Hello, hello. We have news to impart.
If, like we did*, you recently slipped out to the bookies to place a bet on a major new version of the Mac community’s most stalwart text expander being unveiled this summer, you’re in luck!
We’ll skip the customary glib preamble reflecting on the increasingly bleak outlook for western civilisation and get straight down to it: TypeIt4Me 7.0 is almost ready for its close-up. First, though, we need you to help us polish the final development builds.
A Beta Tomorrow For All.
You may or may not recall that some time ago, in an ill-advised moment of hubris that immediately jinxed us, we coyly teased that a juicy new TypeIt4Me release was imminent. Well, 18 months or so later, after a few false dawns, it really is getting close.
The next major version of our flagship app is at last fully functional and it’s been 0️⃣ days since a mystery bug in the latest test build prompted us to lie down in a dark room, rueing our chosen vocation.
No, seriously, though, our inner QA circle has been kicking and slapping TypeIt4Me 7.0b for the last few months and it hasn’t disgraced itself so far. The bottom line is it’s generally stable and ready for wider scrutiny. We’re reasonably confident we’ve now ironed out most of, if not all, the troubling kinks.
It’s not lost on us that some of you have been itching to try the beta since we jumped the gun and teased it early last year. Just so you know: we really appreciate both your enthusiasm and your patience. Thanks for bearing with us.
If we haven’t already sent you a TestFlight invitation and you’d like to volunteer your testing services, please leave a comment here or drop us an email via our contact page. All help will be gratefully received.
We Do These Things Not Because They Are Easy, But Because We Didn’t Expect Them To Be Quite So Hard.
Delay, delay, delay…
You may be wondering: why has it taken these chumps so long to reach this point? Well, rather than bolt a couple more functions onto a creaking Ship-of-Theseus relic of the 1980s and hope for the best, we opted for a bolder approach this time. Riccardo threw out all the crufty Objective-C code to start fresh.
In addition to a completely redesigned user interface, TypeIt4Me 7 sports a sleek new expansion engine under the hood, powered by Swift and optimised for Apple Silicon. Therein lies the rub. While we do relish a challenge, it turns out recreating a mature, feature-packed, 35-year-old program from scratch and getting it all to just work is a more daunting moonshot than we anticipated.
There are so many interlocking parts and different possible combinations of settings in our long-serving macOS text expansion utility that fixing one bug can create a half dozen new ones. Throw new features into the mix and it all adds up to a tortuously long development process for a single programmer and his co-designer / tester / support mule working in a team of 2 (two). That’s before you even factor in procrastination and regular mini-breaks to check in on Carmy‘s latest fever dream catastrophe in the kitchen. [Maybe rein in the pop culture references a bit? -Ed.]
Steady As She Goes…
Keen as we are to share our latest creation with everyone, we didn’t want to rush things and come to regret distributing a volatile, half-cooked beta to our kind test volunteers. In prioritising stability and striving for solid performance before opening things up, we’ve stuck to a risk-averse work ethic that would make even Gareth Southgate raise an eyebrow.
What does all this mean, then? Just that we’ve been very cautious and held off going public with the TypeIt4Me 7 beta to first make sure it wouldn’t seriously screw up people’s snippet libraries or achieve AGI and commandeer the power grid. You needn’t be afraid to get involved at this stage, is what we’re saying.
Over the coming weeks, there’ll be more details to share as we flesh things out further. To ensure you won’t miss any announcements or special launch offers, keep an eye on this blog and / or sign up for our newsletter.
…Got Any Change, Guv?
Hopefully, all this talk of strong and stable betas hasn’t dredged up any buried trauma for fellow inhabitants of the near-bankrupt British Isles. Let’s put the computer nerd stuff aside for a moment and end on a note of [highly qualified] optimism.
Ballot Boxing Our Way to a Faintly More Palatable Future.
Now that notoriously subversive, far left rag The Financial Times has added its full-throated support to a growing chorus of voices loudly calling for the toxic Blue Meanies to be ousted at this week’s UK general election, we feel emboldened to join in the chant, too.
Ours is just one of many family-run micro-businesses that have struggled under the last 14 years of gross mismanagement and spite-driven self owns by a brazenly corrupt Conservative government. Everyone at Ettore Software Limited is rooting for a course correction, as the electorate looks set to hold its nose and vote on Thursday** for Something Else, Please.
Dare we imagine that ID-carrying Britons up and down the land will half-heartedly stick an X in the box for whichever dispiriting centrist candidate has the best chance of unseating a Tory incumbent – no matter what colour rosette they happen to wear? Supermajority, Schmupermajority. This is democracy manifest.
Anyhoo. Please look out for each other as you head to the polls. Whatever government emerges with a ropey mandate to steer the great ship of state into the hulking iceberg that is 2025, just remember that hope springs eternal. It will soon be possible to type letters of protest to your local elected representative, appointed members of the judiciary, or even heads of state of a royal persuasion at blistering velocities like you’ve never seen before. Godspeed.
*Relax, Rish, it’s just a bit of banter.
**Except in Clacton. If you live in Clacton, remember that voting takes place on Friday due to the time zone difference there.