Farewell to Evan Michael Gross, Author of Spell Catcher
It was with great sadness that we heard about the sudden passing of Evan Michael Gross at the end of June 2012. One of the earliest adopters of the Mac, Evan was best known as the author of Spell Catcher, the standalone spelling utility that started out life as Thunder in 1986 before being renamed to Spell Catcher in 1998. In 1999, Spell Catcher started being distributed by Casady & Greene, which also distributed SoundJam, the predecessor to iTunes. In 2005, Evan’s Rainmaker Research took over distribution. We don’t yet know what the fate of Spell Catcher will be without Evan.
What a terrible loss. I never had a chance to meet Evan in person, but over the past 20+ years he was always ready to help via email if I ran into a crazy problem with Thunder/Spell Catcher. His talent will be sadly missed.
I'm also very sad to hear this. His Thunder 7 was one of my earliest Mac software purchases (I still have the disks), and I stayed with its successor Spell Catcher until now as well. I also had occasion to exchange emails with Evan a few times over the years, he was always helpful, seemed to really care and to take pride in his work. Condolences to his family.