I am a seasoned systems architect and developer, now retired. Through the years I have written a number of utilities for my own needs, some in Objective-C and Swift, others in more exotic languages. They had limited features; just enough to serve my own needs. But in the back of my mind I always thought that at some point, I would start enhancing them to share them with others and even try to monetise them.
Retirement Blues
Pioneering work that laid groundwork for the “Industry 4.0” revolution, a couple of patents, and the expertise I acquired in establishing, as early as 2012, the first industrial IoT application to be delivered over the cloud, put me in a position of offering arguably the best products to answer the ever growing connected Business Intelligence needs.
However, at one point, I considered that my carrier was behind me and that the time had come to tune down my ambitions to adapt to my age. I was tempted to just turn the page and let it go. That’s when I remembered AutoRaise (AutoRaise has since been renamed to AutoFocus), CodeCapsules, FinderFix, Taskan, and TrashEye and how much I enjoyed writing these small utilities. I had also plans and material for more apps.
Mac-dedicated forums
Early 2008, on a hunch, I had registered to a Mac-dedicated forum to learn more about new Mac applications and especially about their life-cycle. I learned a lot about how applications “were born” and why “they died”. I also learned why users might end up buying the applications they could otherwise have for free often by just resetting their trial periods.
Beyond being an incredibly long-lasting friendly community, some forums are also a unique opportunity for any serious developer to interact with (non-amateur) power users.
I think it was also a great opportunity for the members of those forums to have an “insider” view in order to understand the uncertainties surrounding development.
Private and public betas
A year ago, I asked those forum members if they would like to beta test some of my applications (and oh, they did). I got high quality feedback I would not have gotten elsewhere. I kept striving to answer their feature requests and today many of my first beta tester are insisting that my applications have outgrown the private beta.
So here they are, humbly offered to your perusal in a public beta. They will all be free while in beta. I am starting with FinderFix and the others will soon follow.
Stay tuned!