Maxprog @ Blogger

The iCash development was projected in the late eighties but actually began in the early nineties. The very first version was released by the end of 1991. At the time, it was built to run on Microsoft Windows 3.1 and IBM OS/2. It was coded using the Pascal language. The development of the application continued up to the release of version 2.0 on May 1995. The application wasn't known as iCash but as 'Peggy Première'. Peggy because of the Muppet Show character and the analogy with a piggy bank. And 'Première' refers to the shooting of the first scene of a movie (it means 'First' in french). Peggy Première was supposed to be the best Personal Finance software at that time. Well at least in Spain, where I was leaving. The software was only available in Spanish, not even in french my mother tongue nor English. There were no international sales projected. I spent a decade selling Peggy Première, sending 3'5 floppy disks by mail with cash on delivery as t...

Regularly I get asked about the maxprog store , specially about how to buy without creating an account. By default we use the Paypal checkout system in order to process cards. There is a wrong assumption that Paypal requires the buyer to open an account in order to make a payment. That's not true at all! Opening a Paypal account is completely optional however, in my opinion, it is better to get a Paypal account and use it as often as posible. Paypal is accepted almost everywhere on the internet and it is much better and secure to share your card data with only one processor, pure logic don't you think? The internet is a quite hostil place where gangs of angry delinquents will do everything to steal others money. The less you share your data the best! As I wrote above, Paypal handles our store checkout by default. This is because we trust Paypal, it is actually the payment processor service we have been using successfully for years to sell and to get paid for our products world...

Last week I talked about the Apple Stores and not only what I think about them but what they really are, everything but stores selling computers. Today was the last straw! Apple has made there new iMac Pro available for orders thru the internet with prices starting at $6’000 and up to $15’000 for full equipped configs. Uh? Really? Sorry all but I am flipping out. What can that be possible? An iMac for $5’500! Wow, I hope you will become an Apple VIP member with such a price. I have been using Macs for 3 decades, they have always been somewhat pricy, but I believe it's gone beyond the limits, Apple is completely out of control. Oh yes, maybe the processor and the graphic card are expensive, in such case I would expect a very different type of computer, something modular, not a all-in-one computer like the iMac. In case of a failure of the screen or the graphic card you need to rush to an Apple Service and pray they will attend you right away. My nearest Apple Service i...

Marc Zeedar 2006 interview for the xDev Magazine Tell us a little about your background. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? Despite my name sounds English I was born and grew up in France. Actually my great grandfather was american so my parents decided to name me after him. Perhaps it was premonitory as nowadays most of my customers are american. I left France when I finished studying electronic engineering and moved to Spain where I reside since then. How did you get interested in computers and programming? My first contact with programming was when I was 12. A math teacher were giving free programming classes at lunch time. I enrolled and later found out I was the youngest of the classroom. We were Using Texas Instruments calculators, the TI-30 if I remember well. That was in 1979/1980. Later I purchased a Casio calculator and made a lot more programming. A few years later I went to Phoenix for holidays. I saw a ZX-81 for the first time. Once back home I bought one a...

A few days ago I went to an Apple Store. I spent quite a lot of time without the opportunity to do so but you know what? I got out in less that a minute. Apple Stores are no longer computer stores, they mostly sell phones, luxury watches and iPads. I only saw a couple of notebooks and 3 desktop computers on a solitary table far away from the entrance. I found out Apple has no interest in computers anymore, well, I actually checked it out. Remember, Apple removed the word 'Computer' from its name. Since Apple has no real interest in computers anymore I just wonder why they don't license their system so anybody with a PC could run macOS. Apple computers are expensive PCs after all, closed expensive boxes to say the true. It is really demotivating to see how Apple is dedicating 100% of its resources to things that has nothing to do with its primary business. Believe me I love iPhones, they are great but despite they carry a processor, they are not Laptops nor desktop comput...

As you may know MaxBulk Mailer is one of the products we develop and market. It is a Bulk Email Software (and emailmerge tool actually) for both Macintosh and Windows that allows anyone to send out customized offers, press releases, price lists or any kind of text or HTML message to a list of subscribers, friends or customers. Basically you can create, manage and send your own powerful, personalized marketing message to small to medium lists. The good thing is that MaxBulk Mailer is a software tool that you purchase once, no need to pay on a per-email basis to submission services. You know that Email Marketing is spreading around the whole world because of its high effectiveness, speed and low cost. If you want to introduce and sell your product or service, the best way is to use e-mail to contact your targeted customer. We created MaxBulk Mailer with that in mind. Email Marketing Email marketing is indeed one of the bes...

Did you know that if you never update your operating system, the last version of your favorite applications, one day, will no longer be supported? Do you realize that this situation will become an uncomfortable impasse soon or later? and the more outdated you are the worse? Let's have a look. The computer industry is in constant motion and evolution. As the time goes on, we usually purchase new hardware, we very likely update our operating system to enjoy all the new features and we try to get all our software up-to-date. But sometimes it is not that easy, mainly because a new operating system or a new hardware can conflict with a version of a software you use a lot, a software that is vital to you or your company. Indeed if that specific version does something or supports something new versions don't you will have to stick with what you have. Same if you're a satisfied pragmatic user that doesn't feel the need for speed new unneeded stuff or simply if your hardware is...

All of a sudden, right after updating your system to macOS High Sierra you probably found out that all the recipient lists throughout the software were no longer sorted alphabetically. Well, I believe we were the first to find out and it took more than two weeks to actually receive the first complaints from MaxBulk Mailer users. We even received screenshots like this: High Sierra file sorting issue So what happened? We believe it all has to do with the new APFS hard disk format that comes with the macOS 10.13 High Sierra operating system. It is a format exclusivelly used on SSD drives for now, maybe that explains why we received so few complaints. That new APFS format no longer returns folder item lists automatically sorted alphabetically but somehow shuffled or maybe ordered by date, not sure. Anyway, as said above, we suffered the problem before anyone else and we fixed it right away. To fix the problem the file list has to be sorted by code. That means we have to process that list...

Today I came across an old document I created on June 2004 probably from some text I found on the internet or maybe from an old NUG post, to say the true I am not sure where it comes from. Anyway, the thing is that the document in question is some kind of variable naming conventions now I realize I fully adopted after reading it. This is what it recommends when naming things you are declaring in your code depending on their nature. For you to understand better, it is a list of heading characters you have to start names with. This is the list: Local Variables: "a" Global Variables: "g" Constants: "k" Input Parameters: "in" Output Parameters: "out" Input/Output Parameters: 'io" Properites of Classes: "m" Events: "ev" Methods/Functions: descriptive name Modules: DB_Module, System_Module Methods/Functions in those modules: "DB_" Properties in that module: "mDB_" Constants in that module: ...

It has been a long time since we last updated the software we have available for sale in the Apple App Store. People may wonder why the versions we have there are more than a year and an half old. There is an explanation for that, Apple rules. Indeed, when you post a new application or an update to the App Store, Apple performs an in-depth review of your submission. If you pass all filters and match all Apple guidelines, your application will be available for sale, otherwise you will get it rejected and you will receive some kind of cryptic message about some weird issues that make your application unsuitable for the platform. Hopefully I am quite used of those error messages and I always manage to get the submitted application finally approved. The reason why we stopped updating comes from Apple new requirements, especially Entitlements and Sandboxing. Apple says: "Application sandboxing restricts an application’s access to only system resources, including the file system, for wh...

After about a decade without a single issue, the iCash Currency Manager updating system has stopped working . Indeed, if you open the currency window and click on the 'Update now' button or you have activated the iCash 'Document > Update Currency rates' at startup preference, you will get the currency list filled with zeroes. So, what happened? Actually iCash was fetching currency rates from Yahoo! services. It seems like Yahoo! has discontinued the (private, mostly-undocumented) Yahoo Finance API that many developers have been using for their currency data. All responses seem to be returning "violation of the Yahoo Terms" error. I suppose there's a chance they may switch it back on, but they don't officially support that API anywhere as far as I can tell. You can see by yourself clicking on the link below: http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=USDEUR=X&f=sl1d1t1ba&e=.csv Instead of receiving the USD to EUR rate as usual now we g...

During the last decade we have been witnessing the smartphone revolution. Mobile phones have become multi-purpose tools, they can do much more than handling calls. At the very beginning we were all filling our new toy with all kind of stuff and it was really funny. Smartphones are great and you can do lots of things with them. Actually there are tons of apps that can take advantage of the portability of such type of device. Some of those apps are the result of its success and would not have existed otherwise but I believe not everything can or should be ported to smartphones. Indeed, smartphones are not notebooks nor real portable computers. They are something else. Actually, since they are phones and they are supposed to be carried virtually everywhere there owners go, they include a small screen and they don’t have a real keyboard. As a result mobile devices may be harder to use with given applications, even with the biggest screen available. Even tablet computers like the iPad ...

Did you know you can fetch sequential contents from the web with Web Dumper? Sequences of documents, pictures or directories like '/01/pict1.jp', '/01/pict2.jp', '/01/pict3.jp',..., '/02/pict1.jp'. This is called Incremental downloads. Read more here: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=278

Sometimes people ask me why all those beautiful and colorful Maxprog software icons have suddenly been replaced with black and white icons: Actually I already posted a note about that a few months ago. It has to do with HiDPI (retina) support . Indeed as part of our commitment with our users we decided to give support to HiDPI displays. To do that, and among other things, we had to redesign all our icons since they were not ready for HiDPI at all. HiDPI needs two different sizes per icon, for example the toolbar now needs 64x64 icons in addition to the usual 32x32. We only had the low resolution ones so we had to look for a solution. All our icons were made by profesional designers, one after the other in the last two decades. At the beginning the idea was to find similar icons and we actually did so. However the result was quite unsatisfactory because it really seems color icons are something of the past, especially in the main toolbar. Lets have a quick look at Apple Safari, iTunes, ...

Regularly I am being asked about subscriptions, how do they work, how long a user can use the software once he has purchased one, how it can be extended, etc. Well, we do not sell subscriptions at all, none of our software need a subscription to operate. Actually what we sell are Update Plans . This is a whole different thing. Let me explain. When you purchase a software from us, what you actually purchase is a user license . You purchase the right to use the software we have created. You download a copy of the version available at that moment from our site, register that copy with the activation code (aka serial number) you have received by email and start using the software. You automatically get support and access to new versions during a full year. Your license never expires! You can continue to use the version you purchased forever. Your activation code will always work for the version you purchased and for all the updates released during the 12 months period from the date of pur...

If you have contacted us to get a refund thru our refund page we usually process your request in a few hours. If you have contacted any of our card processors directly either to get a refund or to open a claim we will accept your request as fast as we can. In either cases as soon as the refund has been initiated you have to wait for the process to clear. It can take from a few minutes to a week for the fund to be back to your bank account. Why is PayPal so slow to refund? When you pay us it is never instant, paypal credits us for you and then starts the process of uploading your funds from your funding source. If we refund before that payment has completed then you have to wait till it clears through to paypal then the refund is credited to you. If the refund is done at a later date and the payment has processed then we can only refund via an echeque or funds in our paypal balance, if its the former then it takes up to a week to process through to paypal and then they credit you. This...

I help people using maxprog products mainly by responding to support tickets. That use to be a routine task I do every day with enthusiasm. It is almost the only contact I have with maxprog customers. However sometimes I get unusual and frustrating requests. Unusual because hopefully they are rare and frustrating because I really can't do nothing to help because of the nature of the problem. First of those problems is fraud, somebody, somewhere with someone credit card buying something on maxprog store. Imagine who the victim will contact in the first place and what will be the tone and rudeness of the message. The internet is an hostil place where gangs of angry delinquents will do everything to steal others money. Usually the victim is persuaded maxprog has charged its bank account or has used its credit card to purchase stuff without him knowing. But how and why would we do that? We are a respectable software seller, yes, but the victim doesn't care, he wants his money back....

We are currently working on 64-bit versions of all our products. Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux are all 64-bits operating systems (note that MS Windows has also a 32-bit version available). Let me explain a bit what's that about, the terms 32-bit and 64-bit refer to the way a computer's processor handles information. A 64-bit operating system handles large amounts of memory more effectively than a 32-bit system. While 32 bits of information can only access 4 GB of memory, a 64-bit machine can access 17.2 billion gigabytes of system memory! That means that your video card and other devices will not be stealing usable memory space from the operating system any longer. In addition software programs that require lots of calculations can operate faster and more efficiently on 64-bit processors. I believe that handling more memory is very good for most of our products and they can even work slightly faster however it will be difficult to tell. The memory space available for...

When you create a new iCash document you have the choice between creating either a blank document or a document with a predetermined set of categories and accounts (you can even import the categories and the accounts from a another document). Two sets are available by default, the 'Home' and the 'Office' sets. Actually those sets were created and added to iCash to save you time and to get you started. I believe it is a good idea to create your own sets of accounts if you plan to create new iCash documents frequently. This article shows you how to do that in a few easy steps. Read more here:  https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=512

I spend lot of time doing support, mostly helping people to overcome problems using Maxprog software. This task is interesting as it allows us to gauge the usability of our software. In software engineering, usability is 'the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction'. Usability goals must address those three components but what about 'Ease of use'? Ease of use is the most talked about and least-understood aspect of software design. Ease of use means how natural it is to use a software, how natural it is to perform tasks and how easy it is to learn. Our goal is to eliminate the need of reporting issues, we know that the more we work on usability the less support we will have later. Doing support lets you find out about usability issues and how the software can be enhanced. Interface design has a lot to do with usability. A software interface has to be as simple as possi...

MaxBulk Mailer offers a very simple way to transfer settings between computers. With settings I mean everything, Preferences, E-mail Accounts, Recipient Lists, Templates, Favorites, Pictures and the Delivery History. You can actually choose what to export, create a transfer file, move that file to the other computer or to your Dropbox folder and then import it into the other MaxBulk Mailer copy. More info: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=301

I want to show you a cool trick today that will help you make your email messages more friendly. Actually the idea is simple, every single recipient on your list should believe your message is a message addressed personally to him, not a bulk message, a common problem I see with people using MaxBulk Mailer where their emails look like they come from some kind of automated system. You have to change your mind, think you are talking to one person only. Your message has to look like it is coming from a real person (you), not a robot and is addressed to one only recipient. How? Using the recipient data you have in your list, its name, company, gender or whatever you have. Yes, all you need to do is simply to modify your message depending on the recipient, that's all. There are several ways: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=325

You already know that MaxBulk Mailer allows you to send messages with custom text by using tags. Tags allow you to personalize your message with the recipient data, its first name, last name, company, etc... What you probably don't know is that you can extend and use this same feature to send customized pictures as well. Let me explain you how: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=620

eMail Verifier is a tool for checking e-mail addresses. eMail Verifier performs a serie of checks to validate every e-mail address including, a syntax check, an e-mail address domain check and finally an e-mail address validity check with the server. All those checks take time to perform and sometimes a user may wonder how much time he will have to spend on this, especially when testing big lists. See more at: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=470

MaxBulk Mailer already allows you to unsubscribe people from a list but what happens if a recipient is subscribed to more than one list and he explicitly asked not to receive anything else from you? Read more about MaxBulk Mailer Global Blacklist feature here: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=47

Welcome to the world of emailing. When launching MaxBulk Mailer you have seen that all you get is a blank document created automatically for you by the application, the place where your message is supposed to be composed. I guess that at this very early stage you may feel a bit lost or overcome, especially when it comes to filling up that blank document and creating an e-mail marketing message for the very fist time. In this short tutorial I will try to explain, in layman terms, how to pass this stage successfully and how to send beautiful e-mails, like the one below, with MaxBulk Mailer. With MaxBulk Mailer, you can actually send the same kind of messages you already receive from your favorite online shops and services. You can indeed deliver beautiful flyers or send really ugly stuff, you are the designer, you are in charge, MaxBulk Mailer doesn't care, it will sent it anyway!  See more at: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=476

One great feature of iCash is the ability to create budgets. A budget is basically a kind of projection of how much money you will spend or earn during a period of time in the future. I believe it is highly probable you already have created budgets in some way or another. Indeed, anytime you figure out how much money you will have left at the end of the month after paying your bills, you are creating a budget. You use budgets to estimate future income and expenses, and create "what if?" scenarios. As time goes by, you may create reports to compare actual incomes and expenses with your budget and find deviations. Typically a budget is created for a specified period of time. At the end of that period you can then compare your actual expenses and earnings with your predicted budget numbers. This can give you a good measure of the health of your economy. iCash budgeting is quite straightforward since you can simply take advantage of the data you have already provided as a s...