Dear Findings user,
We have some sad news to share with you today. More than 10 years ago we set out to make the lab notebook app we would have loved to have when we were still in the lab. The result was Findings. A lot of you loved it but unfortunately it never reached the success needed to make it sustainable 
. Good software needs to be sustainable. In order for an app to thrive, it needs to be continuously improved, kept up-to-date, and respond to user feedback. For that it needs to get to a point where it can keep the lights on, but we didn’t reach this point. We tried many things, including a completely redesigned Findings 2.0 and a different business model, but without the effect we had hoped for. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, it sadly means we can no longer continue the development of Findings.
What does this mean for you as a Findings user? Last week we removed Findings from sale in the Mac App Store. It also means that we won’t ship updates anymore.
The last version of Findings will remain available for download from: http://downloads.findingsapp.com/v2 in case you need to reinstall it.
It will of course keep working the way it has on the current version of macOS (and older supported macOS versions), and may work for a while on subsequent macOS releases, but this is where we cannot make any guarantee. If you run into issues and need support you can email support@findingsapp.com and we will do our best to help you to the best we can.
You can use the following serial if you need to unlock the app: 49D21C49-FFFE5051-19DD4770-1A904E09-475BD5CE
What alternatives do you have? There are a number of alternatives out there, you’ll find a good overview of them on this page from Harvard University, including a useful comparison chart.
Some of them were so kind to offer any Findings users an easy way to get started. We will send an email to all of you on the Findings mailing list containing the details. Please note that we have no affiliation with any of them, nor do we stand to gain from that offer. We genuinely just want to give you some options for the future. Let us know in case you don’t get the email.
We had hoped to have better news today, we love Findings and have had so much joy creating it. It is therefore with great sadness that we have had to make this decision. The market for small independent software developers is a tough place to operate in. It can be very rewarding if you manage to get it to work, but it also makes it painfully clear if there are not enough users picking up your product. This is why it is especially sad for those who we know love Findings and use it on a daily basis in the lab. To you we can only apologize that we couldn’t make it work, and say thank you for being such supportive, enthusiastic users.
May you have fair winds and following seas,
Charles and Alex
NB: If you are interested in giving Findings a new home or a new life, please contact us through feedback@findingsapp.com. We are open to discussing potential options, particularly backed by strong motivation and a clear plan towards sustainability.
More generally, if you’d like to get in touch, share any ideas you’d like to discuss, or just want to give your opinion or honest feedback, you can send them to feedback@findingsapp.com