I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Back on March 6th, 2008, when we began Daylite Touch development, we didn’t realize that we would end up with Daylite on top of a different, more robust database stack. We didn’t realize that we would have a whole new offline sync architecture, a new server, and a new dedicated Over The Air sync system, all working in unison to give us a fantastic small business solution.
Yet this is exactly what we have today. It’s been a long, hard road, but I can assure you that the new Daylite “solution” is much better. We can now truly say that the Apple ecosystem has one of the best small business (1-50) environments out there. iPhone, MacBook, iMac, Mac Pro, Xserve, iPod – connected or disconnected – no matter where you are, you can propel your small business forward in these incredibly tumultuous yet markedly opportune times.
Our vision was to build a system that leveraged your idle time – those times when you’re waiting for something, have nothing to do, and a laptop is inappropriate. We knew those time spans would be short and you’d want to be in and out of the app quickly. I think we’ve accomplished our product vision, gone further and built a great system.
Along the way we ran into some pretty difficult challenges. One of Daylite’s key differentiators is the awesome “linking” between the objects in the productivity pyramid within a multi-user environment. This feature gives people a whole lot of context that other apps simply can’t match and it presents some interesting technical challenges. For example, how do you bring over relevant data to a mobile device from a 5 GB or larger shared database? Or how do you manage synchronizing multiple devices at the same time for different users? And many other intricacies.
Yet another kind of challenge was taking Daylite’s core functionality and figuring out how to implement all of that on a small screen with touch input (considering that a comfortable touch point is at least 44 pixels). When you play around with Daylite Touch, it will seem just right, yet I can assure you that it took many many hours of debates, discussions, experiments, and redo to get there.
When you’re in bed or in a hotel lobby in Thailand and you can review open projects, make and delegate tasks, setup meetings with team members, and plan your next couple of days, all from your phone, you realize that the long road was worth it. It was worth redoing whole sections of the app, it was worth stopping development for 4 weeks to figure out how tasks should really work, it was worth figuring out how to use multi-touch to drag-create appointments and meetings, it was worth weeks of optimization work so it launches in under 7 seconds for relatively large data sets, it was worth ripping out the database engine and putting in a new one so initial setup is 6 times faster, it was worth redoing the Daylite offline sync mechanism so it plays nicely with TouchSync, and it was worth cutting some features so we can ship it today.
The entire Marketcircle team has worked incredibly hard to bring us to this day, and I’m very proud of them.
So without further ado, check out our updated Daylite Touch page and download Daylite 3.9 (existing users, allocate some time for migration).
We’ve included sample data in Daylite Touch so you can try it out at no cost. And when you’re ready to use your real data, simply add a license to Daylite Server and start syncing with your device. You’ll see a whole new world of possibilities open up.
Until next time…
AJ
Chris says:
Congratulations AJ and Marketcircle! I am looking forward to getting Daylite Touch running on my iPhone. Thank you for the long hours you have all put in to make this possible.
Chris
VinceVN says:
Congrats to all the team. You managed to bring TWO major updates to an already strong application, and you managed to do it simultaneously and superbly, even increasing the user’s experience in the process.
I have activated Daylite Touch in a snap, on a very Mac Like simplicity, through the new Daylite Server. And I just created my first appointment from my Phone. It appeared right away on my Mac, properly linked to the right opportunity, right location, etc…
Nothing else to say: Just some huge congratulations
Scott says:
Very cool! Congrats AJ and the whole Marketcircle team!! I’ve now got 3.9 final and Daylite Touch all set up, and can’t wait to play around with it (oh, and get some work done too!) Thanks for putting in the time and thought to create such a great tool for my favorite platform(s).
Steve says:
Congrats on getting this done, our small law firm is going to begin implementing this immediately.
Charles Como says:
Thank you so much for making such an amazing app! Plus, THANK YOU for populating it with some GTD examples.. they will really help me as I move my whole system over to GTD!
Oh, and thank you MacAngel for her pointers on setting up the system!
Charles
Alex says:
First glance. Brilliant! Installation, migration and installing Touch all completed in 20 minutes. Well done Marketcircle people for your great effort and understanding what I need. Many thanks to JR Consulting for starting me up.
Iman Diaz says:
Congrats AJ and All The wonderful people of Marketcircle!!
The setup for 3.9 was so easy, the migration of the server was a piece of cake, and what I was SO happy about was I bought my license of Daylite Touch, entered the server URL. Within 1-2 minutes my whole database was in the palm of my hand.
Please keep doing the ground breaking work you do!
Funny category my business is in, “A PC repair shop, that uses Mac’s!!! ( and Daylite, now with Touch!!!!)”
Winter says:
I just took a first look into it. It is gorgeous.
3 things i cant live without:
My MacBookPro, my iPhone and you guys! What you have done here is celar, simple and easy to use. The overview is great and goes hand in hand with daylite on my notebook.
Great job!
Chris says:
Works perfectly here ! Setup was quite easy and now it syncs so cool! I am working with 3.9 on my macbook and my iphone which rests beside it is updated without notice. Great work ! The best thing in mobile computing I’ve seen since my first Newton !
greetings from Germany !
Christian
Michael Czeiszperger says:
Is anyone else having trouble downloading? I’m getting an error:
Safari can’t find the server “s3.amazonaws.com”.
Tyler says:
Awesome work guys!
The improvements are impressive and Daylite Touch is a godsend.
Brilliant!
Shahid says:
I can’t wait to install this! Thanks for all the hard work. This will be fun
AJ says:
@Michael – Try again. No one else has mentioned the inability to reach it. It might have been a temporary glitch.
@all – Thanks for the congrats!
Steve Jacobson says:
This is the greatest milestone for Macs for Small Business, ever! Daylite with Touch is insanely great. We deeply appreciate the hard work and guiding vision that brought these tools into existence.
Daylite has been the major tool for managing our business for years now, and Touch will allow us to extend that out into the field with our team for ever greater efficiency and immediacy of planning and coordination.
All of Marketcircle deserves a standing ovation for this production.
Bravo!
Cody James Miller says:
Great product, congratulations. Link added to the Fastmetrics blog roll.
Ryan Cash says:
Thanks for your comments guys!
We encourage everyone to post their great feedback in the App store
Stephane says:
Congrats to the Marketcircle team on a very strong product release. My team here at the office is already testing out 3.9 and DL Touch. Can’t wait to fully dive into the new software.
Some key concerns though with DL Touch:
1) No section for Organizations? This is an absolutely essential need.
2) Inability to search Projects, Opportunities, or Appointments.
3) The license is only good for one year? Why is that?
dewey says:
You have just done for small businesses communications and productivity what Apple did for computers
You are an incredibly talented team.
Mark Onyschuk says:
Gratz AJ, and congratulations to the team at Marketcircle! That’s an incredible amount of work you’ve all accomplished both front-and-center where everyone can see, as well as behind the scenes on the server!
-Mark
Jörgen Olsson says:
This is so exciting!
I can now have all my work contacts and projects available where ever I am, so I can go on vacation without loosing touch with my most important customers and co-workers.
Thank you AJ -and you team – it has been a great journey since version 1.03 – I am looking forward to what you will be able to do the next few years!
Congratulations!
Benoit says:
Upgrade to 3.9 server: 10minutes
Upgrade to 3.9 clients: 15minutes
Installation and setup on iPhone: 2 minutes
… Total: Less than 30 minutes to have fully functionnal 3.9 architecture on 5 computers and 2 iPhone with synchro over 3G/EDGE/Wi-Fi working smoothly, incredible!
Thanks a lot to the whole team to have create such a professionnal and efficient solution for small companies! The whole solution is worth the investment for my company. It is great to be able to track the progress of a project when I am with a customer (my company is a furniture shop and an interior architect office).
Congratulations once again!
Abdul Muwwakkil says:
I have been using Daylite for over three years I am excited about the 3.9 upgrade which I have been unable to take advantage of
because I can not migrate my my DayLate Admin file from version3.8 to 3.9. I have been trying for one week. I hope someone can help me.
Thank You
Abdul
Mike says:
Are you serious… an annual license fee. In less than four years it will have cost me more that the Daylite program itself, just to connect from my phone. If it was a one-time fee for $60 I would consider it… but not for an annual fee. That’s ridiculous. Have you forgotten that this is NOT software as a service. This is a self hosted, self supported piece of software. Let me decide if I want to upgrade future releases… don’t force me into a subscription to connect to my own server. Unfortunately, my iPhone will not be connecting to my Daylite installation.
everaldo says:
Touch version looks great! And Finally we got GTD into.
Unfortunately I lost my Daylite license and you recovery form isn’t working. I tried your support by email and I didn’t receive any reply.
David Utts says:
AJ,
This is definately a milestone – but it is still in concept form. I have spent so much time getting this thing to work that is has costed me way more than its been worth. I see many are delighted and I have had times when it has worked well but that’s 30% of the time. Here are the issues:
- Daylite Touch way tooooo slow. Takes 15-20 seconds to boot up and then it has to sync
- 70% of the time the buttons are unresponsive on the iphone – I push and nothing happens
- I finally got my phone to sync with the server but the next day server went bad and asked me to reinstall and now – it won’t even install very frustrating.
Just being honest here – look at the forums – all problems with syncing and slowness of platform. I assume you are working on the fixes. I hope so – it would be great if the promise could be realized.
I know you all have worked hard on this yet I would not recommend this to anyone yet.
David
AJ says:
@Abdul – please contact support, they should be able to help you.
@Mike – It took us longer with more resources to develop Daylite Touch than it did to develop Daylite! Check the comparo – Daylite Touch is the most cost effective solution of this kind! http://www.marketcircle.com/daylitetouch/DayliteTouchComparison.pdf
@everaldo – You should have received a response by now.
AJ says:
@David – I’m sorry you’ve experienced so much trouble. We do have some edge cases which we have to solve. It looks like you are one of them. SSL and DNS are tricky to deal with because of the many variables that affect them.
The calendar speed issue will be resolved in 1.0.2. The slow down is experienced by people with many many repeats. We’ve made about a 10x improvement in that regard (from 40 seconds to 4).
In regards to the forums – yes people with issues have congregated there (exactly what it is for), but the ratio of people with issues as compared to those who don’t is about 1%. That is pretty good considering the scope of the system.
We are working to resolve those edge cases. We already pushed out 3.9.1 and we are about to push out 3.9.2.
Alpesh says:
Hey, AJ. I’m an independent filmmaker and a regular editor on Ghost Hunters. I just wanted to let you know that DLT has helped me out tremendously in keeping me organized. In my business, DL & DLT is a small expense compared to all other things. I am looking forward to the upcoming software updates to fix the slow calendar. Thanks for all your R&D and hard work. Hope the new source of revenue will keep you on the cutting edge of innovation.
Alpesh Patel
David Utts says:
AJ,
First of all my apologies for the negative comments in this blog. I am pretty savvy with a computer and was just frustrated – I saw the promise and could not get it working! I am back to it working again and do love it! I think when ever you push something out revolutionary like you have with DT and DTL – no matter how much you feel you are ready – new issues will emerge because of all the applications being tried of the software. The great thing about your program and support is that the software is very flexible and can work with many others needs.
As I said, I am back up and running and looking forward to 1.02 – I have no doubt you will continue to improve this. Great job to the team. I known this will be a huge positive in managing my business and sales pipeline.
Regards – David