Some of you already know and some of you may have guessed, after using Xojo for 25 years and with extreme disappointment in the highest of management, I’ve unhitched my wagon from Xojo and have been moving on.
I’ve committed to supporting the wonderful App Wrapper customers, but I can’t help wonder if it’s time to pass the reins on to someone who is going to be able to keep it relevant in the Xojo community.
If you’re interested, then please e-mail me. I don’t have any formal plans, I’m just putting feelers out at the moment.
With you on the way out of the community, Xojo Inc would be smart to buy it from you and maintain it (if they have the needed Mac expertise and the capacity to quickly update it for Apple changes)
Without it a lot of people would have a harder time getting their Xojo apps into the Mac App Store.
I really think Xojo Inc does not fully appreciate what all the fallout from API 2 has been.
I didn’t put my applications on the AppStore, but if your application disappear I’m nearly sure I will never do it.
I don’t know you Sam, but with all the calls you’ve been making I can’t understand why Xojo isn’t reaching out to you to work something out. As I’ve written before, it’s a real shame you’ve fallen out. (this last sentence is translated from french with DeepL because I don’t know how to write it directly in English).
I have to say it is scary how many experienced and long supporters of RealBasic /Xojo are moving on
This transition of many professional developers moving on to other dev environments has me pondering a move also
That’s possible. Personally I’ve not found it a major issue, but then my apps are small to less small, so moving from API1 to API2 was not so hard. And the new database methods which do the statement prep/binding for you are a major plus in my view. The insistence on exceptions is IMO a negative, but as anyway I have wrappers for such as as the database methods, whicb recover from and log errors, converting those exceptions back to a return status was easy enough.
I certainly agree that Xojo should but AppWrapper off Sam and maintain it.
I have doubts if Xojo will be able to maintain it, not sure if Christian would. My guess is that it contains lots of “black magic” to work (depending on deep knowledge about the subject collected over time).
At the end, if nobody appears, it could be interesting sending it to Bjorn’s warded open source contents, as Bob Delaney’s given projects are, at Einhugur Software - Open source projects
Once something breaks, Xojo, Christian, Bjorn, Sam or someone else could submit changes trying to fix it, and Bjorn could try it and accept it and even evolve it.
What is certain is, if AppWrapper dies, Xojo apps for App Store dies too.
If it does, then that (coupled with the changes to hardware signing on Windows), would mean that I could be forced out of business within a couple of years, consequently leaving my own many thousands of customers without an upgrade path or support.
I appreciate your honesty, although never say never.
Given my recent interactions with Xojo, I believe that this is highly unlikely.
API 2.0 / DesktopControls was the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you Thomas. I’m sure Xojo have their reasons.
It has been an incredible eye-opening experience. I’ve made a ton of new friends who’ve taken the time to assist me to converting to the new language. There’s so many tutorials and sample code for almost everything (except acl_free). Not to mention the capabilities the new tool brings. It really makes me excited about development again.
App Wrapper 4.0 took 18 months to build.
Rewriting App Wrapper is no simple feat, people trust me to take care of them and moving it to API 2.0 opens the entire app to bugs created by me and bugs hiding in the “New” framework. Over the last half-decade Xojo has shown little to no interest in issues that affect me, so I can’t trust 'em to fix something critical. If I choose to rewrite because I have a better design, that’s one thing, but if I’m going to be forced to rewrite, you better give me something tangible for my time.
I have no intention of abandoning the people who rely on App Wrapper, but as I withdraw from this community, I figured I’d see if anyone is interested in taking it over who can continue to improve it to support this community.
If I can’t find anyone to take it over, I will continue to maintain it myself as best as I can.
Good to see that at least you care for your clients, not like xojo that killed web1 without warning or waste so much time renaming things forcing users to waste even more time rewriting their apps with more downsides than advantages.
But if you are leaving like MANY more in the las couple of years, maybe you can set a date to stop updates. The the free year of updates plus an extra year as an extended support period.
If @Björn_Eiríksson accept hosting AppWrapper in his open source warded section, send him the sources, and keep working on updating it for the time people paid (I guess no more than one year), and after it, just if wanting to, and having spare time to share. After that, the community should put efforts to fix it, they had some time to learn how it works. Change the licence to GPL or something, so people couldn’t close the source and make profits from your original work.
Very sad to hear this. I have developed many small-ish apps for automation in the graphic arts industry, and I use AppWrapper solely to notarize distribution builds.
I have so many irons in the fire, I doubt that I could find time to learn notarizing without it… even if I wanted to. Same with learning another dev environment/language.
Bottom line, with all the other recent issues with Xojo, I’m afraid I’m done with Xojo, leaving my clients without updates, support… and out in the cold.
Sam, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for your help and good luck in all your endeavors going forward!
I don’t know you Sam, except through AppWrapper which I just discovered a few months ago. It is a great app and I’m sure there are many, like me, who find it an indispensable tool.
I, for one, am always looking for a better mousetrap. In fact, that’s how I discovered Realbasic after the demise of Visual Foxpro. I wonder if you would be willing to share the new development language you are migrating to? If you don’t want to disclose it in this public forum, perhaps you could send me a private message.
Good luck with your transition and I’d just like to express my appreciation for your development efforts in AppWrapper.
Hey Rick, yeah me too. However I don’t feel I have any other option at this point.
No need to worry, Several people have shown interest in taking App Wrapper on, so I’m pretty confident it’s future is safe.
I was a little naive, I thought knowing Apple’s API as well as I do, that I’d be able to recreate two apps in the new tool by the end of the year, I’m now aiming for just one (albeit I’m still hopeful, I can do two). I actually made pretty good progress when I was trying to replicate the app 1:1. Then I decided I should take the opportunity and create brand new versions and while that’s been great, it’s been slow learning. Here’s an example of me trying to learn the new animation functions https://twitter.com/Sam_Ohanaware/status/1725522241482612870
I’ve just figured out how I can use my learning to help promote my apps, so that’s cool.
I’ve been all in for a month or two now, and the other day, the Mrs said it was so nice to see me excited about my future and a lot less angry. She thinks with everything that’s transpired over the last 4 years, I’d become depressed.
Likewise and thank you, I wish you all the best and stay in touch, who knows maybe we can talk about developing in the new tool together.
Hey John, nice to meet you. I’m pleased to hear App Wrapper helps you, it is why I’m looking for a new home for it.
This might get me into trouble, but you’ll find out one way or another. I’m going all in on SwiftUI. While it’s still quite immature, it is improving every single year and you can drop down into AppKit to fill in the missing pieces or work around bugs, which is ironically what I’d learned to do as a Xojo developer
Thank you very much John, much appreciated. I wish you all the best with your development too. If you wanna chew the bit on SwiftUI and other things, hit me up on X or Bluesky, or threads if that’s your cup of tea.
