A few years ago, I wrote a few shorts using Causility 3, loved the program, but was waiting for iOS version to come out for my iPad.
It’s good to see there’s a new version being worked upon, do we know what the timescale will be for the mobile versions, are there beta versions being worked on?
I also purchased based on future promises as well but it’s been quiet for way too long now.
I’m also interested in the status of the iOS version. I’m never quite sure if even the main version of the software is being actively developed anymore. But, every so often, a new update does pop up. So something is still happening. I get the impression that it may only be Per Holmes who is working on it, and he simply doesn’t have enough time or resources to dedicate to these extra features.
At the very least, perhaps it is time to remove mention of the iOS version from the website if it’s not something that is likely to happen. It’s been on there for years.
Oh, yes, developed full time. It’s only that at some point, any software project that’s large enough and have lived long enough hits a point where it’s impossible to move forward without paying off some technical debt.
In our case, it has been sync and collaboration that confronted er pervasive, incorrect design decision that had to be corrected, or we wouldn’t be able to move forward.
At one extreme, you have apps where every part of the app talks to other parts of the app as they please. This eventually results in a gridlock of reactivity, where you can’t control anything, because it triggers some cascade you can’t control.
At the other end, you have apps that are rigorously designed around some kind of model-view-controller paradigm, where changes in the document data make their way out to the UI in a controlled way.
We used to be 75% undisciplined, and now we’re 95% disciplined with a few holdouts remaining. But it took several years of deeply unfun work.
Separately, in order to go to mobile, we had to move the app from Qt 5 to Qt 6. Only Qt 6 can build for modern mobile platforms, but we started on Qt 5, and we had been holding out, because going to Qt 6 would kick out people using older versions of Mac OS X. Apple is aggressive about killing old computers (so people will buy new ones), and we felt bad for people who had great Mac setups that wouldn’t be able to use the app at all. But now that transition is 95% done.
Next, sync is hard with a sophisticated document model like Causality. Sync is only easy if you’re willing to liberally lock people’s documents like you lock timelines in shared video editing. But that made our stomachs turn, and we wanted proper sync where everybody can be in the same space. This also has required restructuring data in fundamental ways, so that it’s freely mergeable, and now it is. We can now have any number of people in a document without collision, including on the same timeline at the same time. It’s basically an achievement in computer science. This is a far more sophisticated document structure than just a text document. Merging changes from multiple streams is very difficult, until the data is structured in a way that allows it.
Finally, sync/collaboration are an unnegotiable prerequisite for mobile apps. Without any way to move the data to and from mobile devices, it’s miserable and basically unusable to be in a mobile app. Even if it’s just one user by themselves, copying to/from Dropbox will eventually result in you forgetting to load before making changes, and then ending up with a forked document, and it’s not even clear what the differences are between the documents.
So our work has been, besides dealing with modernizing the code, to (a) get all our data to a place where it’s modern and sync-able, and (b) get to Qt 6.
This together has basically been a lost couple of years for us, and we realize the opportunity cost. But we’re doing right by the software, and allowing it to have a long life. Now we can just put in features again, because we’re no longer digging a deeper hole.
I hope this clarifies what has been going on in the background.
Thanks for the detailed update on what’s going on behind the scenes. I’m not a coder, but it sounds complicated and, no doubt, quite frustrating trying to keep everything working happily without breaking anything at the same time.
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Thanks for the update, Per. It is helpful to understand what has been happening behind the scenes.
I first signed up for a one‑year subscription back in 2023 because the website said the mobile app was coming soon. That was three years ago, and I feel like my original question still hasn’t really been answered.
You have explained the work on sync and the underlying systems, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the mobile app itself. What I am trying to understand is whether mobile development has actually begun. Is there a mobile build in existence, even in a very early internal state, or has no mobile work started yet because the groundwork is still ongoing? That is the part that has been unclear for a long time.
I also wanted to ask about the add‑ons listed on the site as coming soon. They have been there for about three years as well. Are any of those in development, or are they still only planned features?
If the mobile app or the add‑ons are not likely to appear in the next few months, are there plans for the website to reflect that more accurately? It would help people decide whether it is worth investing time and money in Causality 4, or whether it risks ending up in the same situation as the last 3 years.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply here. It would just be good to understand what is real, what is still on the roadmap, and how close the mobile version might be after such a long wait.
Hi,
It’s kind of an tough rule system that nothing is allowed to appear on a website unless it’s right around the corner.
The future features like production are mainly listed so that people don’t freak out if/when we make production features and they have to pay extra. The main investor is passionate about a production system, but I personally think it’s a distraction, considering (a) there are many out there, and (b) if Causality isn’t great to work in to begin with, then nobody cares about a production system. So this is down the line for me. But we have to clearly explain it as a separate product, or people will be in the street with pitchforks. We can change the graphic to “Planned” instead if that feels better.
About mobile apps, it doesn’t divide at neatly as you imagine. We have in fact steadily been working on that, just not very fast. Moving to Qt 6 is fundamental to mobile apps. Having sync/collaboration is fundamental to mobile apps. We’ve been steadily changing things that are mobile-hostile. One previous developer on the project used “mouseareas” for everything, and they don’t respond well to taps, so we’ve been swapping all those out. The popup inspector that’s used everywhere in the most recent versions of the app is built to exactly be great for mobile, and then also happens to be used on desktop. Please realize that in a cross-platform codebase, the problem is not simply compiling the project for ARM64, and then it works on mobile. We ALREADY compile for ARM64 for Apple Silicon. It’s having a UI that works on mobile, and a data model that can shuttle data around without handling files. We work on that every single day.
So to answer your question specifically, mobile is after sync/collaboration. Sync/collaboration is this year. I personally work more on Shot Designer 3D than Causality, and we’ve taken great care to use the same data models and servers, so all of this is 100% running for Shot Designer, along with servers, real-time collaboration everything, and besides a couple of polish issue, it’s done and ready for beta testing. That back-end is an entire module that can be dropped into Causality. So what Causality has to do is be ready to get data that way, and that’s the main things that has happened in the last two years, the technical debt I mentioned.
There’s no way around doing things in this order. These are the number 1 and 2 feature requests, and we dedicate almost all waking hours to them. We know that we lose people over both lack of collaboration and lack of mobile, and it’s painful, but there are no two ways about it. These changes have to be made, or there’s no way forward, the end.
If you feel that you’re unable to use Causality in the meanwhile, then unfortunately all we can offer is a refund. I’m sorry we can’t do it faster, but we’re working at full capacity. If this is what you prefer, please contact sales@hollywoodcamerawork.com.