Techspansion, developer of VisualHub, iSquint and AudialHub, shuts down
In a surprising move, Techspansion - the makers of the indispensible Mac OS X conversion software utilities, VisualHub, iSquint and AudialHub - has decided to close down for personal reasons as stated by the head developer, Tyler Loch.
The sad news is now posted on the Techspansion website, bearing the following message:
…After much soul-searching (it’s not you, it’s me), for personal reasons, Techspansion is closing its virtual doors. Thanks for all your support. It’s been a fun ride… and a special thanks to all the well-wishers that have e-mailed. I’m sorry I don’t have the time to respond to every e-mail, but please know that it’s very appreciated.
I personally use VisualHub on almost a regular basis, using it to encode my downloaded public broadcast TV shows and video podcasts to mobile MP4, which I then load to my Sony Ericsson Walkman phone for later viewing on the go. With a simple drag-and-drop of the source file, with one-click settings for most video formats, makes a tedious thing to do in QuickTime almost enjoyable.
AudialHub is another great utility, although I don’t use it that often, that comes in handy for the random .ogg file that finds it way to my hard drive, needing to be encoded to something more iTunes friendly.
I personally don’t use it, but iSquint is quite popular with the iPod crowd for converting movie files straight to QuickTime format compatible with any iPod that can play videos.
Indeed, this is sad news for the many Mac users who rely on Techspansion’s software for re-encoding various video and audio formats. I just hope the source code is sold to another developer, just to keep the good work going. There really isn’t much of an alternative out there that can match VisualHub’s features and price point. Another good option would probably be to make it open-source. Or even better, maybe Apple could somehow buy the 3 software utilities and add some great new iApps to its already stunning iLife suite.
Techspansion, you will be missed.
For those of you who would like to backup their present copies of VisualHub and AudialHub, here are the instructions since we won’t be able to get a hold of any further official downloads.
- Backup the actual VisualHub or AudialHub application (inside your Applications folder)
- Next, you’ll have to backup the Conversion Engine. Copy the folder at: /Library/Application Support/Techspansion
- …for good measure, you can also back up your Preferences file, containing your registration info in case you lose the original purchase e-mail. It’s at: /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.techspansion.visualhub.plist
- …or for AudialHub: /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.techspansion.audialhub.plist
