The Old Guard of Mac Indy Apps Has Thrived For More Than 25 Years (macworld.com)

Glenn Fleishman, writing for MacWorld: It seems like it was only yesterday that I first used BareBones Software's BBEdit, but in actuality, yesterday is so far away -- 25 years, in fact. With all the twists and turns across more than two decades of Apple as a company, Mac hardware, and the underlying operating system, you might think that BBEdit stands alone as a continuously-developed app shepherded largely or exclusively by the same independent developer -- an app without a giant company behind it. As it turns out, BBEdit is one of several apps that's been around the block more than a few times.

The longevity of indie apps is more extraordinary when you consider the changes Apple put the Mac through from the early 1990s to 2018. Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 processors to PowerPC to Intel chips, from 32-bit to 64-bit code, and among supported coding languages. It revved System 7 to 8 to 9, then to Unix across now 15 major releases (from 10.0 to 10.14). That's a lot for any individual programmer or small company to cope with. Bare Bones's head honcho, Rich Siegel, and the developers behind three other long-running Mac software programs shared with me their insight on development histories for over 25 years, what's changed the most during that time, and any hidden treasures users haven't yet found. You can hear more on BareBones Software's in this recent episode of The Talk Show, a podcast by DaringFireball's John Gruber.

Comments

Unix programs, yes

[raymorris]

> Did those platforms have three major CPU architecture changes, two completely different OS core and a 32-to-64-bit upgrade path in the last three decades?

Yes, in the case of Unix. In fact most of the old Unix programs supported three different CPU architectures *simultaneously*. Instead of version 1.0 supporting one architecture and version 4.0 supporting a different architecture, all versions supported all architectures. They did so partly by using some *simple* abstractions so that the applications mostly didn't care what the CPU architecture was. (Complex abstractions can make these things harder, simple abstractions make them easier).

Two different "OS core" - yep, completely changed out the entire kernel. Most Unix software runs fine on any of three or four different kernels. Originally Unix, then most switched over to Linus's Not Unix (Linux), and they run fine on MacOS, which is derived from an old Unix. Again simultaneously - the developers didn't have to switch. Simple abstractions like "everything is a file" mean the application doesn't care which kernel is providing fopen(). The application only cares that some kernel allows reading and writing of files. Since everything is a file, fopen(), read(), and write() let you do whatever you want in the system.

"32-to-64-bit upgrade path"? Linux supported x64 before x64 hardware existed. At the same time, the same version of the kernel supported 32 bit, and someone even rannitnon an 8 bit processor.

Great Mac Shareware

[JBMcB]

GraphicsConverter - basically a GUI version of ImageMagick - could open absolutely anything, and pretty damn fast at it

SoundApp - GraphicConverter for sound files. It was the only thing fast enough to play high quality MP3s on my old PowerMac 6100

Fetch - THE FTP client. Only thing I've used that's even close to being as simple and clean is FileZilla

PlayerPro - All in one MOD file player with cool as hell spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, per-track VU meters...

Stuffit Expander / Compressor / ShrinkWrap - Open any archive or disk image file and do pretty much anything with it - the coolest thing is you could (trivially) script it to automatically expand something, drop the archive into one folder, then put the contents in another folder depending on the file type.

ZTerm - Dialup client with Zmodem - essential for BBSes

NIH Image - Freeware image editing software designed to do medical imaging analysis - but it had all kinds of crazy filters and color modification algorithms that let you do Photoshop-style color channel operations for free

Realmz - Massive tile-based role playing game with tons of character options, weapons and gear

Re:I’m a satisfied customer

[93 Escort Wagon]

You can actually run BBedit for free now - you basically get the TextWrangler feature set in that case. You can choose to pay them for the "premium" features, or not - but in either case you run the same app.