Re: Re: New Respect for Shadow

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, John wrote:

# I know exactly what you mean. I have never found any app that is as 
# useful or well thought put as Shadow. In fact, I have bought up a couple 
# of old Treo 680 off ebay to make sure that I can go on using it for a 
# few more years.

	... which is a real shame, given the age of Shadow now, and the 
'organic evolution' it took. (ie: It was pretty thought out to start with 
to be lean and minimal and efficient; over time I tried to keep it lean 
and efficient, but with so many options for so many kinds of people, it 
did get a little hairy in the UI .. we filled up that screen good, no? :)

	Amazing that so many modern apps still don't have "+1 week" type 
helpers on their date picker, and that a date picker is a fancy rolling 
wheel artwork that eats up the whole screen, with how much useful info we 
used to pack in...

# I think it is a real shame that it is not more actively developed. 

	*ulp*

	As in any software, after so many revisions and refinements to its 
direction, it really needs a good retooling, a ground up rewrite so that 
it is more quickly adaptable given the very drastic changes going around 
these years. An application designed in early 2000 is not well suited to 
the demands of 2010-and-later hardware and operating systems. (I mean, 
carrying around a dozen separate APIs to do high rez, a dozen different 
ways to do screen rotation and resize and widescreen, a dozen different 
ways to have 5-way or other controllers.. ugh! Alphasmart, Sony, Palm, 
Handspring, all those guys with different ways to do things.. was it a 
blessing in the diversity of hardware, or a developmeny nightmare.. hmm 
:) -- I should've written a book about that time in history :)

	(Especially in the face of these 50-employee companies producing 
webapps, phone apps, and hybrid web/phone apps. The people who want a 
dedicated app like Shadow, versus competition from big boys like Google or 
even BaseCamp, or Evernote, etc .. thats a steep fight against well funded 
multiplatformers. Back when Shadow was started, there were BrainForest and 
a couple other guys; it was a case of "I can do better, faster, cheaper, 
and support it long haul", but fighting big guys is something that needs 
deep pockets... maybe.)

	Then again as I was quick to point out.. Shadow sure beat up on 
some well funded guys back in its prime too; if the market is large enough 
to support a niche on the side, thats all you need.

		jeff

	(and yes, Shadow supports OS5 just fint; Shadow supports all the 
classic Palm devices and many variations pretty much.)

--
If everyone would put barbecue sauce on their food, there would be no war.