The End of the Trail
2010 October 23This week Apple announced a new version of iPhoto, and the Mac App Store, and this week I am officially calling it quits here.
Geotagalog 2.0 seems to have broken on iPhoto '11 (at least partially) before I even found the time to get it out of beta. I suspect it's something small related to the database format, but to be frank I'm not going to buy the iLife upgrade just to look into that. I've stopped throwing time away to iPhoto so I can help build something better instead.
Furthermore, with the announcement of the Mac App Store, Apple has broken any lingering hope I had for one day succeeding at indie Mac development. Being treated as a responsible adult, innovating without restriction, connecting directly with customers, and being able to fix my mistakes quickly — the things I cherished most about my job at Calf Trail — are being gradually replaced by a "submission" process.
I've put off really, for surely, officially quitting (even in my previous "there's been a change of plans" post) because I didn't want to let down the dedicated users (which I guess includes myself) who found, chose, and stuck with the software we were building. Rather than pretend that's not already happened by my neglect, it's time to admit that my passions and priorities have changed, and it's time to end my commitment here as well as I can:
I've shared basically all of Calf Trail's interesting source code, including the complete source for Geotagalog and Sesamouse (and even Mercatalog) as repositories on GitHub. So now everyone has access to the stuff Calf Trail's Mac softwares were made of, except for the "me" piece, and I'm willing to give tips and pointers around specific parts of the code. I know that not all our former customers are programmers (that was the point of our software) but I do know that many of you are rather creative, intrepid folks who might be able to figure out some way to get these pieces picked up and running again.
It's been a long trek, and I'm so so so grateful to my family (especially Hannah, for her patience and her generous icon drawing) and friends (especially Hjon, for his patience and his huge contributions as co-founder of the company) and to everyone who ever emailed us or commented here. Your encouragement made Calf Trail one of the most worthwhile life experiences I've had so far, no matter whether the business itself succeeded or failed. God bless, and keep in touch!