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Folding Text 2.1 out -- now abandoned by Hog Bay
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Posted by Andy Brice
Oct 15, 2015 at 05:17 PM
Hugh wrote:
>A promise of something that
>will make your life as a user slightly easier or more fun at some point
>in the future? If we as consumers tend to think in those ways, are we
>foolish?
Not foolish, but certainly optimistic. ;0)
Products stop being supported all the time for all sorts of reasons.
When people ask me about future features in my product I am happy to talk to them about what is on the ‘wishlist’. But I make no promises and tell them to make their purchasing decision on the basis of what it currently does.
Andy Brice
Posted by jaslar
Oct 15, 2015 at 06:55 PM
I see that Hog Bay’s mangomarkdown.com web folding markdown editor site is also down. (Oakoutliner.com is still up, though.) Mangomarkdown was another cool idea that never QUITE a made it to my use-it list. I like markdown, like folding, but need just a few more things: tabs, spellcheck, word count. As Steve said at the beginning, so many brilliant almost solutions from Hog Bay. I too have put money into people who seem to be on the right track. But I suppose we have to be philosophical when it doesn’t quite pan out. Not every investment pays off. As a pool shark I once knew told me, even without his fancy cue “I bet I can still find the pockets.” CRIMP though we will, we can usually get the job done with the tools at hand.
Posted by Prion
Oct 18, 2015 at 07:55 AM
An interesting interview with the creator of Taskpaper, Foldingtext et al but not one that would convince me of a strategy behind the differentiation between the two. You would not believe which one is due for the next update and for which reason….
https://hacked.com/interview-writeroom/
Spoiler: It is Taskpaper
Posted by Andy Brice
Oct 19, 2015 at 11:51 AM
Prion wrote:
>https://hacked.com/interview-writeroom/
I think the key text is:
“[Folding Text] also quite geeky and not easy to sell. Much easier to sell simpler more focused apps like WriteRoom and TaskPaper.”
So it seems he wasn’t making enough sales to justify further development.
It’s impossible to predict how many sales a new product will make before you release it.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 19, 2015 at 03:41 PM
It is no doubt true that Folding Text didn’t sell well enough to keep Jesse’s attention on it, but his next project could very well be even more difficult to make work financially, as many early-adopters may not be so quick to buy into it with his demonstrated track record of jumping ship on his software.
TaskPaper isn’t nearly as “geeky” as FT and seems to have a larger following. Instead of continuing to improve TaskPaper, he made the choice to stop working on it and focus on FT, thus, in the end, leaving two user bases high and dry. He also dropped the TaskPaper iOS app. (In fairness, he did make it open source and two developers are now working on forked versions: TaskOnPaper and Taskomator—the latter just had a new version come out.)
While TaskPaper remains a live app (you can still buy it on the App Store)—it just hasn’t been updated in well over three years and Jesse stated that he was stopping to work on it because it is flawed and he wanted to give FT all the power that TP had and more. Now they both seem abandoned.
I’m not complaining about this—it is what it is. Lots of big companies hang users out to dry too (e. g. NetManage with EccoPro). I’m just suggesting that it is not a good way to make a software business viable.
Steve Z.
Andy Brice wrote:
>
>Prion wrote:
>>https://hacked.com/interview-writeroom/
>
>I think the key text is:
>
>”[Folding Text] also quite geeky and not easy to sell. Much easier to
>sell simpler more focused apps like WriteRoom and TaskPaper.”
>
>So it seems he wasn’t making enough sales to justify further
>development.
>
>It’s impossible to predict how many sales a new product will make before
>you release it.