Maple, OurHome, and the other side of the boom

Maple told customers it will shut down on 31 December 2026. It was one of the few all-in-ones that tried to be a family OS rather than a calendar with AI copy. OurHome, the chore app every 2024 roundup still ranks, was not installable as of late August; another developer has the name. TalkingParents retired its free plan on 30 March. AppClose, free for about a decade, moved to a subscription in January.

This is not a side note. It is the household layer of the same system the labs are booming through. Parents do not experience “AI.” They experience whether the app they trained the family on still exists in March.

Why we keep the dead on the Index

Search and language models still recommend OurHome. Last year’s “best family apps” posts are still live. If Onyt deleted the row, we would be complicit in the ghost listing. The Family Life Index keeps sunsets and discontinuations as warnings, labeled, scored as products that can no longer take work off a plate.

What fills the hole

Not, usually, GPT-6. The hole Maple leaves is “one place for the week.” Cozi is the name a PTA parent already knows. Google Calendar is the plumbing. Skylight is the wall. Concierges try to finish the work instead of storing it. Homsy is what is left in chores now that OurHome is gone. None of these is a drop-in Maple. Telling a family to “just use ChatGPT” for a shared Saturday is how you get two different Saturdays.

The boom and the junk drawer

The assistant boom is real at the lab and rail layer. The junk drawer is real at the family-app layer. An honest briefing holds both. An honest index does not promote a shutdown as a leader, and does not hide a shutdown because it makes the category look messy.