Great story! Here’s what I gathered: The founders are in their 80s and may be completely retired. It’s unclear what their perspective is on open source or whether they have considered selling the app to someone (if that someone even exists) who would ensure the same level of dedication that they provided. The code might be legacy, difficult to maintain without a significant rewrite, so the costs of updating the app could be prohibitively expensive.
Now I am curious about what language it is written in, as well as the architecture and other details.
I think Nisus was the app that had a fun About... window easter egg: if you did it with the option key down, little stick figures would assemble (or disassemble?) the dialog letter by letter, running back and forth frantically to do so.
Nisus also might be the Mac app that had the unusual scrollbars and basically no minimum size on the edit window.
You could make the window maybe 10 characters by 5 lines, and the arrows in the scrollbar would change to a smaller size.
Then smaller still and the scrollbar itself would get narrower.
Then smaller still and the arrows would change again, to simple triangles.
Then smaller again and the arrows would overlap and change to point right and left instead of up and down.
You could make the window so small only a single letter would display, then even a fraction of that letter.
For circumstances like this I create a VM with a version of MacOS that the app works with, and keep it on life support that way (doing this at the moment for Finale, music notation software that works well with Piano Marvel and thus gamifies piano practice for my kids…)
What freaked me out a bit was reading “100% mission critical”. I may not fully get the niche issues that the product resolves here but if it’s really 100% mission critical, I’d only use FOSS or make a mix of tools.
In many ways being able to run something on a stable, well emulated, platform can be a better way to know some tool will always be around than to have the source code for the tool itself (even if that is definitely also a good thing). There is a much better chance that someone will e.g. keep maintaining some forks of DOSBox to keep it running than that there will be people around to maintain a specific tool. Not sure how that looks for MacOS applications? Of course support for running fully offline and without messy DRM is a must.
The app is not activation-locked to a remote server, from what I can tell.
There is nothing stopping the author from buying a 2013 Mac Pro "Trash Can" with 64GB RAM, and running it in perpetuity. RTF import/export won't stop working, documents won't bloat beyond what 64GB RAM can handle, etc.
What a beautiful app. Sorry to see it become abandonware soon. - Same happened to other apps like that. Years ago I used and loved Netmanage’s EccoPro as a personal information manager (PIM). It was an outliner, an address book, a database. Way ahead of its time. But it was abandoned.
I have used Nisus Writer Pro for several years, replacing MS Word for my personal text writing. And I loved it. Sorry to see that devs get older and cannot maintain it anymore.
Same is true for other apps that I heavily rely on. For instance DevonThink. I don’t know how solid the company is, what their future looks like.
> For instance DevonThink. I don’t know how solid the company is, what their future looks like.
Oh, they exist, but did a rug pull with a switch to half-assed subscription model last year, increasing the cost threefold over the same time period. But it is ok, we all know that making a proprietary software a cornerstone of your workflow is a long-term risk. I've dropped them and never looked back.
Nisus' killer feature back in the day was that it was a word processor that supported regular expressions for find and replace, which at the time were only found in text editors for writing code. But yes, LibreOffice supports that now.
At this point it sounds like there's no one left at the company who still cares.
That would be a death sentence, even if the company had good financials, which it also sounds like it does not.
Open sourcing it sounds very unlikely in that condition.
The only thing I can think of is to switch to a subscription model. If there's enough people who rely on it and need it to keep working despite Mac OS updates. Then it seems fair to continue paying for development?
(If there's enough people like that, maybe they could organize something and contact the company... maybe)
tl;dr: the site for this app has been down more than usual these last months. the company owners are already in their late ages. [anonymous] has been doing some maintenance to the site, but [they] don't seem to have enough access to the company's resources. OP has offered help on managing the app, updating it to add more features, maintaining the site/forum, etc. many times, for free, but got no response. with no official announcement, the situation is unclear.
[+] [-] lastdong|4 months ago|reply
Now I am curious about what language it is written in, as well as the architecture and other details.
[+] [-] gcanyon|4 months ago|reply
Nisus also might be the Mac app that had the unusual scrollbars and basically no minimum size on the edit window.
You could make the window maybe 10 characters by 5 lines, and the arrows in the scrollbar would change to a smaller size.
Then smaller still and the scrollbar itself would get narrower.
Then smaller still and the arrows would change again, to simple triangles.
Then smaller again and the arrows would overlap and change to point right and left instead of up and down.
You could make the window so small only a single letter would display, then even a fraction of that letter.
Good times.
[+] [-] bearsnowstorm|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] WillAdams|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] aeontech|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kragen|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] quibus|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] 1313ed01|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] shrubble|4 months ago|reply
There is nothing stopping the author from buying a 2013 Mac Pro "Trash Can" with 64GB RAM, and running it in perpetuity. RTF import/export won't stop working, documents won't bloat beyond what 64GB RAM can handle, etc.
[+] [-] submeta|4 months ago|reply
I have used Nisus Writer Pro for several years, replacing MS Word for my personal text writing. And I loved it. Sorry to see that devs get older and cannot maintain it anymore.
Same is true for other apps that I heavily rely on. For instance DevonThink. I don’t know how solid the company is, what their future looks like.
[+] [-] lycopodiopsida|4 months ago|reply
Oh, they exist, but did a rug pull with a switch to half-assed subscription model last year, increasing the cost threefold over the same time period. But it is ok, we all know that making a proprietary software a cornerstone of your workflow is a long-term risk. I've dropped them and never looked back.
[+] [-] unpopularopp|4 months ago|reply
I always have this strong preconception about proprietary Mac apps. When a screenshot tool costs for example $30
[+] [-] jhbadger|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kstrauser|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cowsandmilk|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] andai|4 months ago|reply
That would be a death sentence, even if the company had good financials, which it also sounds like it does not.
Open sourcing it sounds very unlikely in that condition.
The only thing I can think of is to switch to a subscription model. If there's enough people who rely on it and need it to keep working despite Mac OS updates. Then it seems fair to continue paying for development?
(If there's enough people like that, maybe they could organize something and contact the company... maybe)
[+] [-] barrenko|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|4 months ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20250717090627/https://nisus.com...
[+] [-] pseingatl|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Jotalea|4 months ago|reply