I have decided to deprioritize my work on Seashore in favor of a low-cost commercial replacement Seahorse and have created this FAQ to answer common questions.
For several reasons:
Nothing. It will still be on the App Store, and people can chose to use that for free. I will also try and make sure it runs on later OSX versions and fix critical bugs if they are reported. This is becomming very time consuming, as the latest XCode cannot build for older OSes without a lot of manual changes.
Depends. Seahorse requires OSX 13+ which is compatible with most Macs since 2017. There were just too many complications trying to support OSX versions older than that. Seahorse has a lot of new capabilities that required later OSX versions. This may change if Apple makes some of the newer APIs more backward compatible but that is a longshot. I hate electronic waste, but an M1 Mac Mini can be bought on eBay for $200 - and it’s an amazing machine.
No, not at all. It is a brand new code base written from the ground up in Swift using SwiftUI and GPU native operations. This application should be very stable, more performant, and far easier to maintain moving forward - reducing the number of hours I need to spend. It has most of the features of Seashore, and has a few more - like the “people selection”. It uses a completely dynamic Core Image Filter layer allowing more filters to be added more easily.
It should be a piece of cake. I’ve tried to retain the simplicity of Seashore, and kept the user interface very similar. The major difference is that Seahorse does not have layer linking, it offers the much more powerful layer grouping instead. It will support multiple layer selection in the future as a means of quick grouping. The other major difference is that Seahorse offers machine learning based tools, like object erase and image enhancement which can make image editing far simpler.
Honestly, the ageism in tech plus my desire to not be disrespected has brought my career into retirement. This is a way to hopefully generate some income while keeping myself busy.
This has been a struggle. I looked into how I could credit those who have already donated but there was no easy way to do so, and for the few people that did donate - who I appreciate immensely - it wasn’t worth the effort. Seahorse is a very low cost application - lower than the price of a fancy coffee.
Possibly. If I generate enough money to have the proper legal structure to enforce its intent I may do so. I believe in the power of open source for education, but the modern AI systems have perverted this. I believe the code is some of the best I’ve created in my career. That Seahorse is 3x smaller than Seashore with greater power and flexibility is a testiment to proper design and the power of Swift and SwiftUI.
A very small bit. It was primarily a test to see how well it worked. We had very early AI code generation at Google - it was just ramping up when I left - so this was a great opportunity to test various models. I hope to some day write a paper on AI code generation, how well it works, how best to use it, the ethics involved - but that day is not today.
Maybe, but in the end the code was of such low quality or simply didn’t work that I needed to write it from scratch anyway.
Not yet. I’ve done some preliminary proof of concept testing but my priority has been getting Seahorse finished for the Mac first. It will probably require an iPad pro and possibly an external monitor to be truly useful but it’s too early to know for certain.
Possibly. Contact me at the email below and let’s talk.
As a tribute to my late father - an octogenarian that love technology. When discussing Seashore he would always seem to call it Seahorse, and the name stuck.
It is available for download on the App Store.
Feel free to send me an email at seahorse@eolcoder.com - complaints, praises, questions and ideas are welcome - so is simply saying hello.