Sorry for being out of touch. Not for lack of activity, certainly. Where we’re at; where we’ve been at for quite some time is waiting. So we wait. And you wait.

What we’ve waited for is some guidance from Microsoft. Eighteen months ago we were quite happy with the direction of Windows 8. And then we got to the Technical Previews and a groan was heard ‘Vista!’

It has been our goal; for years in fact, to have a seamless set of products based on Microsoft technologies. But this is no longer a practical goal for customers who don’t have dedicated data centers. Microsoft has gradually been moving towards a very different vision of the future.

The other vision, has been ‘open source’. This blog, developed with WordPress is a part of that open source tradition.

Unfortunately, the two visions have never been reconciled. Desktop computers (Windows, Mac OS) are so much easier to work with for serious data entry. The truth is that there is no browser application out there that is as easy to work with or as reliable as a desktop application for touch typing or transactional (accounting) applications.

But the web is the future of computing so we have to make the best of it. That is, we must do our best to make applications like Simple Accounting as easy as possible to use over the widest variety of devices. And for web applications, Open Source has won the day. (Phones and tablets are actually the third leg of the stool. The iPhone/iPad#8212;another propietary system— rules this part of the universe.

The point is that there is no way to reconcile these systems into one SAFE that behaves the same way on every device you have. It was such a great dream, we wanted to get every chance. And Microsoft has been teasing us developers with this vision for a decade. But we give up. Win8 will not get us there.

What will? Back with more quite soon.