Stairways Software Acquires Keyboard Maestro
Perth, Western Australia – 12 July 2004 – Stairways Software Pty Ltd is
pleased to announce that it has acquired Keyboard Maestro from Michael
Kamprath. Keyboard Maestro is a powerful macro program for Mac OS X that
lets you design your own macros and activate them at any time, with support
for selecting menus, opening files or applications, controlling iTunes,
pasting text, running scripts, and controlling processes.
While Keyboard Maestro itself is a very professional program (and one that
we here at Stairways have found indispensable for our day-to-day tasks),
Michael originally approached developing Keyboard Maestro as a part-time
hobby. Keyboard Maestro 2.0 has been in beta testing for over a year and
Michael realized that for a variety of reasons he did not have the energy
or time to dedicate to the program that Keyboard Maestro’s users deserved.
When we learned from Michael that he was considering abandoning the
program, we offered to acquire it from him. After a short and very fruitful
negotiation the agreement was signed on June 30 and Stairways Software
acquired all rights to Keyboard Maestro.
We here at Stairways Software will bring the same level of professionalism
to Keyboard Maestro that we have to our powerful award-winning Internet
client, Interarchy, including such things as rapid registration, prompt
support, and web access to license and email details.
Some things will stay the same, especially the solid power of Keyboard Maestro.
Other things will change. We plan to finish the 2.0 version in around three
months. Version 2 will be a free upgrade to those who purchased Keyboard
Maestro 1 after June 30. Those people who purchased version 1 prior to June
30 (from Michael) will be able to upgrade for a nominal free. Following
Stairways normal informal policy of one paid major upgrade per year we
should see much more rapid development of Keyboard Maestro, perhaps
including such things as Automator or Dashboard integration in the future.
Michael promised that he would not give customer email addresses to any
third party, and that obviously includes us, so in order to allow existing
users to upgrade to Keyboard Maestro or to retrieve their serial number or
information about future versions, Michael will shortly send existing
customers an email with details of how to transfer their customer details
to Stairways if they desire.
It will take a few weeks before we have completed the transition and can
email customers. Anyone interested in keeping informed can join the
Keyboard Maestro mailing list at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/keyboard_maestro
Keyboard Maestro was developed by Michael Kamprath and is now engineered by
Stairways Software Pty Ltd and distributed by Kagi. Keyboard Maestro is
licensed on a per workstation basis (individuals can choose to license it
on a per user basis).
New customers can purchase Keyboard Maestro 1.x from
(http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/purchase) for US$20 and customers who
purchased version 1 after June 30 will be entitled to a free upgrade to
version 2.0 when it is released.
A fully-functional trial version of Keyboard Maestro is available for
downloaded from (http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/download).
For sales enquires, customer service, technical support, or to contact
project management, our current contact information is listed at
(http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/contact).
For more information about anything to do with Keyboard Maestro visit
(http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/).