writing there are 320 open bug reports for Mori, even after having pre-release testing candidates as part of the process. That just isn’t right.

I’m primarily depending on the unit tests to prevent shipping defects to you. They serve to expose bugs in existing and new code; and by adding tests for the types of bugs identified in the bug reports, the tests will continue becoming more valuable to the release process.

The purpose is to continuously speed up the process by improving its results. It shouldn’t be a shock when a program works right off the bat. The delays are (partly) associated with having so many steps of repeated inspections on the same system. It multiplies the time it takes to get a new release out the door. The less I tolerate it, the quicker it gets done correctly.

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.

How timely! I had been working on the last entry for nearly a week, and was giving the 8th or 9th proofing when Manton Reece tweeted, “Finding the comments on CandyBar upgrade pricing kind of interesting. http://tinyurl.com/26aggr“.

That’s happened quite a bit lately, as I’m a bit of a perfectionist and entries I’ve began have been bogged down in my proofing stage. At least I was able to finish and publish the entry when those comments began. I guess I’ll have to do less polishing and just more shoot from the hip, dangerous though that may be for a corporation; and likely to result in a retraction or two in the future.

But it’s precisely those retractions and changes in policies and reactions to public opinion that developers should learn to handle. Most just don’t like having to say no. Well, most people don’t like to say no. But it’s important to know to say no, as you don’t have time to do everything you want, and you have to learn to prioritize based on what’s important to you.

Here are a few of those interesting comments left for that article:

I bought CandyBar 1 & 2. I won’t be paying Panic for 3, they priced it outside of my impulse range by trying to make it into more than it needed to be. I’m sure it was a lot of work, but that upgrade price is just too much for some icon swapping.
– Aurich

Another $5 product priced at $25.

Sounds like a job for serial box!
– Greasy Breakfast

There’s always LiteIcon. Not nearly as pretty and doesn’t do the dock trick — but it’s free.
– Insomnic

And that’s the point: if you want more functionality, expect to have to pay more for it. If you don’t want to pay for it, settle for less or do without. You’re not obligated to work overtime on your day off so your company can make more money off you, nor are companies obligated to lower their prices just so you can afford to buy their products.

quote:
Why are some people so against paying for something that had a lot of work put into it?
Because it doesn’t DO very much! If I put a lot of work into taking a dump are you going to pay me for it? What if I were to wrap it in shiny plastic? Would you pay me then? CandyBar is about 99% interface and 1% function. The point is that what this program actually does is largely unspectacular and is available for free by other means regardless of how much work was put into it to make it look nice.
– Fiendish

Schools used to teach that things could be separated into wants and needs, but back then parents used to take responsibility for their kids’ education. A Lexus is no more effective, yet is far more expensive, than a Kia for driving from one place to another. A Ferrari even more so. Not everyone wants or can afford the more expensive vehicles, yet they sell very well. A man has to pick the standard of living he’s content with.

If you’re running a business, the most important thing has to be the money (or some reasonable substitute). Some people like to espouse terms like ethics and morality and customer service, but those aren’t requirements for running a business. Those are principles by which you make decisions for how to run a business. And making decisions with those principles can make for a healthier business in the long run. But they aren’t necessary for a business. An unprincipled business that is profitable will outlast a principled business that isn’t.

People are afraid of money. People don’t want to be greedy, or worse, don’t want to be seen as greedy. Most people have a dysfunctional gauge for money which varies wildly depending on its context and is completely disproportionate to its true purpose. Money is just a product, made by man, used to trade goods and services. It is a way to shift one asset you have to another. Like your health and time or a house or car, money is just another resource that you can manipulate and assign a value to. Money doesn’t exist or accomplish anything on its own.

From a moralistic point of view, money lacks any. It is neither good nor bad. Even the saying “Money is the root of all evil” is a misreading of text from the Bible, which doesn’t condemn money. The actual text is, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith…,” and you don’t have to have a dollar to your name to covet. You don’t need a dime. In fact, a great many people in the world who criticize those who work hard to achieve financial success are also out there buying lottery tickets every week. Is money attained hastily in a desperate attempt to improve your life better than money gained after working a lifetime, or inherited?

You should think of your role in business as a farmer, looking for a harvestable crop. Disregard what you’ve heard about money not growing on trees. Everything grows. It’s a universal truth. You just need to recognize what the tree is for a business: its relationship with its customer. Now you can’t just have any customer and expect to harvest cash from him. Just like expecting walnuts from an apple tree, there are customers that don’t produce money for you because they aren’t the right tree for your business. And even the right tree requires the right soil conditions, the right amount of sunlight and the right amount of water. If you don’t have the right environment for the tree, pick another tree or you’ll waste a lot of your time and effort and trees.

But some trees are unhealthy. Some trees won’t bear fruit no matter how well you nourish them. Letting yourself be cheated of your hard work is just as bad for business as cheating your customers. There has to be a balance which is healthy for both parties in the relationship.

Now there may be a lot of customers who cannot afford your product, who will have to go without, or resort to unethical behavior to obtain it. But the same is true for your business, it cannot afford to buy everything to maximize its efficiency. You have to compensate and adapt and act based on your abilities.

But if you can’t refuse to take work which isn’t profitable your business won’t be profitable. And if your business can’t be profitable it can’t survive (unless its main purpose is to be a tax write-off!).

Uproot the wrong trees so they can be replanted in the proper environment, and plant the right trees. You’ll be able to take better care of them, and the remaining trees will be better off as well.

So this winter, do the right thing by your business and your customers: learn to turn away customers which are unhealthy for your business so you can take better care of the ones who aren’t.

A few days ago, there was a thread on the Macintosh PIMs group that descended into a diatribe against the current state of PIM software and the cost of software. In response, I wrote what turned into a very long, poorly-conceived, and most likely ill-advised response to some of the opinions voiced. Very few quotes are enclosed, as it’s mainly a response, not a rebuttal.

Please forgive what is sure to be a foolish action on my part, but nothing concerning the current state of affairs will improve by actively avoiding public discussion of the issues. None of my comments are an attack on the people whose comments I responded to, particularly db whom I responded to especially. Consider his remarks a proxy for a lot of the “it costs too much” complaints I see on sites like VersionTracker, MacUpdate, iusethis, and elsewhere on the Internet. And it’s with the intent to publically respond to those complaints that I choose to do so here, rather than the Macintosh PIM group’s mailing list. My apologies to the Mac PIMs group, and the rest of the netizens (although there are worse things one should unsee). With that in mind, here is Apokalypse’ contribution to the conversation. Your comments are welcome.

Ted Goranson wrote [Context added so his position is somewhat clearer. His remarks are included as Mori is mentioned. -- AG]
> the value added. Users who know nothing about development somehow
> expect the same, unreasonably low pricing scheme.
>
> These people, for example are why we don’t have Incontrol and
> Infodepot, why we lost MORE. Why Mori was all but lost.

db wrote:
> I’m going to try again (to change this topic
>
> Ted/Edward,
>
> I appreciate the understanding and constructive disagreement, however
> large or small, though actually I don’t think we really disagree about
> anything substantial, other than pigs flying. I have proof, from the
> state of Maine no less, which is the original home state of Mori and
> still the home of Mori’s original Developer, HogBay Software:
> http://sendbread.com/
>
> Mori got smart and moved to Florida, well before winter set in. I have
> no idea where the pigs went.

db wrote:

> And you expect Mori to get
> it right with a part-time developer.

Since there’s been some mention made of Mori of late, I believe it’s in the community’s best interest for me to stir things up a tad bit more in the hope that by sharing my experience as Mori’s owner/developer, a better understanding of the current state of the Mac software market might help to improve the situation for us as users and businesses.

And I know, db, that you like to constantly talk about Mori’s “original” developer, in a wistful (or rueful) tone, but the truth is Jesse wasn’t developing Mori when I purchased it from him, had lost all interest in continuing development months before, and never wants to touch Mori code again. This isn’t an attempt to be cruel, but to make the point with finality. If anyone has any bugs to report or feature requests they want to make, they’ll have to tell me. I’m the only one who’s responsible for the condition it’s in now, and the only one who’ll be able to make the necessary changes. I’m the one taking Mori into the future. Or to put it into less delicate terms, Mori may once have been Jesse’s little girl, but I’m making her a woman.

The Low-Baller Wins Myth

> There are some folks who will defend M$ pricing, or the price of an
> unlocked iPhone in Germany. That’s OK, but not me.

> If you recall, I am asking for a more modest personal edition price,
> to help the product succeed by increasing market penetration (and
> frankly, user goodwill) in order to make an integrated PIM available
> to more users. I’ll bet that your Mac and it’s apps save you $1000s
> more than they cost if you use them effectively in a work environment.
> But if Apple sold them at a price that more closely approached the
> savings gained by it’s users, users would have revolted and there
> would be no Macs. The Apple IIe saved me a ton of time in college but
> that doesn’t mean I would have been willing or able to pay two or
> three times as much for that option. My strategy is to charge as
> little as I reasonably need to and I’ll keep busy. If some fool wants
> to pay someone more thinking they must be getting a something better.
> Fine. I don’t like working for fools anyway.

> I think their is a marketing possibility that more at lower pricing
> will offset less at higher. Not everyone is a fool.

The problem with your strategy is it fails to account for shortfalls in sales volumes, changes in the market, and other unforeseen events; both corporate and personal. For a lower price to make a difference it has to be substantially lower, and for volume to make up the loss in margin it has to be several times higher. Selling 25% more of a half-off product won’t cut it. And when your target market is the price-conscious, economic conditions which impact their budget also impacts your sales. Wal-mart successfully, though unintentially, demonstrated that for us these past two years.

People spend 50-300% more for an Apple iPod than for anyone else’s portable media player. Not just 20-30%, but up to 300%! That’s two to three times more for a device to play songs or display pictures. The multiple is even higher when you consider the features lacking in an iPod which are available in other players. So you think iPod buyers are fools. I think your opinion that price is the main consideration for consumers is faulty. Or is there some special excuse we give Apple for pricing above the market, instead of “a more modest personal edition price”? (The iPod Shuffle furthers my argument, not yours, as the Shuffle is priced against Apple’s own products, not the rest of the market: it is has even less features.)

When you made that crack about me developing Mori part-time, I was insulted. But then I realized that, in all honesty, I am only developing Mori part-time. I’m also handling web-site duties part-time, which include controlling spam, updating the site software, touching up the databases, writing blog entries, performing backups, and preparing traffic reports. I’m also fielding customer support, whether it’s email, IMs, the fora, or bug/feature tracking. I’m also handling marketing, which includes contacting blog writers, contacting writers and editors in the media, preparing market plans, product literature, artwork, etc. I’m also writing user docs, screencast scripts, tutorials, and the like, in several languages. I might be doing all this, but my development work on Mori itself is, as you say, strictly part-time.

Most software developers in the Mac market are small shops. MicroISVs. Indies. Whatever the term, sometimes it’s a shop of two or three people doing product development. By far, though, the bulk of the product developers today are one-man shops. Somebody working solo. And that solo developer typically doesn’t make enough to support himself on his products’ sales. It usually doesn’t matter because these indies are usually students or employees of another company. Their product is just something they whipped up for their own needs or interests, and they decided to offer it for sale to make a few bucks (just like the Apple story we’re all so fond of).

However, I’m neither a college student nor employed anywhere else. I’ve even turned away contracting offers due to the backlog of development tasks. So I have to question what your beliefs are when I read your crack about my work on Mori as nothing more than part-time in the same paragraph where you complain that Mac software is overpriced, and how small shops can’t afford market research!

A Cowboy [Coder] Isn’t A Landowner

> I think many (not all) of the little one-man shops fail because they
> lack the willingness or ability to see or use the advantages of
> cooperation with others. They sometime simply want to be in charge,
> their own boss, and see cooperation, of course, as giving up control.
> That’s the way it is when you work with others. Unless they have such
> a big hit that allows them to hire others, they’d be far better off
> cooperating with others. Look how many GTD and info management apps we
> have from very small shops. Few have a chance at decent success
> working alone, and especially when competing with the larger shops
> which simply engender more consumer confidence because of their size,
> never mind having more resources to begin with.

Now you’re finally saying things I can almost completely agree with: most indies want to strike out on their own so they can be their own boss. The problem is most lack the chops to do it. Being intelligent in one field, many assume they know what it takes to be successful running a venture entirely on their own. Being socially awkward, many are too untrusting of others to risk venturing with them. Indeed, many realize the likelihood is that any new venture will go belly up in less than five years. Though most entrepreneurs fear personality clashes with potential partners, the most common cause of failure is insufficient resources.

What incentive does one developer have to cooperate with another? to give his source code and a promise to share profits with a competitor? I’ve repeatedly attempted to persuade other developers to work with me, but loved as I am for my winning personality and disarming smile, I’ve been unable to convince them to abandon their products and support mine instead! Crazy, no? Perhaps they need some sort of compensation for their investment in their product and their customers; some security or other evidence of the legitimacy of the deal, and its probability of success. Would having a bankroll improve the likelihood of him joining me so that we “have a chance at decent success”? How do I accumulate this bankroll with your strategy “to charge as little as I reasonably need to and I’ll keep busy”? While being a low-price leader may be a marketing strategy, volume isn’t proof of commercial success. Long-term commercial success is dependent on your money being busier than you.

There are a couple of your comments that undermine your entire “more modest personal edition price, to help the product succeed by increasing market penetration” fallacy. One is, “Unless they have such a big hit…” Unless? So you admit the chance of that happening is slim. And if the chances of having a big hit and the volume that it creates are slim, then prices will have to remain high to stay in business. Also, if you think having a low price will guarantee a big hit, you are guaranteed that a competitor will come along and undermine your sole competitive advantage with an even lower price.

The other comment debunking your assertion is, “…larger shops which simply engender more consumer confidence because of their size, never mind having more resources to begin with.” Without the margins and volume to build up your resources, how do you expect to engender more confidence in consumers?

If you don’t make enough profit with the early adopters of your program, you’ll never last long enough to develop the additional features, user resources, documentation, etc. to be purchased by the mainstream. In addition, your organization will likely implode due to an inability to adequately provide service for your customers.

You probably have a larger selection of PIMs to choose from now than ever before, so why aren’t you satisfied? It’s because they aren’t as powerful or feature-rich as the old ones were. You’d say they lack the quality, or aren’t of the same caliber as the old apps. I’m pointing out that, twenty years later, the apps are substantially less expensive as well; and they don’t get better because the developers can’t afford to invest more development time and money in them!

Road Closed Due to Growth

Do you know what it takes to add that power and those features you long for to the software on the market? It doesn’t take listening to the customer, because customers have been talking about their needs for years. It doesn’t take writing better docs, which people don’t like to read anyway. It doesn’t take promotional discounts or educational versions, which have a limited lifespan in effective marketing.

It takes engineers. Software engineers and time. Time to think about how the current product was architected. Time to think about what features need to be added. Time to think about what features can be added given the current state of the product. Time to design the code to add those features to the product. Time to code the features into the product. Time to test the code. Time to fix the code. Time to redo the steps again and again until it’s ready to be released. Or worse, until they run out of time.

Do you think engineers are given special treatment for all this wonderful code they’re adding? Do real estate developers or hotels put a roof over their head because they’re improving products? Are hospital visits, medical treatment, or even health insurance without a price because we’re indispensable? Do engineers get any food or caffeine of any quantity without charge because of their role in society? Or should they be required to sacrifice their own needs and wants for transportation, entertainment, family, etc. to fulfill some “higher calling”?

Someone who enters the PIM market as a business isn’t looking to scrape enough money to buy himself a shiny new MBP for Xmas. There’s more than just the cost to purchase equipment. Or pay electric bills. Or Internet access. Or to purchase technical books and journals. A business can’t just make enough to cover the salaries of its employees, its legal fees, its taxes, etc. It has to cover the cost to invest in growth: of its products, its corporate infrastructure, and its owners.

Someone has to foot the bill for all these things while time is being spent adding those improvements you want so much, whether it’s a VC, an angel investor, a spouse, family, friends, whatever; and that someone is going to want a return on their investment. You get a lot of turnover in this industry because these would-be entrepreneurs discover the return on their investment just isn’t satisfactory.

A competent software engineer can make at least $75K/year, even as a fresh graduate. For a 2080 hour year, your product has to bring in $36.06 per hour to cover his salary. His salary alone. If you don’t want him to work on development part-time, like I do, you have to pay others to do the marketing, technical writing, artwork, administering servers and websites, the business-administration-type stuff, etc. So, say you as the business owner make a worst-case salary of $80K, and your developer makes $75K per year. So after other operating expenses of $65K, and a 20% profit for the year, a business should bring in $264K. That is for strictly online sales without a marketing program. It excludes marketing expenses such as advertising, sales commissions, packaging, product literature, trade show exhibitions, etc.

That’s $129.513/hr in sales for a company to be comfortably profitable. (Oh, did we forget to deduct the processing fees deducted from sales by the payment processing firm? You can go out of business if you forget these details!) If we don’t make that, there isn’t a point pretending we run a business. And if you don’t have a business standing behind the software you use to manage your information, quit pretending to be surprised when it’s no longer under development, being supported, or that the features you enjoyed on the old packages will ever return in anything new.

Companies are bought and sold. So are product lines. Products with a sufficient revenue stream continue in the market, regardless of their origin. Products that aren’t worth the trouble die; regardless of how loved they were and how missed they’ll be. So if you’re not prepared to spend the money necessary to obtain a solid, powerful package now, then let time take its course. The part-time developer you’re supporting will either get the features added in there eventually, or drop the product for something more rewarding in his life.

Those who cannot learn from PIM history are doomed to re-key their data

Let me explain why there isn’t a strong third-party PIM in the Mac market. Future product development is based on past product development. Whether it’s the profits from past products, or using the codebase of previously engineered products (e.g., Cocoa and Carbon), one product is built upon others. And whenever someone gets the bright idea to write another to-do list or contact manager or agenda application, whether it’s to learn how to develop for the Mac, or because they have more time than money, they have to develop the basic functionality first. Then, they think, “This is so helpful for me, I bet other people can use it too,” so they make it available to others as freeware or shareware, presumably to others who perceive a similar lack in existing apps or possessing a similar lack of funds.

Then, his app begins to find users. Slowly, of course, because it’s new and the majority of people will let others be the early-adopters. But his app will find some users because it sufficiently meets their feature/price requirements. But! its feature set is shallow because he started from scratch. And! there are a few bugs here and there that need to be fixed. And! it doesn’t sync with Apple’s bundled PIMs. And! it lacks support for their phone or pda. He doesn’t have time to add innovative features because he’s too busy trying to catch up. Now it stops being just a hobby and starts to be real work. Then he thinks, I’ve got to get something more out of it. If he feels he can do it, he’ll start charging (more) for it.

Now there are people who don’t mind spending hours in front of a TV set, playing video games, or downloading and reading stuff off the Internet. It’s something to occupy their time. A way to unwind. Maybe someone likes to tinker with cars, spending months to strip down a junked Mustang and rebuild it into a street monster. It’s a nice way for him to while away the days. Perhaps when he’s finished he’ll just cruise the strip in it. Maybe he’ll street race. Maybe he’ll sell it off and use some of the money to buy another clunker and start over again.

Regardless of the number of times he rebuilds cars for fun, his mindset changes when he begins to treat it as more than just a hobby. His goals will be different. The decisions he makes will take on a whole new importance, and even the tools and processes he uses will have changed.

It’s the same way with software development: you can afford to waste time and money on it when it’s just for kicks. But when it competes with the rest of your life, when a child becomes ill, your spouse loses a job, or your kids are in college, those things that occupied your time are re-evaluated; and you decide whether or not it needs to be treated more seriously, and how committed you are to its success.

And businesses that were profitable in this market re-evaluate their returns due to the competition. They consider whether branching out to other product lines or other platforms will be more rewarding. Developers, large and small, let sales coast without active development. Eventually, their products are outdated, or the platform is (like Mac OS 9 or Tiger). Then some developer decides there’s no to-do list or contact manager or agenda app that matches his feature/price requirements, so he writes one from scratch…

And that is why the PIM market, indeed, the Mac software market in general, is so poor today, and only a few categories have clear market leaders.

As far as PIM goes, it’s obviously an inadequate term for the types of products that fit in that category. There are calendars, to-do lists, project planners, address books, outliners, and on and on, but Mori is specifically a digital notebook app. And while users and developers can add agenda, contact management, GTD, file management or even wordprocessing and spreadsheet functionality through the use of scripts and plug-ins, it doesn’t come with the features typical of those applications. In fact, a lot of the design work I’ve been doing over the past couple of months has been to reduce the excess behavior in Mori and recast its feature set with an eye towards note taking and organizing superiority. Any additional behaviors will have to be the result of plugins. This means the plugin API will be more sophisticated though.

The point is, I’m not going to add features to Mori to handle all PIM needs. And I’m not going to cater to the notetaking needs of every Mac owner out there. Apokalypse will be focusing on the professionals who understand the value of their time, and demand software that delivers productivity gains that make them look good. SOHO users. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate everyone else, but I can’t afford to help everyone else, and the quality of the products will suffer badly. This is one reason why I’ve continued Jesse’s practice of sending prospects to other products, you can’t be all things to all people.

So, as a user of PIM products, figure out what your needs are. If you’re just looking to keep a list of your friends and family members’ contact info, track class activities or have the occasional sticky, the iApps bundled with the Mac should be enough. If your needs are more sophisticated and your time is a resource you use to produce money, find the software that will maximize your productive use of time in managing your tasks, contacts, info, etc. and purchase it. Even at minimum wage rates, you should recoup your investment within the first week!

If you want engineers and small businesses in general, and me in particular, to improve the quality of your life, you’re going to have to improve the quality of mine. How can we maintain a continuing relationship otherwise?