Is Sam of Ohanaware still actively developing App Wrapper? Several days ago I did sent him a mail but got no response.
I believe that sadly, Sam moved on.
Yes, I did know that. But he never managed to sell it to anyone, so I presume heās still supporting AppWrapper. However, the fact that I havenāt received any response doesnāt look promising.
Iām asking because I may need to upgrade to the latest version for ARM support for macOS27. But buying something that might be dead just doesnāt feel right.
His email responses this year havenāt been very fast. I had a problem with AppWrapper which wasnāt solved. Yesterday I finally let ChatGPT make an IDE script for notarization which was super easy. Iām going to migrate my other app off AppWrapper soon.
From what Iāve read, Xojo worked very hard to alienate Sam.
And why would they be motivated to due that?
Didnāt know that. Thatās not cool.
Anyhow, I want to upgrade Appwrapper but just need to know Sam is still āaliveā. Appwrapper still can do things not available in Xojo.
WHAT?! Just unbelievable to read things like this 
May I ask where did you read that?
I wonāt break Samās trust. Here is what I believe: Sam and Geoff are very different people who canāt work together. Geoff is very not-invented-here and Sam got frustrated by that.
Letās be serious, please. Speculation is not information.
The statement: āXojo worked very hard to alienate Samā is out of the box.
Still, an opinion not a fact.
None at Xojo Worked very hard to alienate Sam. We are focused on what you, guys, want us to be focused (and we enjoy the most)
I really canāt be more concrete than that. Sam was deeply affected. Iām not saying itās his fault only. And no itās not speculation.
Some persons can have this feeling, but Sam proposes others and me to buy the AppWrapper code to continue developing and sell. But the price was too high for me.
He wants more macOS, like Xojoās app, but Xojo is multi-platform, and there are compromises to do, I think from the Devs.
For my part, I only use some functions of AppWrapper, and with time I develop my XPackager in order to notarize and create my Pkg installers. To upload to the store, I use the Xojoās functionality.
Sam put an awful lot of effort into another product for Xojo. One which brought a huge amount of functionality to macOS. However, when API2 came along some of the changes required massive amounts of effort to modernise the product. He believed that the new API could have been made in such a way as to be backwards compatible with such offerings. He was faced with either adapting for API2 and dropping API1 support or doubling the maintenance efforts for the product. He chose to withdraw it from sale and seek a new development platform.
Yeah API2 has kind of killed the third party market. Itās getting old enough that it is becoming more practical to support only API2, but only just. A lot of these codebases, including the IDE itself, will simply never be updated. So what is a control developer supposed to do? Maintaining two copies of the same code is unreasonable, API2-only limits your ability to target ālegacyā windows, and API1-only does the same with the added benefit of filling up your userās warnings pane. Thereās no winners. Not Xojo, not the users, not control developersā¦ so I canāt blame Sam for bailing.
API2 was a huge pain point. Sam, for better or worse, decided that it wasnāt worthwhile to rework his products. We talked at length around the time API2 was launched and again later as he made his exit.
Being largely in the same boat as a vendor of products centered around Xojo and its users, I decided that I had to just push forward with API2. It was probably the lesser of two evils at the time but the massive changes to the framework hurt in very many ways that were foreseeable, were expressed, andā¦in the endā¦had to be accounted for. Isnāt there some old saying about standing in the way of progress (whatever your definition of āprogressā may be)?
I wouldnāt just say that API2 killed the third-party market as that was still very strong for quite some time, but I would say that API2 was a massive turning point in the success of many projects, products, customer trust, and user experience. After all, why rewrite in Xojo when you can rewrite in something free that may have more of the features you want as a professional? Thatās the choice many made.
Iāll not fault Sam for the decisions heās made. I have my own gripes, some very much similar to Samās, and he made the best decisions he could for his situation and scenario. Iām grateful for the time, effort and love he put into his products and this community over the years. I, for one, have benefited many times from his knowledge and wish that he were still here with us. I always looked forward to AppWrapper updates especially because he did some really cool and amazing things with it that makes the current offering just feel incomplete.
ETA: I was just made aware that he is still supporting AppWrapper. Very glad to hear this. I planned to keep my license current as long as it was available to purchase anyway.
Respectfully, this is deeply unfair to Xojo, to make accusations of them mistreating their customers based on private conversations youāve had with someone who is no longer here (by choice) to speak on their own behalf. It becomes an impossible task to defend themselves.
When he was a part of the Xojo development community, Sam was not shy about making his opinions known, both here and on his blog. Anyone curious about his opinions can read all about them there - keeping in mind that this was years ago and is now water under the bridge.
In any case, if what you say is true, then it is between Sam and Xojo and does not involve anyone else.
API2 asked me many time to update from API1 but less time than to rewrite all my projects with another developer tool.
In other side, I never read from Xojo: āmove from API1 to API2 was a good choice because ā¦ . And if we didnāt move to API2 we would have had those problems ā¦ .ā
Each time I read comment (criticism) in the forum about API1 ā API2, I never read good reasons for having done so.
API1 methods are not updated anymore. some methods/class like Dates are broken in recent systems (I saw that in macOS donāt know the others) you must move to API2 if you want clean working DateTimes. same for dates in folderitems. there are bugs, coming when you update OS and if the one in API2 are fixed (this can still take some time) you know that the ones in API1 will never be.
Thatās for me a good reason to move to API2.
PS: I still have some big apps that would take too much time to move to API2 and that will probably never be. hopefully nowadays AI can help a lot in this.
That is becauseā¦ you are young.
At a point in time (age), the effort to learn API2 or learn another Development tool is similar.
In the last 35 years, I changed many times of Development Tool (DT), and the last change was due to a previous DT lackā¦ I was stopped.
Porting the stopped project to Xojo tooks me two work days (16 Hours~).
A desktop application.
It was easy when you already have the design, know what code to write, having images for the interface, etc.
Now at two times this age (> 70) I do not know if I can change to another DT.
NB: I started with Xojo before May 1998 'REALbasic).
NB 2: I relocated (last week) and see that many people works like that. I see typos on TV, heard journalist talking about September 31st, etc.
That is a part of how our wolrd works. It is sad.
Youngers (and mid-aged people) does not know what a Dime is (adapt Dime for your country.)
Think:
DIM replaced to VAR.
Please, explain the need.