Welcome to my Weblog!! I am Cadent's founder, Doug Oucharek. I intend to use this Weblog as a way to communicate new changes to Cadent's products and consultancy direction. And, as with all blogs these days, I will be expressing some of my views with regards to the industry I am in. After over 20 years of developing myself as a craftsman of good software/firmware, I have become very opinionated. I hope not to offend, but simply to express my own thoughts here and to generate discussion.
Weblog
Dropped the Ball
Wow, have I ever dropped the ball when testing the Mac version of Cadent wineCellar! For over a year now I did not catch a very obvious bug which must have aggravated many users who were trying out Cadent wineCellar for the first time.
Basically, when you first start wineCellar, it creates an initial default database for you to use. This "was" supposed to be created under your Documents folder on a Mac. An oversight on my part left this default location hardcoded to be the Documents folder for the user "doug"! Since I expect most users our there do not have a username doug, this completely broke wineCellar for everyone on a Mac when it is first launched. Two main symptoms: 1- popup menus on the Add Wine screen would not initially work, and 2- wines do not get saved. This second one is especially bad and I am amazed this did not get caught until now.
If you create a new database using File->New Database or open the sample database using File->Open Database, then things would correct themselves and all would be well. I can only imagine that this is what current Mac users have been doing.
Well, this will teach me to keep using my own account for testing. Doing so masked this long-standing bug from me.
I have addressed this issue with wineCellar version 2.5. However, if you have run wineCellar on a Mac and have not changed to a different database (via New Database or Open Database), the wrong default is now embedded in wineCellar's preference file so the update will not correct it. Use New Database to correct the problem.
Once again, I'm very sorry this issue has stayed around uncaught for so long. The bad default path never made it into the Windows version so there is no version 2.5 for Windows.
iPhone App Out, Now What?
As you can see from the news section, the iPhone version of the wineCellar application is available on the Apple App Store. This brings to a close a personal objective I had of creating 4 supported platforms for the wineCellar app:
- MacOS 10.4+ version.
- Windows XP+ version.
- Web/Cloud version.
- iPhone version.
Now what? Well, there are many suggested enhancements to the app I can now pursue. Also, having all 4 platforms fully up and running creates a nice starting point for new apps and services I can base on this architecture. And let's not forget about the original product, monitorLite! There is a lot I want to do with that product but have not had time yet!
In many ways, getting to this point is really just the beginning of where I have been trying to take Cadent's product development. It has been a long road slowed down by the need to do contract work to keep things funded. It would be a total dream to be able to stop the contract work and just fund everything from product sales. Here's hoping that 2010 makes such a transition possible!
iPhone wineCellar App Coming
Just a heads up: the iPhone app version of wineCellar is done and fully tested. We have gathered the material to sent it to Apple for approval. Just need to wait for that to happen!!
In conjunction with this, version 2.3 of the desktop version of wineCellar will soon be released. In 2.3, a crash we found has been fixed as well as cloud expiry has been turned off! Yes, we are not going to be charging a subscription fee to use the cloud. You will be allowed to sync up to 500 wines to the cloud from the desktop with no expiry. We will only start to charge a subscription fee for those who need to sync more than 500 wines.
The iPhone version will be able to sync up to 200 wines to the cloud. Of course, the iPhone version and desktop versions will all be able to use the same cloud account which means they can be kept synchronized via the cloud. Once you have the iPhone version, buying the desktop version increases the number of allowed wines in the cloud from 200 to 500.
More details will be released once Apple approves the app. I'll also be doing a screencast on using the iPhone version.
Happy Holidays!
Here is wishing my readers, one and all, a Happy Holiday!
I have not written in a very long time (shame on me). I have been very busy since September until now working on various contracts for my clients as well as two very important projects of interest to those watching development of the wineCellar application:
1- I have just finished porting wineCellar to the iPhone!! I just need to do some final cleanup and testing and will submit the app to Apple in the new year. The new iPhone version is able to sync to the Cadent Cloud in the same way as the desktop version does allowing you to keep your wine information synchronized between your desktop computers and your iPhone.
2- The pricing on the use of Cadent Cloud is about to change. Currently, there is a yearly cost to use the Cloud. That is about to be dropped. Accounts, once bought, will not expire for 200 or less wines. This is an important change to support the iPhone version which would be difficult to administer a yearly fee for.
There is a lot more that I want to do with the wineCellar app as well as other un-announced applications which will be released in the first half of next year. It should be a very interesting 2010 at Cadent!
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