Memento Mori
I have been working on Apse for about a year now. Up until a few days ago, I didn't know of any other software like it.
Earlier this week, Pinboard turned 10. It was one of my inspirations for Apse! Maciej's writing is gold, and his post to commemorate the occasion doesn't disappoint:
What does the future hold for Pinboard? Death! The bus that one day comes for us all! The skeletal, icy hand on an unprepared shoulder! Pain, a flash of light, then numbing darkness. So back up your bookmarks.
Just after I read that piece, I learned of a company called Atlas Informatics. In 2016, they raised $20 million in funding. The company folded later the same year. They were building... almost exactly Apse.
It was almost like whiplash - in the span of 10 minutes, I went from thinking my app was alone in the world, to learning of another one. Except that company raised 20 million dollars, and shut down less than a year later! And it all happened years ago.
The website is gone, but the press coverage and marketing materials are still around. It was a little surreal reading them - there's almost verbatim quotes of things I've been telling people about my project.
Companies and people come and go. Maybe I can learn from Atlas Recall. Their product was a little different - it had cloud features, and I have purposely decided against adding that to Apse. They only supported Mac OS, and Apse also runs on Windows and Linux. Apse still exists, which may be a point in its favor.
It does make me feel good that other people recognize the usefulness of this kind of application. If there's any users out there that wish they still could use Atlas Recall, have I got a deal for you! 🙂
So what does the future hold for Apse? Not death! Well yes, ultimately death. But hopefully not for a while. In the meantime, head on over to apse.io and check it out.