Goodbye, Google. Hello, World!

When I joined Google in 2011, it felt like I was realising a dream. I had been working primarily as a software engineer, with my design activities limited to an unofficial portion of my job and to personal projects in my spare time. Google provided an opportunity to be a full-time interaction designer working with very clever people on widely used products, in a fairytale-like work environment.

But time changes things, including your perspective. In the last 12 years, Google got a lot bigger, making it a very different place to operate in. Also, not everything may turn out like in your dream – for instance, my field (UX) hasn’t developed into the rigorous, science-based discipline I had hoped it would. And, perhaps most significantly, I got to know myself better, learning what I enjoy and what frustrates or stresses me. So a new dream began to form.

Licensed 1.5.1

I’ve just published a minor update to Licensed, my free app for storing software licenses. It fixes a bug where the contents of the Notes field were not legible when using macOS’s dark mode. Download the latest version here. You can read more about the previous update to version 1.5 in this blog post.

Also, I now gratefully accept donations, in case you enjoy my free apps and would like to support me in developing more in the future (more news on that soon).

Licensed 1.5 (and Tofu news)

In 2014, I announced that I was not planning further development of my Mac and iOS apps. I have a couple of updates on that.

Licensed 1.5 now available

One thing I still intended to do was update Licensed, my Mac app for managing software licenses. That update is finally here. I’m sorry it took so long.

My main motivation was to add an export function, so that you could get your data into other tools such as a spreadsheet, and finally say goodbye to Licensed if you were still relying on it.

But it also turns out that technology moves on in 14 years (yes, that’s how long it’s been!), and the app couldn’t even run at all on recent versions of macOS. So that became the first problem to address. Licensed is now built to run on macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) through 13 (Ventura). This update also increases the chances that Licensed will work with future macOS versions.

5 years later…

UPDATE – 1 July 2023: Tofu is still alive, with version 3.0 now available, and Licensed got an update too.

Wow, that was longer between posts than I had intended.

Seriously, though, I'm sorry for the long silence, and for the lack of updates to my software. I'm going to tell you a bit about what's happening with my apps, my life and this blog.

So what’s been going on?

After many years of working mainly as a software engineer with a passion for design, I managed to fulfil my dream of becoming a full-time interaction designer in 2011 by joining Google. I moved from London to Switzerland to join their office in Zurich, where I live today.

Previously, my creative energy needed an outlet outside my job, which my free Mac and iOS apps provided. Since becoming a full-time designer, I feel that much less of my capacity has been available to put into extra-curricular projects.

Let me tell you my plan for each of my apps. There is a general theme of retirement, but I think these are the right decisions to make, and, as I explain at the end, I intend to direct my energy into efforts that I hope will be of more benefit.

Can you feel the pain?

What better way to launch a new product than with a promise of maximal pain?

Licensed offers a place to put [your software licenses], and because it does nothing else, it does it very well. Every effort was taken to make entering details as quick and painful as possible.

I guess I'm not paying £3400 on a course about what makes software hard to use for nothing; I hope you can feel the difference.

Got money lying around?

Although some kind people have offered me money for my software in the past, I never felt accepting it was quite justified, because I was full-time employed and only spent very little time on my products.

Well, starting today, I'll be accepting donations through a link at the top of my website. This is a) because I'm planning to spend more time on my software (within the constraints of my studies), and b) now that I'm a student, I don't mind the extra money so much.

As you may have already noticed, I've put up a pre-release version of Tofu 2.0 which includes PDF support. There are a number of other releases in the pipeline as well: Deep Notes is getting some interface enhancements, I'm looking to improve Namely, and there's a brand new CoreData app for storing software licenses, pending only a name and an icon (if you have an idea less boring than License Manager, let's hear it!)