Yesterday we shipped version 1.2 of our Envision for Macintosh product. Envision, and its associated iPhone version, iEnvision, are not security products. But they do contribute to an interesting story having to do with our direction in the security field, and the direction of Apple developers in general. There are actually two parts to the story.

First, as you know, Open Door Networks has been a Macintosh Internet security company for a decade now. A few years ago we made our first foray into the consumer space with Envision, focused on large-screen Macs and Macs hooked up to HDTVs. It was way cool, but ahead of its time (there were few HDTVs to really show it off), and not as successful as we had hoped. So we put it in our back pocket, so to speak, and went back to security.

When the iPhone SDK came out earlier this year, we wanted to expand our security offerings to that device. But, as discussed here previously, the design of the SDK was too good, and limiting, from a security perspective, and there was nothing for us to do in that area.

Since the iPhone was clearly a consumer device, we started looking for potential consumer apps and realized we still had the Envision code in our back pocket. We immediately recognized the irony of implementing a for-HDTV product on the iPhone, but it made sense in many other ways so we went for it. And not only were we rewarded by significant iPhone sales and revenue, critical recognition (“Top 10 apps to show off with”), and what has turned out to be the basis for a whole line of iPhone apps (there are about a dozen apps in our “Envi” line now), but we saw a marked increase in downloads of the old version of Envision for Macintosh, which wasn't even a Universal app until yesterday. Plus users emailing us and wanting improvements in it on the Mac (now that at least a few had HDTVs and other large screens), and with interesting ideas with things to do with it along with the iPhone version.

With this changed landscape, it clearly made sense to bring Envision into the modern era, and refocus it a bit in terms of a great iPhone publishing app. So that's what we've done. We’re curious as to whether there are other Mac developers who have seen the same thing. Our guess is that there are, but we're a bit too busy here right now to think about it much :)