Announcement from Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay software that it is pulling its TaskPaper and WriteRoom iOS versions and concentrating solely on the desktop.

http://blog.hogbaysoftware.com/post/72442052582/winter-2014-newsletter

Actually, he appears to have sold them to somebody else. WriteRoom is still available (currently for free!), and PlainText was relaunched but then hastily withdrawn again following the discovery of a serious bug. TaskPaper is, I think, still available (at least here in the UK)?

MadaboutDana wrote:

Actually, he appears to have sold them to somebody else. WriteRoom is
still available (currently for free!), and PlainText was relaunched but
then hastily withdrawn again following the discovery of a serious bug.
TaskPaper is, I think, still available (at least here in the UK)?

According the blog post, they're being pulled at the end of the week.

I actually considered an iPhone once, mostly for Taskpaper. I'm glad I didn't.

And while I understand the reasons, killing off Taskpaper mobile feels like a mistake. In this day and age, a todo list is pretty much useless to me without a mobile version.

Also, that Listacular app he suggests is kinda bad, at least on iPad, anyway.

Pulling the app from the App Store doesn't mean the installed copy you have will stop working. TaskPaper is pretty simple, so its probably going to work for a while to come. It used to be the case that if you backed up installed apps to a desktop then then could be reinstalled even if not on the App Store. Don't know if that's still possible.

Jesse Grosjean is an innovative developer, but he doesn't seem to have the ability to make a plan and stick with it. In October 2012 he wrote this on his blog:

"Long term (year a minimum, probably longer) when FoldingText can do everything that TaskPaper can do, FoldingText is expected to replace TaskPaper. But that’s still far enough away to be unpredictable. Another option might be that we just update TaskPaper to use FoldingText’s engine."

Then, six months later, instead of much new development with either FT or TP, he announced that Oak Outliner, an online app, was up and running. Go to the HogBay web site and the only two apps it promotes are TaskPaper and WriteRoom, no mention of FoldingText.

Maybe the downturn will force him to be a better business man. But I agree that by abandoning the mobile version of TaskPaper he is not getting off to a good start, as the market needs a mobile option.

Steve Z.





shatteredmindofbob wrote:

I actually considered an iPhone once, mostly for Taskpaper. I'm glad I
didn't.

And while I understand the reasons, killing off Taskpaper mobile feels
like a mistake. In this day and age, a todo list is pretty much useless
to me without a mobile version.

Also, that Listacular app he suggests is kinda bad, at least on iPad,
anyway.

Paul Korm wrote:

Pulling the app from the App Store doesn't mean the installed copy you
have will stop working. TaskPaper is pretty simple, so its probably
going to work for a while to come. It used to be the case that if you
backed up installed apps to a desktop then then could be reinstalled
even if not on the App Store. Don't know if that's still possible.

This is an interesting question as to what happens to abandoned iOS apps or the ones that abandon your particular version of the OS. E.g. I'm on iPad 1, iOS 5. A while ago I got a notification from Workflowy that they will no longer support the iOS app for v. 5 and that it will turn into read-only. I figured that as long as I don't update my current copy on my iPad I will be safe. But no. Even without me doing any app update they were able to deprecate my Workflowy app, so it's read-only now. I also had other apps that were completely disabled, without warning. They just say "upgrade your OS", which means "buy a new iPad." I don't seem to have a say in not wanting the "downgrade."

So it seems to me that when you buy an iOS app, you are not buying software but only a service to use the software, and it is entirely unforeseeable as to how long that service will be available. This is quite different from buying software for the PC that you can keep forever, as long as you've got the hardware and OS to run it on.

Doesn't Workflowy communicate with the Workflowy mothership? I could see a case where the developer will want to deprecate an iOS app because then they do not have the cost of keeping their server compatible with clients that they no longer support. TaskPaper just saves plain text files to Dropbox. Someday, Dropbox will change their API or Apple will do something, and it will die.

I agree with the general case that frequently we're not really "owning" anything when we "buy" software --- it is a lease. Same for the cable television companies that uptick the prices of movies and say you "own" it. Sure, you own it as long as you pay the cable fees to access that movie in your library. Terminate the cable service and the movie vanishes.

Paul Korm wrote:

Doesn't Workflowy communicate with the Workflowy mothership? I could
see a case where the developer will want to deprecate an iOS app because
then they do not have the cost of keeping their server compatible with
clients that they no longer support.

Yes, you're right, that's probably why Workflowy had to ditch iPad 1 users.

It's tricky though with the App Store updates. In the past I got used to hitting "update all" without ever looking at it, but now I have to be very careful because I can start ruining my apps. Just today I saw a message from iAnnotate PDF, saying "iOS 5 users don't update to this version." So it will just have to forever sit there...

Regarding the subject of the thread, Taskpaper is now open source. Perhaps not all is lost if someone smart picks it up.

http://blog.hogbaysoftware.com

Best
Prion

That's an interesting development. I wonder if anyone has successfully created a profitable app from open-sourced abandonware. The core target audience is desktop TaskPaper users, probably not a large group in total -- and the subset of those who care to integrate their desktop documents with iOS. In the very crowded market for todo organizers.

Prion wrote:

Regarding the subject of the thread, Taskpaper is now open source.
Perhaps not all is lost if someone smart picks it up.

... according to App Annie, TaskPaper over the past year has ranked on average at around the 750th most downloaded app in the "US - Productivity" category.

Paul Korm wrote:

In the very crowded market for todo organizers.

"Jesse Grosjean is an innovative developer, but he doesn’t seem to have the ability to make a plan and stick with it"

I totally agree! Back in 2007 he sold Mori to Apokalypse (!) software ; that was the end of it.

Regarding the subject of the thread, Taskpaper is now open source.
Perhaps not all is lost if someone smart picks it up.

http://blog.hogbaysoftware.com

I took a quick look at the github source. It looks like what's been open-sourced is not the current iOS version, but the code for the original version (1.0?) before the internal synch was replaced by Dropbox. Here's the description:

--------------------------------------------------------------
This is the source code for the original TaskPaper for iOS.

It contains the source code for the original TaskPaper for iOS app. I no longer have time to develop this app, but there seem to be other developers who'd like a crack at the code.

It's fairly old and needs some work in many places. If you really want to spend some time on it I would recommend taking away the custom sync lib and replacing with a Dropbox or iCloud based solution as a start. The existing sync has some hard to track down bugs.
--------------------------------------------------------------

In fairness, why is that indicative of Grosjean's faults rather than Apokalypse's?

Having been a sole proprietor for quite a while, I'd report that it's not easy to "make a plan and stick to it". HogBay isn't Google.

MacSE wrote:

"Jesse Grosjean is an innovative developer, but he doesn’t seem to
have the ability to make a plan and stick with it"

I totally agree! Back in 2007 he sold Mori to Apokalypse (!) software ;
that was the end of it.

I don't think the lack of progress with Mori was put on Jesse. He was more discussing the seeming habit of Jesse to keep jumping to new (but similar) apps. Mori, TaskPaper, FoldingText, Oak Outliner (?). I'm not really criticizing it, I think there are both pro's and con's here.

Paul Korm wrote:

In fairness, why is that indicative of Grosjean's faults rather than
Apokalypse's?

Having been a sole proprietor for quite a while, I'd report that it's
not easy to "make a plan and stick to it". HogBay isn't Google.

MacSE wrote:
"Jesse Grosjean is an innovative developer, but he doesn’t seem to
>have the ability to make a plan and stick with it"
>
>I totally agree! Back in 2007 he sold Mori to Apokalypse (!) software ;
>that was the end of it.

I wasn't necessarily criticizing Hog Bay/Jesse Grosjean as much as I was just offering a "buyer beware" warning. It's already been demonstrated that if you buy a Hog Bay application, you may find yourself with abandonware.

And if you take money for your software, then sell that application to another developer, I believe you have an obligation to find one who will do right by your customers. Again, I don't know what happened with Mori, so I am not pointing the finger at Jesse for this. He may have done the best he could, and that's all that can be asked. But he might also have just washed his hands of Mori. All we can do is look at the track record to help us judge for ourselves whether we want to trust him with our money down the road.

Steve Z.