Just saying people are looking for Sam.
@samRowlands still maintains and supports AppWrapper
But he has had some personal challenges and responses have been slightly slower than usual
See my comment on the Xojo thread. I wonder if it will stay there.
I am still alive and @npalardy is correct, I’ve had some mental health issues these last few years and have not been doing as well as I like to project.
Xojo’s integration of their own wrapping tool, did exactly as I expected and reduced sales to the point they’re almost non-existent.
While I love AI, sales of Sleep Aid have also dried since Google highlights AI answers to sleeping problems.
I have screwed up my marriage, to the point of no return. Edit: No, I didn’t cheat on her, despite being given the opportunity (I met an incredible, smart and capable girl at dinner on Friday and let her walk away without even asking her name). I failed to recognize warning signs and by the time I’d had enough, it was too late.
The only thing keeping me going is my amazing and very loving dogs.
I’m not looking for a pity party or attention, I do feel some relief simply being able to state this, rather than keeping it buried under an illusion.
I am putting together plans to organize a weekly event for the foreigners living here in Hengchun, I want to provide a space where we can meet each other, discuss what life is like living here and also not feel so isolated when times are hard. I also want to do this because there are not many opportunities for Taiwanese to practice their English in our small town, and some people really want to.
Very sorry to hear all you are going through… I hopes it gets better soon
- Karen
Thank you. I hope everything is well with you.
Sad to read all this 
Yes, really sad.
SAM:
Even when you try to send a private message from the Xojo Forum, ifnotnil is rejected (but I was able to send the address with little thinking).
And some Xojo fans read this forum and eventually send privatre messages with comment (via the other forum)… 
Sad to see how Xojo has not only shot itself in the foot but in the feet of those who supported it for so long
Yes
Blocked words are blocked words everywhere
There is, or was, a bitly link that pointed here at one time
like Encurtador de Link
I went through similar some years ago with a side business I’d created, making hardware add-ons that circumvented software limitations of a closed-system 3D printer. My products were so successful that the printer manufacturer eventually relented and included the features in their software, at which point my sales dropped off a cliff.
Fortunately it wasn’t my main income stream, but that’s the risk of hitching one’s wagon to someone else’s product. We recently saw another example where a Xojo user (with the help of AI) pretty much obviated the need for LibXL and Monkeybread’s wrapper for it.
When Geoff took aim at me, it wasn’t my feet he was aiming for. He made a calculated decision and aimed much higher, turns out he’s a pretty good shot. In fairness, he wasn’t aware that the rest of business was collapsing, nor how my wife has been molding me into an extension of her to support a high dysfunctional family dynamic. Again, in fairness, I don’t think she even knew what she was doing as I’ve only recently realized it.
I am sorry that this has happened to you also, it’s very heartbreaking when something you support goes and stabs you in the back. Supporting Xojo wasn’t my only source of income, but with the alterations to the Mac App Store (over time) it became harder and harder for me to make a living from Mac software. The rise of AI has killed my last remaining Mac app, it now offers people solutions to problems for free.
In the late 1980s, one of my big selling points was my ability to get surprisingly rich and interesting sounds for toys out of 4-bit microcontrollers by algorithmic synthesis. When the Taiwanese introduced low-cost “speech chips” that could play back highly-compressed arbitrary recordings from ROM, I went into a tailspin - “OMG, these things are going to put me out of business!” Long story short, I established relationships with the chip makers, learned the toolchain, and went on to become one of the only developers in the US who knew how to use them, kicking off the most lucrative decade of my career. That too eventually became commoditized, and I now I do power distribution stuff 
Yes, all good things eventually come to an end. And indeed, all things in general. I’ve had dry spells too. They didn’t last, either.
I haven’t sold software at retail (yet) but I lost very lucrative, longstanding and enjoyable consulting gigs on two occasions, both of them due to predation via merger & acquisition. I most recently got the bum’s rush about four years ago but I had an even better offer within a week, and another competitor has been romancing me for over a year now to no avail.
As Julia suggests, sometimes you have to let go and adapt.
Decades ago I was slogging through an unhealthy relationship not terribly unlike Sam describes so I know how that goes. My professional life kept hope alive for me through those years, too. The craft has been good to me. Even in my dotage, sometimes my mind is a volcano of ideas that I have to get up at 2 in the morning to commit to text editor.
As for the AI thing – it is bringing a lot of change but it isn’t a substitute for judgment and skill. In fact, it’s exposing how little many understand about architecture / design tradeoffs and planning, and so do not direct their LLM agents in ways that produce net benefit or new efficiencies. The industry is slowly figuring this out. Competence is about way more than memorizing the Internet. LLMs have no no intuition, no empathy, no passion, no ethics and most importantly, no understanding. All of that still has to come from humans. Or not, as the case may be.
Indeed
I just meant that he’s ruined his business & that of many others who made up the eco-system
@samRowlands I’m really sorry to have participated in all that. I really wanted to be the successor for AppWrapper, but i just couldn’t swing the kind of cash you wanted for it.
I am sorry that this happened to you too, were you aware of it at the time? There have been instances where I thought it was weird or perhaps overheated, but now realize that it was about control.
I am pleased that you had a survival mechanism, I think the loss of mine is what triggered my own personal destruction.
For me, it’s bittersweet. I love using AI, even if it is cold. But the loss of my last Mac app is hard to ignore.
I do hold grudges and hope that one Geoff gets his comeuppance.
Hey Greg, I appreciate the compassion, but please don’t feel any guilt or responsibility. I do NOT want this to infect others, especially when you were NOT responsible for anything. Nobody wanted to touch App Wrapper with a barge pole, the general consensus was too much work for too little reward. It didn’t matter how much my lowered my expectations, App Wrapper just isn’t a profitable venture, and even less so now.
You could say that I wasn’t, until I was.
That is how it goes. In psychological terms, you let go of your projections, and you’re left with another flawed human, and you deal in reality rather than in hopes and dreams.
Hang in there; you can and will adjust, and make better choices in the future.
In a way I suspect he has with the obvious decline of activity on Xojo forums which I believe is reflective of slowed sales
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they’re having to borrow money to make ends meet there
But Geoff would NEVER say “Hey this was a mistake” and then have a cogent plan to unfuck things
Not his style and quite honestly I don’t think it would matter