{"id":26453,"date":"2019-09-02T16:20:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T20:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=26453"},"modified":"2021-05-28T21:03:32","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T01:03:32","slug":"thirty-years-of-fetch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/02\/thirty-years-of-fetch\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirty Years of Fetch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Matthews<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Of the thousands of other Mac apps on the market on September 1, 1989 I can only think of four (Panorama, Word, Excel and Photoshop) that are still sold today.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I imagined a new Fetch that had all the improvements that I’d daydreamed about, and none of the old code that made it so hard to implement new features.<\/p>\n

This, of course, is one of the classic blunders in software development. It was exhilarating to be free of the shackles of our legacy code. But with a blank slate and no clear destination or deadline, we spent years without getting anywhere close to having a product that we could actually sell. Meanwhile Fetch 5 stagnated, and customers who needed more than Fetch 5 could offer moved on.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In January, 2018 I finally accepted that I wasn’t going to make Fetch 6 happen. Apple had made it clear that 32-bit apps like Fetch 5.7 weren’t long for this world, so it looked like the time had come to lay Fetch to rest for good. But I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye, and it occurred to me that there was a third option, something between finishing Fetch 6 and letting Fetch die: I could port Fetch 5.7’s Carbon user interface to Cocoa and make a 64-bit Fetch 5.8.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n