![]() ![]() And two, Apple likes apps that take advantage of their new stuff and tend to feature them on the App Store. I think it’s very important for two reasons – one, customers can see that I’m making an effort to keep up with Apple’s technologies, so they feel more confident in buying my software. How important is it to be ready for X feature or X device on day one? It has been amazing seeing it get new features and regular updates, keeping up with Apple’s yearly release schedule for iOS and OS X. I’ve been a PCalc user only for a few years now. I didn’t want to move to the States, so I left in early 2000. That’s not to say it wasn’t stressful at times, and unfortunately Apple was at a point where they were pulling most of the development back into Cupertino and shutting down the international development groups. Apple was a fantastic place to learn, and I worked on lots of interesting projects including the Finder and OS X Dock. ![]() In 1996, I got an email from somebody at Apple’s European developer group in Cork, Ireland, and that led to me working there. I always wanted to work for Apple, and the documentation for DragThing and PCalc had a line in it to that effect. How was it working there and what made you decide to go independent? You joined Apple for a bit a few years ago. But, I also think the market has moved on to some extent – regular users use the Dock, and power users use Spotlight or some other keyboard based launcher. DragThing is still running over 20 years later – I’ve been more focused on PCalc of late, but I hope to get back to it and give it the rewrite it deserves. It was inspired by the NeXT dock, but then DragThing went on to partially inspire the Apple app switcher in Mac OS 8.5, and the Dock in Mac OS X. It was really an excuse to learn the new drag and drop APIs that were coming in Mac OS 7.5. Tell us a little about DragThing.ĭragThing is an application dock, inspired by the original NeXT dock and other Mac launchers of the time like Applicon / The Tilery. It’s still possible though.Ī lot of new PCalc customers are probably unaware of DragThing and how important it was for OS X and iOS. The market is significantly bigger, but a lot harder to convince to hand over their money. The main difference is the commercial environment in which I am trying to sell software. But it still takes the same amount of time to do anything. The actual day-to-day process of developing software hasn’t changed a great deal in that time – just the platforms are thousands of times faster. Some of that code is still running today on my phone. ![]() Twenty three years, this December! The first version of PCalc was released in 1992, and I wrote it in Pascal on an original Mac Classic with a nine inch 512×384 1-bit black and white screen. Tell us about the journey and how developing software has changed in the 2 decades. You have a long history with Mac and Apple since PCalc is now 20 years old. You probably know him from PCalc - a scientific calculator that is available on every Apple platform. He founded TLA Systems with his wife nearly 20 years ago, and now works full time writing software. James is an indie developer of iOS and Mac software, living in Glasgow, Scotland. In Dialogue, Featured The Dialogue: James Thomsonįor this edition of The Dialogue, we had the pleasure of talking to James Thomson. ![]()
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