So, 2019 is just a few hours away, so it is time to look back at 2018 and see what happened:

App Updates:

We’ve been busy this year!

TouchPad: 9 updates.

NumPad: 5 updates.

Please note that Currencies has been retired for good in March. We’ll keep the service running for as long as we can, possibly throughout 2019.

March: TouchPad and NumPad back at Edovia

We wanted get these apps back for quite some time and the opportunity showed up early 2018. We then contacted MartianCraft and quickly arranged for a deal to transfer the apps back to us. Read more about it here.

July: Happy Birthday, App Store!

July 11 marked the 10th anniversary of the App Store. We were fortunate enough to be part of the grand opening, amongst a handful of developers and a total of 500 apps! We wrote about this earlier this year.

August: So long, Back to My Mac!

Apple decided not to include the Back to My Mac service in macOS 10.14 Mojave. BTMM was introduced back in 2007 with OS X 10.5 Leopard.

It is hard to tell what motivated this decision. One reason could be that Apple discontinued its router line, which included some settings for Back to My Mac. Perhaps Apple didn’t want to have the burden of supporting a feature other routers did not support specifically.

Another possibility is that Apple has some larger plans for macOS and its iOS-ification and considered that the service was no longer needed and did not want to spend resources on it. Hopefully WWDC 2019 will shed some light on Apple’s motivation.

We wrote about this in more details here.

September: iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave

All of our apps were updated as soon as both iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 were released. Actually, NumPad took a little longer because of an App Store review issue but we always commit to release updated apps for the latest operating systems on day one.

December: Hold to Send Password

One thing we would like to improve in 2019 is our we communicate with our users. Hold to Send Password (née One-Tap User Password) is a feature that makes it less cumbersome to type in your Mac user password. This feature has been available since Screens 4 for iOS shipped back in April 2016 but was unknown to many of our users. We improved the feature earlier this month and it is surprising how many users had no idea it even existed!

Oh! Screens for iOS turned 8 on December 10. 🎉

So, what does 2019 holds for Edovia?

Updates for Screens, Screens Connect and others

We’re planning to update our apps, like usual. While we have some major releases planned for Screens in the future, we want to see what Apple has in mind next June before we decide on our timeline. See below.

Super Secret Project

We are working on a brand new app, something we have never done before and completely different from our current VNC apps, which we have been doing for 10 years now. It is time to try something else, don’t you think?

This will also be our first subscription-based app as we believe it is the future for sustainable apps. We do not plan, for the time being, to move our current apps to a subscription-based model as they seem to be doing very well with the current paid-up-front business model. However, there are some new Screens features that we’re experimenting with that may require a business model change in the future but unless these become a reality the paid-up-front model remains.

Hopefully, we will able to share some details (including our motivation to use subscriptions) in the first quarter of 2019.

WWDC

With all the crazy rumours running on the Internet about Marzipan and the future of macOS app, 2019 is a big mystery. We expect some major changes from Apple durning WWDC. How this will affect our current line of apps is unknown at the moment. We are both excited and anxious to see what Apple has planned and we will be in San Jose to witness it!

NSNorth

The Çingleton conference is missed by many but the guys at NSNorth decided to hold their 5th edition in beautiful Montréal, Canada. We will definitely be there and cannot wait for Dan and Philippe to share more details about the event.

Happy New Year!

We wish our users and everyone else a wonderful 2019. Thank you for your support and we hope to surprise you in 2019!

A 2018 Retrospective