Stacks Pro Update

Idiotic comment. So on that basis no business should ever keep their customers abrest of news?

You’re not in marketing, are you?

And… Nah.

No matter how much I wantto find out about Stacks Pro, I’m absolutely not signing up to some third party social platform that will do god knows what with my data.

Forcing your customer base to do that just to get product news is a terrible idea.

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I’ve seen very little from Realmac regarding the development of Elements. Maybe they are using a social platform that I don’t use?

There are developer beta versions available (only for friendly developers, nah, not me 😉)

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Ah, yes’s, found a post regarding Elements from one year ago.

The developer beta is coming soon

They have been on Twitter mentioning the Elements builds for Devs to test recently.

I hope Stacks Pro is going to enable editing in Preview (it’s not as if I haven’t asked 😆). If it’s just going to be a standalone version of what is possible now in RW8/RW9, it’s not going to take us that much forward. But being able to use the Stacks libraries we’ve already invested in, in the kind of way that Dan is showing here, would be a big competitive advantage of Stacks Pro over RW Elements (where, presumably, we’ll have to buy them all over again as ‘elements’ from participating developers).

At 2 mins into the video, there is a tender moment where Dan anounced that all the Foundry Stacks have been converted into Elements and he hopes Adam doesn’t mind. He mentions that users will not be able to do this and only developers will be able to do this. I expect this will save Adam some effort and there won’t be any need to complicate things by requiring Stacks.

Thank goodness all stacks developers who care about this have put in place measures to stop RM or anyone from converting their stacks and eliminating the need for Stacks.

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Stack plist encrypter

So I don’t get this. If developers are converting their stacks to elements and users then have to purchase the now converted stacks as elements, what has been gained over just using stacks?

I appreciate that RM can sell their own elements, but they can sell their own stacks already if they wanted.

This makes no sense unless developers are going to be charged for being allowed to add their elements to the new elements app.

Not many devs are joining RM in this Elements escapade. Some are but many are not.

It’s unbelievable that Dan has just stripped Isaiah out of the equation and thought it would be okay. Disgustingly sleazy.

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If I remember correctly, an original “feature” of Elements is that it would convert (using a transpiler?) customers existing stacks in to compatible elements, unless they had been encrypted by the developer to prevent this. There was a raft of stacks updates to include encryption for a while from various devs to prevent this conversion.

I can only guess that the strategy would be to provide this as a “quick fix” to get users/devs easily onboard to RW Elements with their existing stacks/tools but without the need for the Stacks plugin. Once in this new ecosystem the up sell to use new element versions with new elements specific features (whatever they may be) would be the driver for new business for devs, for Realmac it would be the dependence on Stacks purchase removed.

Interesting to see that the footer on the Realmac site no longer mentions it is built on RW + Stacks + Foundry.

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Correct. Although that was now so long ago (+15 months), in this new age of ChatGTP AI, the process may well just require a few carefully crafted questions to ChatGPT to “transpile” the few available unencrypted stacks. It is likely that any developers hoping to capitalise on reselling the Elements versions of their stacks (same price as the Stacks versions + an inevitable premium for the support) will be in for big surprise.

In the past, RW+Stacks power has however, continued to exist due to the huge resource of clever and diverse stacks, the support of those stacks developers and importantly due to the Stacks support from YourHead. Yet as the movers and shakers in the Stacks community have already encrypted their stacks to prohibit this Elementisation, that huge resource does not exist in a an easy to plunder way.

I see the use of transpiled stacks, whether done by RM (without the authority of the developer), misguided developers, or by ChatGPT back room conversions, will create an allmighty and unsustainable support sink hole.

So where’s that Stacks Pro update?

First, I doubt end users will be able to convert unencrypted stacks to elements. I guess this “feature” will only be available for developers (who have no moral and want to go that route). But you never know.

Second, I doubt ChatGTP will be able to convert stacks to elements. But you never know 😝

I think there may well be a surprise. I reckon some stack developers will move to elements or most likely support both. RW already has a solid user base which might not be financially viable to ignore.

There are also those stacks the RM is happy to mention consistently on their website and dev videos, which indicates a close relationship.

If a lot of stack developers jump ship staying with RW might win you more business.

All-in-all nothing is clear!

An update from Yourhead, for us poor users might help, especially in the light of the beta Elements releases. And please not on Discord.

Which is still available through RW8/RWC and Stack Plugin.

Question is, if a user will have to pay an additional license for RW Elements…