Preface<\/b>: The following is not strictly company or product news. So if you’re the kind of visitor who feels his time is wasted whenever we show up in your RSS reader without providing cold, hard info, please feel free to skip this rather lengthy blog entry.<\/p>\n
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There’s a new kid in town, as the Eagles once put it so aptly. A new Mac {hot key\/web search\/iTunes control\/what have you} utility that attempts to make a Mac user’s life easier and more productive. The name is Alfred<\/a>, and from what I see on its product page, it seems to be a well-designed application.<\/p>\n And in a lot of ways, it’s, shall we say, a tribute to Butler<\/a>—even more so than You Control<\/a>, for instance, ever was. Now, I’m not complaining about that. On the contrary, I feel honored, and I can see why a Butler-related theme is a somewhat obvious choice for that kind of application. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the lack of significant Butler updates over the last few years were part of the motivation that brought the aforementioned new kid to fruition, much like a temporary lack of updates for Riccardo Ettore’s otherwise excellent TypeIt4Me<\/a> was one of the key reasons for me to create Textpander (which, of course, is known as Smile Software’s TextExpander<\/a> these days).<\/p>\n So despite what people might think, I have no issue whatsoever with their decision to create an application that shares a lot of its functionality with Butler, and outfit that with a name and an icon that remind me of Butler as well. If anything, I consider this new competitor a wake-up call. Yes, it’s high time for Butler to evolve. And trust me, we love the honorable sportsmanship that’s customary in the Mac software world.<\/p>\n But there’s one thing that got to me, and that’s the one thing they couldn’t possibly have been aware of.<\/p>\n The name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let me tell you about a man named Alfred Ruck. He was an entrepreneur, he was a free spirit, he was a war hero (and that’s despite<\/i> the fact that he was a German army officer in World War II), and he was my mom’s oldest brother. He also was a kind of dad to her, because she never knew her father, who had died young. And for us kids, he filled the role that’s occupied by a grandfather in most families. Looking back, and comparing what he did decades ago to what Rob and I try to do now, he’s also been a role model for me.<\/p>\n So I guess it goes without saying that his passing away a few years ago left a hole in the lives of those who knew and loved him, including myself. But even as he went to join his beloved wife, who had died years earlier, he left me something that constitutes a direct connection to Many Tricks—money, plain and simple.<\/p>\n You see, there’s a reason why Many Tricks went offline last winter and generally ceased to exist for a while. I had worked a lot over the years, I felt like I hadn’t always made the best business decisions. Simply put, I was severely burned out. So I needed a break from everything that was even remotely related to the software business, and in typical fashion for this condition, I didn’t even have energy left to let people know I needed that break. Instead, I just vanished to think about what I wanted to do from there on out.<\/p>\n The vanishing obviously confused a lot of people, angered some, but the break was still undoubtedly necessary. It gave me time to develop a new vision both for myself and Many Tricks, and it was during that time that I realized that Rob’s coming on board was paramount for the future of Many Tricks—the future of my “babies”, if you will. There were things I didn’t want to do anymore, there were things I just didn’t know how to do, and what’s more, there was just too much to do for days that could never be coaxed into having more than 24 hours. If I was to continue development work, someone else would have to run the business. It was very obvious to me that I absolutely had to convince Rob to join Many Tricks after years of half-joking about it, because I felt like I knew him well enough, I trusted him more than anyone else in this industry, and I knew we shared the same ideals when it came to software. If you’ve visited this site before, you’re probably well aware of the happy ending that story had.<\/p>\n But it still took me half a year to sort these things out, and if you’re self-employed, it’s far from trivial to just drop out for that amount of time. There were bills to pay, after all, and this was where uncle Alfred’s legacy came into play. He was a clever businessman, he invested wisely, so when he died, he left a surprisingly sizable fortune for his surviving siblings, nieces, and nephews. And my 1\/16th share of that legacy helped keep me afloat both while taking that break I so sorely needed and while patching things back up thereafter.<\/p>\n It’s fair to say that Many Tricks might not exist anymore without his posthumous help. And that’s why I started to refer to my most precious creation, the little Butler, as “Alfred” in private a while ago. That was my way of commemorating the original Alfred, and thanking him. Prior to today, I never even considered making that public, but now that the new kid is around, I feel like my hand is being forced. If I ever want to tell this story, it’s now or never, because the longer I wait, the more the name Alfred might be affixed to something else, and the more it would seem like I was trying to steal someone else’s thunder.<\/p>\n So there you have it. There are not only two Butlers now, there are actually two Alfreds. Welcome to the club, Alfred.<\/p>\n And most importantly, thank you, Alfred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Preface: The following is not strictly company or product news. So if you’re the kind of visitor who feels his time is wasted whenever we show up in your RSS reader without providing cold, hard info, please feel free to skip this rather lengthy blog entry. There’s a new kid in town, as the Eagles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,5,4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[22],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behind-the-scenes","category-butler","category-products"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3619,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/3619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=817"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manytricks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}