Pasadena, Calif. - March 4, 2014 - Karelia Software today announced the company has acquired Potion Factory, and added The Hit List, I Love Stars, Tangerine! and Five Moku to its stable of award-winning software products. Answers to some background questions about the announcement follow.
Why did Karelia buy Potion Factory?
The short version is ‘we love the apps and we complement each other.’ During Karelia’s long history of award-winning software products, and success with Sandvox in particular, the company has built a team and infrastructure to provide solid development and support for its customers. Potion Factory products are highly regarded as finely conceived, well executed apps, and we wanted to bring the talent and products together.
In particular, we really appreciate the approach to interface design. Both companies prize interfaces that are helpful while staying out of your way. Also, their experience with iOS apps provides us with additional insight for a direction important to everyone in the ecosystem. Finally, we simply really like the products and wanted to add them to our stable of offerings. We hope you stay tuned while we execute our ideas and vision for great OS X and iOS apps.
What are your plans for my favorite Potion Factory product in the future?
While we are very excited at the prospects for all our products, both in the near term and over the long haul, we don’t have any product developments to announce at this moment. In fact, it may take a while to simply transition the large quantity of details necessary to take care of the acquisition itself.
Specific plans aside, we rightly do have plans to develop the products we just acquired, as one might imagine. Indeed, we have already started working as a unified team on the Potion Factory products. It’s safe to say development is well underway. In fact, the entire team is hard at work on Sandvox, too. The bottom line is that while we may ask you to be a bit patient with us during the transition, we don’t blame anyone for being as excited about the development prospects as we are.
Is this a good time to remind you of my favorite feature request?
Actually, Yes. We understand that our customers are passionate. We always welcome feedback and feature requests, but right now is great timing. If you always wanted a specific feature or idea to be considered, these next few days and weeks would be particularly opportune timing. We invite you to tell us your suggestions. BTW, notes of encouragement are welcome too.
When will an update of The Hit List for iPhone on iOS 7 be available?
While we don’t have a ship date to announce for an iOS 7 update of The Hit List for iPhone, Karelia engineers are working diligently and development is well underway.
I own Potion Factory products. How do I get technical support?
Support for both Potion Factory and Karelia products is available today via email to <support@karelia.com>.
What about updates? Can I still get updates? What about in the future?
Yes. When updates become available, you should receive them as you normally do. This should be true whether the app you purchased was acquired directly from Potion Factory, directly from Karelia, or via an App Store. Some products may be updated more than others, and we can’t commit prematurely to a model for how major updates might be priced. However, our plan is to provide continued updates when they make sense and those updates should operate as they do now, with no delivery mechanism change.
Can I still buy the Potion Factory products from the App Store and Mac App Store?
On the Mac App Store today, you can get I Love Stars, The Hit List and Tangerine! For now, Voice Candy is not currently available, and we’ve put development of it on the back burner. On the App Store on iTunes, Five Moku and The Hit List, are also available now. There are no plans to change their availability on either App Store, and we hope you’ll join the ranks of those who own and enjoy them.
Can I buy Potion Factory Products directly from Karelia?
Absolutely. You can find all of the apps which we can distribute directly, outside of the App Store, on our Products page.
I subscribe to The Hit List Sync Service. Will my billing change, or do I need to change anything?
You don’t need to do anything or change anything. It’s all been taken care of already.
What will happen to the open source LetsMove and Potion Store projects?
The Potion Factory open source projects will remain available and continue to be updated as time and needs permit. The projects continue to be available on GitHub and we welcome and encourage your pull requests!