Guide Rails

The next Forebears release will be a major enhancement to the way users build and maintain their family groups. Basically, my plan is to have Forebears take more control of the various update workflows. Let me explain how this has come about.

California Calling!

One of my users in California was having real problems with Forebears. He said he loved the App but hated that it had so many bugs! Which as you can imagine was a little scary! Usually I get issues solved with a new version out in no more than a day or so. But this one’s turned out to be different.

In a way, there isn’t a bug. At least not if Forebears is used precisely as described in the User Guide. Which is kind of unreasonable on my part! As app-users, we should expect to tap anywhere, on any screen, at any time, and have the app take control. Put simply, apps need to be built with ‘guide rails’ to keep users safe and steer them in the right direction. That’s the bug. Forebears is missing a few guide-rails. It may take a week or two to get these all in place but when done, Forebears will be a lot better for it.

Busy, busy, busy

First of all, thanks to all of you great people who’ve downloaded my Forebears family history app. I really appreciate it and hope you’re having fun using it with your family history projects.

And there’s a lot of you! The chart may help explain the radio silence since my last update. I’ve been preoccupied developing and supporting Forebears and apologise for not telling you about it. So let’s start with the big one…

Forebears for Mac

Forebears started life as an iPhone App with a focus on mobility – “family history on the go”. It was extended before too long to iPad and then had a further face-lift for external keyboard and mouse. After which I relaxed, my job done. Content that the community of family historians and genealogists had everything they needed.

But no. It wasn’t long before people were telling me “We have our Apple computers and we don’t always have iPad tablets. We want more!!”

So unlike Mr Bumble’s answer to Oliver Twist, I felt the World deserved another helping of Forebears.

In December 2023, just in time for the seasonal holiday, I launched Forebears for Mac and already it’s becoming a best seller. Users in the United States – the home of Apple – are finding this new Mac version especially attractive. However, whilst they’re leading the way, downloads are coming from across the globe.

What’s Next?

Watch this space for more news on Forebears development. And please – I’d like to hear from you about your experience with my App. What do you like? What do you not like? Don’t be shy 😉

Great News for iPad Users!

Our latest Forebears release (version 2-3-2) includes a radical change to the user interface for iPad users. We know that some of our customers always like to use their iPads in Landscape orientation and often with an external keyboard and mouse attached. That’s certainly a great layout if you’re used to a laptop or desktop computer and ideal to enter your family history into Forebears.

So to support all our iPad customers we’re delighted to say that you can now work in either portrait or landscape with (almost) the full range of functions available either way. I say almost because landscape is still the only place you’ll find the “Big Ancestral Circle” display to see, in one neat picture, all 62 ancestors going back through six generations!

Time to flex my muscles!

What am I trying to achieve with my Forebears genealogy app? That’s the question I was asked by a wise friend two-years ago. “Is it just something to talk about at dinner parties? Or am I trying to build a long-term business serving a global market of family historians?”

Good questions! The truth is somewhere between the two. For sure, it’s fun to surprise friends by showing them Forebears on the AppStore. When I charged a small amount for each download it was even more fun to buy a round of drinks with the revenue!

But the time’s come to raise my sights. I’ve had my head-down in the weeds (looking for bugs) and need to go to market. ‘Hello World’, as they say in computing!

So today’s new release of Forebears shifts the focus from programming languages to real human conversations. Earlier releases were about functionality; this one is about user-experience.

But that’s still talking about Forebears as an app rather than engaging with the people who might use it. The genealogy ‘ecosystem’ includes magazines and journals as well as family-history societies and professional associations. Most towns across the globe have groups with an interest in local history. These are all people who’d enjoy Forebears – if only they’d heard about it! And it’s FREE!!

So after nearly three years of development effort, the time has now come to step outside and begin the hard part: connecting with journalists, speaking at club events, engaging on social media. I need to leave the home-office and flex my marketing muscles.

That said, it’s incredibly exciting that with no marketing on my part, Forebears has still had 200 downloads in the last 5 weeks from 38 countries! Just imagine how many people would want it if they only knew it existed…

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this latest episode in the Forebears app-development journey. If you’ve enjoyed it please share with your friends!

And get ready for the exponential sales chart showing how 200 downloads have grown to 200,000. Hopefully in the next post!

Forebears is now FREE to download!

Yes that’s right. This great little genealogy App for iPhones and iPads is currently available free on the AppStore. It’s taken me three years to build and has users on every continent and it’s now… FREE!

I hope you’ll enjoy this opportunity to give Forebears a go and take your family history projects onto your mobile device as you travel or relax away from your desk. Have fun!

In the Beginning

Contemplating Retirement

I’ve been a little too busy building Forebears to take the time out to explain why I built it and what I’ve built. So my apologies for the long ‘radio-silence’.

About three years ago in about 2019, I was approaching the end of my working life as a business consultant in the technology sector. For over twenty years I’d helped people adapt to change in their organisations. So with just two or three years of salaried employment ahead of me thoughts turned to planning for an independent future.

Forebears originated in that period and out of a personal interest in family history. I’d had an idea for showing a person’s forebears (their mother and father and these people’s mothers and fathers, etc) as a series of concentric circles with them at the centre. Of course, this style of diagram is not new in genealogy and I don’t claim to have invented it. But the idea of implementing an ‘Ancestral Wheel’ via a mobile app was a new one back then. Just a shame that I had no idea how to implement it!

Some in their late middle-age solve crossword puzzles or learn a foreign language to keep their brains active. I did much the same by learning the Swift programming language and teasing out bugs in my program code.

It’s been a journey, but a worthwhile one. The ‘Ancestral Wheel’ has grown to become a fully-fledged genealogy app available to iPhone and iPad users on the AppStore with users from all around the World. These users are my new clients and Forebears is continually changing and improving to serve them as family-historians.

In the next post I’ll explain how Forebears version 1 (4Bears) evolved and launched on the AppStore.

A Bear is Born!

Monday 4 January 2021 was a very special day for us here in Cambridge. We released our Forebears App to the world on the AppStore. This is the culmination of a three year development journey and the beginning of a new relationship with family historians and genealogists all around the world.

In future posts we’ll discuss the many exciting features of Forebears and how to get the most from using them. But for now we invite you to download the app and try it for yourself. We hope you enjoy this new way to engage with ‘family history on the go’.