Mr B Ware is Closing Shop. Simply B&W to be End-of-lifed.
iOS app developer Mr B Ware is closing up shop. With it, one of my favorite photo apps, Simply B&W, will be end-of-lifed.
The Mr B Ware developer account with Apple expires February 12, so all three apps of his photo apps — Simply B&W, Posterize, and Pixel It — will be free until then. I’ve got more info and App Store links after the jump. >>>
Mr B Ware is/was a one-man shop — a side project of Brian Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy explains his decision to close up shop on a post on the Mr B Ware website.
“In August I accepted a Software Engineering Manager position at an amazing company… that also afforded my wife the position she wanted, “Stay at Home Mom.” Kennedy says.
“Over the last month I’ve thought long and hard about the future of Mr B Ware and yesterday I decided it’s best to close my doors. I had lots of ideas about improvements and additions for Simply B&W and also had a few ideas for new apps (one was very close to being finished) but I don’t see myself having the time to see these out.”
Simply B&W in particular was innovative in its time yet elegantly simple. It was one of the first black & white photo apps to use colored filters to convert from color to grayscale, much like using colored gels on black & white film to block colors of the light spectrum and to enhance the look of the black & white. This often makes for a much better black & white conversion that just desaturating an image like many photo apps still do. It’s an awesome app and is my go-to color-to-black & white app.
Posterize is an app for easily creating two and three-color posterized photos. You can easily adjust the thresholds and select the colors within the image, giving you a lot of control over the color conversion.
Pixel It is another easy-to-use photo app for converting your images into 8-bit images. These are true digital lo-fi images, adding the qualities of an early color computer monitor or an old game console. You can create pixelated and chunky images with very sharp color gradations.
All three apps will continue to run fine on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch for the foreseeable future, but as the iOS is updated, there may come a time when an iOS update breaks one or more of the apps.
I wish Brian luck in his (very awesome) new city and success in his new job. Although the Mr B Ware portfolio wasn’t as expansive as other app developers, you made some awesome apps, Brian. Thank you for taking the time to make and update the cool apps you created. Enjoy your spare time and I look forward to seeing your iPhoneography.
All three Mr B Ware apps are FREE until February 12, 2013.
Simply B&W | 
Posterize |
Pixel It |
=M=
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Marty is a self-employed graphic designer in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex. He is an avid Rangers baseball, Chicago Cubs, Packers and Highbury Arsenal fan. In addition to capturing random moments with whatever camera is close by (usually his iPhone), his other interests include coffee, film, music, and traveling in seats 5E and 5F with his fiancé.
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That’s a shame, some great apps. One option he could do rather than just close the door is pass the apps development on to another fellow developer. It’s been done before & most recently by WordFoto yet hasn’t been something many knew about. So I would highly suggest if Brian loves the apps that he freely passed the development on to someone who has the time to add to what’s already been done.
That’s too bad. Simply B&W is my absolute favorite black and white photo app. Get it while you can.
Simply B&W was my GoTo app for conversion to greyscale. Thinking of the future … What alternatives have similar functionality?
Simply B&W is my go-to for mono iPhoneography. What a sincere shame.
As I tell my ‘excessive’ gamer/music friends though real life always comes first so definitely the correct decision.
Simply B&W is also my number 1 app for b&w conversion!
Brian Kennedy, if you’re reading this, take the above advice: “pass the apps development on to another fellow developer“. Or consider selling the apps, even for a cheap price, it’s better than not getting anything. Picking up someone else’s code is not the easiest of things but maybe there’s someone out there that would be willing to do it.
There are LOTS of apps that simply should go and not clutter up the huge app store mess any further. ‘Simply B&W’ is NOT one of them. What other app lets me apply a fine grain as well and as gradual as Simply B&W does? Anyone knows?
The really sad thng about this type of loss is that while the app will continue to work for those of us who have it now, at some point in the not so distant future, our “friends” at Apple will update the iOS and render the app obsolete/non-functional. I have a dozen or so apps that I used (note the past tense) regularly until Apple released iOS6, and now they languish together in an icon group named “Crashing”, while they long for an update that, alas, will probbably never come because the developer has moved on. And while we can’t blame an app developer for their perfectly good app being rendered non-functional by an ouside force, it is still sad when a developer’s decision to stop supporting an app means that the clock is now ticking, and it is only a matter of time before Apple steps up and “improves” our user experience yet again.
And note that many of the apps that do not work under iOS6 are still being sold in the AppStore. I wonder of Apple is giving refunds when apps purchased in good faith don’t function at all.
Good luck Mr. Kennedy, it was fun while it lasted.
Slight update. See the bottom of http://www.mrbware.com and pass this along if you know someone who might be interested.
Brian – Your decision is an extremely generous and noble gesture. I hope that the quest is successful – for so many reasons – so that your legacy is a source of pride – so that the successful candidate gets a step up in the world – oh, and so that we still have the functionality of the app to call upon into the future