About the survival of our Data ( when Apps die )

Posted by eastgate
Jun 15, 2025 at 10:56 PM

I believe this issue is far less dire than it was a generation ago.

Take Tinderbox (https://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/), which I design. It’s huge, opinionated, and exotic. Its documents are XML files. If Tinderbox disappeared, you could extract all your data with modest difficulty — difficulty that is decreasing every year. (You could get much of your data out by opening your Tinderbox documents in BBEdit!)

Same thing for Scrivener, Pages, Keynote: if you need to, you can get your data out. If LOTS of people need to (for moderate quantities of “lots”) you can make it easy to get your data out.

In addition, a generation ago emulation was pretty much a pipe dream. Now, it’s fine and even ubiquitous.

Now, this doesn’t mean you’re entirely safe from annoyance and inconvenience if your favorite application vanishes. It might take some work. But this is no longer something to inspire 7 pages of worry in a week.