Why our unreleased products have honest pages
Our catalogue lists products that do not exist yet, and their pages say almost nothing. That is deliberate. Here is why we do not publish feature lists, release dates or waitlists for things we have not finished.
If you browse our product catalogue, you will find a few entries that are marked Coming soon: Compass Post, Notepad and Tablez at the time of writing, and a Games category with nothing in it yet.
Their pages are nearly empty. No feature list. No screenshots. No release date. A line saying details will be published closer to launch, and a link to ask a question if you want to.
That is not an oversight or a placeholder we forgot to fill. It is the most honest page we can publish about software that is not finished.
What a typical coming-soon page does
Coming-soon pages in software usually do some combination of:
- list features the product will have,
- show mock-ups or early screenshots,
- promise a date or a season,
- collect email addresses for a waitlist,
- offer an early-bird price.
Each of those has a purpose. Most of those purposes are the company's, not yours.
Why we do not list features
A product that is not finished has not had its features decided. Some planned features will not survive contact with real use. Others will turn out to need a different shape, a different permission, or a server we decided not to run.
If we published a list, one of two things would happen. Either we would ship features because we promised them, not because they turned out to be right — or we would quietly drop them and the page would have been untrue. Neither is a good outcome for someone who bought on the strength of the list.
Why we do not give dates
Software dates slip. Ours included. App Store review adds its own uncertainty: even a finished build can wait for review or be sent back, which is exactly the stage at which a date feels safe and still is not.
A date on a page becomes a promise people plan around. When it slips, the page is wrong and the people who planned around it pay for it. "No release date has been announced" is less exciting and has the advantage of being true.
Why we do not collect emails
A waitlist is useful to a company. It measures interest and provides a launch-day audience. It also means handing over an email address for a product that does not exist, to a list whose future use you cannot control.
We would rather you found out about a release when it happens — from the catalogue, the changelog or these notes — than give us your address in exchange for a promise. If you have a specific question about an upcoming product, the page links to our contact form, and we answer from the same inbox as everything else.
Why list them at all
A fair question: if the page says nothing, why publish it?
Because the alternative is worse in a different way. Products appear in App Store listings, in developer account names and occasionally in conversation before they launch. A catalogue that pretends they do not exist leaves people to guess. A catalogue that lists them with a clear Coming soon label and nothing more says: this exists, it is not ready, and we will not describe it until it is.
It also keeps the catalogue honest in the other direction. Every product listed without that label is one you can download today, with the features its page describes.
The same rule for released products
The principle does not stop at launch. Our product pages describe what each app does now — not what a roadmap says it will do. Limitations are stated: Garfi has one picture-in-picture layer; Ziploom does not create RAR; ClackSmith cannot tell which key you pressed; Miyu Paint's free export stops at 2048 pixels.
When a version ships, its notes go into the changelog. When a version is waiting for review or has been rejected, it does not appear there until it is actually available.
What you should expect from us
- An unreleased product's page will stay sparse until it ships.
- When it ships, the page will fill in with features, screenshots, pricing and privacy details, all describing the version you can download.
- We will not ask for your email address in exchange for early access or news.
This costs us something. A launch with a waitlist behind it starts faster than one without. We think the trade is worth making, and that you can judge a company fairly well by what it is willing to leave off a page.