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If you really want to read about Ben Haller, the founder of Stick Software, not about the company's history and mission, you should visit Ben Haller's home page. The Stick Software Philosophy  Our slogan is "Anti-Productivity Tools for the Discerning User". And that's what we're all about (that and t-shirts). We want to make computers fun, friendly, easy and aesthetic. Our software will probably never help you balance your checkbook, do your taxes, schedule meetings, or write the Great American Novel. But it will brighten your day — or so we hope.As for the "discerning user" part, well, that's up to you. But our hope is that you will recognize that Stick Software is kind of a special company. We don't release software with any (repeat, any) known bugs — we ship our apps when they are ready to ship, not when we arrive at a management-chosen production date. We don't ever charge you money for upgrades to our products. We don't spam you with undesired advertisements and promotions. We listen to your feedback, and respond to you with emails written by humans, not with automatically generated notices intended to deflect you. We develop our software for the Mac first, instead of making inferior ports from Windows. We even take requests from our users! (Jiggler, for example, was written in response to a user request). We're here for you, the discerning user. If you find bugs, or want features added, let us know. If you have ideas for great new products that fit in with our philosophy, drop us a line. And if you appreciate the software we've already made, or the philosophy behind it, please send in your payment. Thank you. If you like us so much that you want to give us a donation to support our future development work (as opposed to a registration payment, which pays for products of ours that you use), please contact us. Alternatively, buying a Stick Software t-shirt is a good way to support our future development work. Every penny counts, for a shoestring operation like us! If you want to support us but don't want to spend any money, please link to us! The Old Stick Software   Stick Software was founded sometime vaguely in the vicinity of 1986, but I really can't be more specific, I'm afraid. The name comes from the fact that my nickname in high school (the Alternative Community School of Ithaca, N.Y. — click their logo at left) was "Stickman". My friend Malcolm (who made up the nicknames of half the high school, probably) felt that I "moved like a stick". I'm not sure what that means; all I can tell you is, I was taking karate at the time — maybe that's relevant.The most famous title published by Stick Software was probably Solarian II, a video game that won many awards in its heyday (and now its ported to OS X!). Other Stick Software titles from that era include Mandel, ColorBits, Eyeballs, BigFoot, and doubtless some others that I've forgotten. I left the shareware industry in pursuit of education, romance, and other things some years ago now, so Stick Software languished, gathering dust deep in the walk-in closet of my mind. The New Stick Software   With my recent decision to leave my job at Apple to write shareware again, Stick Software was reborn! Stick Software is currently only one person, me, Ben Haller. It is now an OS X-only operation, and except for the possibility of Carbon ports of some of our old software, our software is written in Cocoa. That means that those of you on X will be getting fully native apps on the cutting edge of coolness (and those of you stuck on 9.x will feel a deep, abiding pain). No complaints or flames about this, please.This web site is dedicated to the new Stick Software's products; I don't even have the source code to most of the old titles, and in any case they are all ancient "Classic" apps that I am not interested in supporting. My favorites might be rewritten for OS X in the upcoming months. If you really want to get my old, outdated Classic software, you can probably find it on Google. A few frequently requested pre-OS-X titles can be downloaded from here. News We send out newsletters from time to time (guaranteed less than once a month). In it, we describe new or upgraded products and other news that our customers might be interested in. To sign up (or to unsubscribe), just fill out our subscription form. You can browse our old newsletters, if you want to read old news:
We also publish an RSS news feed, for customers who want immediate notifications of new products, updates, and other time-sensitive news. For more information on that, you can read about RSS and learn how to subscribe. Interviews  Stick Software's Ben Haller was interviewed by an Internet radio show called The Gamesome Mac. We've got a copy of the interview here for you to listen to; just click the play button!If you don't see a widget with a play button above, you probably need the QuickTime plug-in for your browser.  The interview is just over an hour long, and is mostly about Ben's involvement with video games like Solarian II and Lunatic Fringe, back in the day. If you want to, you can go to The Gamesome Mac's page with the original broadcast; the interview starts about halfway through. We'd like to thank Sean Smith and Omaha Sternberg for inviting Ben onto their program, and for their dedication to the cause of Mac games, a good cause if ever we saw one. Credits Thanks to my mother, Dan, and Joe for their help reviewing this web site. It's a lot of work making a web site; your help made it a lot easier. Thanks to Ken Feinstein for not only review work, but all sorts of other invaluable assistance and advice. Thanks to all our testers, localizers, the folks on the cocoa-dev list, and everybody else who has helped us out over the years! Thanks to all the folks in the Mac community. It really is a special group of people, with uncommon vision, creativity, principles and unity. You can check out our links page for some of our favorite pages made by members of the Mac community. Most of all, thanks to my wife Keewon for her support, companionship and love. Keewi, you keep me going on the days when the code is crashing, the server is down, and nobody is paying their shareware fees. I couldn't do it without you. Linking to Stick Software  If you're interested in linking to Stick Software, check out our how-to page for sample HTML, web badge images, and guidelines! If you want us to link back to you on our links page, drop us a line.Contact Information Feel free to send e-mail with comments, suggestions, bugs, ideas, etc. Please note Stick Software is not hiring. Thanks!
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