Pixelmator 1.6 Nucleus to go Snow Leopard only
Yup, that’s right: we are moving our whole code to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. In fact, we already moved it a few months ago. And, boy, are we happy about that! But most important, yours truly, Mr. P., is the happiest of all.
Moving 100% to Snow Leopard not only makes the development easier and faster for us, but also it makes your favorite image editor a much better app and also an environmentally cleaner app (considering that the environment is the Mac OS X). Other reasons for the move are obvious: new technologies that we can take advantage of, old show-stopping technologies that we can get rid of, an extremely fast growing number of Snow Leopard users (our web stats are our intel), happier developers (us), and so on and on and on.
In other words, we just love developing for Mac and wish to take advantage of the best that Mac can give.
For those of you who are still running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, I can say that even though it is a good OS, I really hope that Pixelmator 1.6 Nucleus will encourage you to upgrade to an even better OS – Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Or if you can’t or don’t want to move to Snow Leopard, Pixelmator 1.5.1 Spider (still one of the best apps) will be there for you for awhile.
I just wanted to let you know about this move (which is very big, especially considering the huge number of Pixelmator users out there) so that you could prepare yourself if necessary.
P.S. Pixelmator 1.6 Nucleus development is going very well. Still a few bug fixes and minor refinements left. I sometimes tweet on Twitter about what we do and how it goes.
Thanks for doing that.
I understand a lot of the frameworks from snow leopard and up are really quite a fresh new start?
I am not that familiar with those type of things, but I am happy you decided to. This will allow for so much more features :) I am already a heavy pixelmator user, and will probably use it professionally full stop if it continues like this. Not just features from ugly other software (ahem), but new, thought out additions. Nucleus can’t be here quick enough if you ask me!
I love your approach, there is no need to waste your time with old libraries!
Great! Thanks for the heads up!
Super! Can’t wait for 1.6!
This is great! on of the hardest innovation blockers is to keep and to hang on all the old stuff; INTEL CPU still have 8088 Code; Windows 7x still has Windows 3.1 Code in it :-)
/Karl
[...] Pixelmator] Autor: Datum: Kategorie: Tags: Kathrin Grannemann, Chefredakteur [...]
Congratulations ! sometimes we need to do housekeepings and free the environment from the waste of old days. This will certainly open the doors for a even more high performing application with even better ways of implementing new technologies.
Thx from Bavaria, Peter.
I’m already Snowy so it’s all good!
Typo Alert – in the line “new technologies that we can take advantage off,” should be “of”.
Yay! Nucleus will be awesome!
I totally agree with this choice.
Good idea! Can’t wait for Nucleus! Peter P summed it up really well :)
I will still be stuck with leopard for the next few months, but I can see why you made this choice.
You’ve made a good choice!
Does it mean that Pixelmator 1.6 will use Grand Central Dispatch and/or OpenCL? :)
Snow Leopard is so cheap as an upgrade from Leopard (I mean really REALLY cheap), so I really don’t see why not.
I’m not the one who’re going to complain here! :)
sucks
Seriously, those that don’t use SL don’t understand why we all hold down “6″ and “4″ when starting up our macs.
Can’t wait to see the speed increases.
[...] Pixelmator skulle vilja med kommande versionen 1.6 bara stöder Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Utvecklaren ville uppdatera koden fullständig på [...]
I’ve had SL on the macbook pro – but saw no speed increase whatsoever. But the annoying dock expose feature got me reverting back to 10.5. I really see NO difference 10.6 vs 10.5 on a 2008 unibody 15′ MBpro.
Will it include GCD capabilities (Open CL and more…)?
I hope the power of 10.6 enables Pixelmator to open two views of the same file at the same time ;)
Hi staff, as old programmer now converted to graphics & web, I totally agree with this choice.
Better product needs better platform & support.
I hope to see Nucleus as soon as possible.
Have a nice day, Riccardo.
Glad to hear this from one of my most used programs! Pixelmator does everything I need and more – no need to pay the “Adobe Tax.” ;-)
I agree with Dove, I hope the new version includes two views of the same file. Also would like to see CMYK support. I would also like to see some photo filters added in the Filter toolbox. Can’t wait to see 1.6
I hope it will at last stop to crash in fullscreen, and fix the pixel drawing bug
Will 1.6 contain Layer Styles?
As I’ve stated before, I need them to get anything worthwhile done, because I can’t create the effects using the basic tools like a graphic design professional might.
>Snow Leopard is so cheap as an upgrade from Leopard (I mean really REALLY cheap), so I really don’t see why not.
SL may be “cheap”, however, upgrading a host of apps, read $$$$$, sure makes up for the “inexpensive OS upgrade”. ;)
Don’t let the snow lepers touch you!
You can upgrade to Snow Leopard without upgrading any apps. I upgraded the day SL came out and have not had to upgrade a single app.
This would mean that people with PowerPC or those that for some reason couldn’t or wouldn’t upgrade to SL would not get all the latest features of your software; I do however believe that you should not slow down the phase of something new just because of something that has already been, as technology moves forward, the developers should as well.
You have my full support on this ;)
disagree. Any developer should never remove support for hardware because of some mythical performance improvement. SL is NOT faster on my 3 macs.
I see the reasoning for going SL-exclusive… but alas my computer doesn’t have the specs to run monsieur snow. *Sigh*
I upgraded to SL the first day it became available. In 64-bit it is faster (with proper software that supports 64-bit of course) and it reduced OS footprint on the disk by almost 10GB which was a great surprise! It is on Windows you can have doubts whether to upgrade to a slower system that has even more useless garbage but not here! SL rules! You have my full support.
Hello pixelmator,
I would really like to support your great product, but why in the world do you need to know my ***TELEFONUMBER*** and why in the world you are not able to sell me your product without?
When I´m paying for a product – I do not like to get telephone spammed. Not from you and not from anybody else you are selling my contact details to.
Same for my details address information. I do not like to get real-world spam. Not from you. Not from anybody else.
What makes it really so hard to decide to sell a great software product OR make your business as little spammer and collect and sell peoples private contact details. Both together will not work!
Sorry no money from me and I will ***WARN*** everybody everwhere in in the Internet to buy products from spammer company.
It’s our reseller eselerate that requires the telephone number. But please feel free to put a fake one in. We don’t gather and use the telephone numbers ourselves. And if you don’t feel comfortable buying Pixelmator from our store. Feel free to buy it at the apple store or any other sales point where they don’t ask for telephone numbers and any other date you wisely don’t want to share. So just sit back and relax and let your blood-pressure drop we aren’t as mean and ugly as it may seem.
It’s really rude of you not to give us Layer Styles – even DrawIt has them! Unbelievable! How DARE you treat your (potential) customers this way?!
How DARE you take our hard-earned cash, paid for with BLOOD, sweat and **TEARS**, and use it on booze and hookers and those new i5 MacBook Pros without giving us some Layer Stylin’ Lovin’ in return??!.. This is OUTRAGEOUS!
I’m going to be warning EVERYONE about your treacherous ways! I’ll tell my mother, my sister, my uncle and umm.. all my imaginary friends too! That’ll show you!
———-
Shit just got real. I think you need to perform some damage control.
just a short question to Michael… and why do you put all your contact informations online?
@Pixelmator: I’m impatiently waiting for the 1.6 release…
@Pixelmator:
Hey guys!
I am testing Pixelmator and I love it!! Great features, very easy and mac-like application. It makes even more fun when post processing my images. I’m going to buy the software but I have a question: how do you handle updates? I mean: when the new version is out, will it be a free update for old customers?
Thanks and go on creating such an amazing tool!
@Dan: on twitter they already said it: all 1.x versions are free updates ;)
Apparently my cutesy trick didn’t work.. maybe it lacked cuteness after all.
But seriously?
You respond to some angry dimwit within 2.5 hours just because you think he might affect your sales, but have never (afaik) said a single goddamn word about Layer Styles even though people have been asking for that feature for a long time?
Have you just decided to never implement it, ever, and to keep silently ignoring the requests, hoping people would forget all about it?
Even if you actually are developing the feature, there’s no reason to keep it secret, because it’s not like it would be a competitive advantage anymore. Quite the contrary, not having Layer Styles, and especially not saying anything about it is a competitive disadvantage by now.
@Anon
I’m sorry but we have never given any information about new features until a few days, sometimes hours, before a new release. I always say on the forums: Look at the amount of requests for a single feature and you might get an idea what we are up to. This policy has served us very well in the past and I haven’t heard of any plans yet to change that. If you can’t wait on something that is known as Layer Styles or if you want to work with Layer Styles or can’t wait for us to design something better then Layer Styles.. Well I don’t know. You don’t have to use Pixelmator. Nobody is forcing you.
Alright :) Thanks for responding.
Oh, by the way, are you implying that “Layer Styles” is not a known term/name for any feature in an image editing program?
That’s the name I’ve seen used in your blog posts’ comments though, and it’s always seemed clear enough to me.
What we want is the ability to choose from a set of “effects” to be applied to a layer, like in Photoshop. DrawIt has its own take on this feature, and maybe you will too, eventually. I hope this explanation was clear enough.
Great stuff :D
Can’t wait for Nucleus!
So I will wait for 1.6 …
if you implement the info window (requested by many users since 2007) I will buy it for sure.
Thanks in advance
M.
since 2008 … sorry for exaggerating
I’ve had SL on the macbook pro – but saw no speed increase whatsoever. But the annoying dock expose feature got me reverting back to 10.5.
Right, because you are FORCED to use this dock expose feature.
And, because, you know, reverting to a 3 year old OS is the way to go when a UI feature irritates you.
How is this working out for you?
I really see NO difference 10.6 vs 10.5 on a 2008 unibody 15′ MBpro.
Eyes examined, lately?
Crap, there goes my powerpc…
Holy shit balls this thing is taking forever and a half to be released. Seems like the bigger the Pixelmator team gets the longer it takes to release something.
So… I’m starting to sense that I can just KISS OS9.2 goodbye now. Crimony.
I’ll be one of the naysayers and not be pleased about Pixelmator becoming Snow Leopard-only. First off, this will leave out those people using PowerPC Macs, even if they do have Leopard. And what about those who are using Leopard on an Intel machine? In addition to using Pixelmator, I also use Acorn, which has already made the jump to SL-only, so I’m stuck with an older version of Acorn for my Leopard computers.
While Snow Leopard had a couple of nice refinements, I don’t see enough changes to make using Leopard painful at all. Booting in Snow Leopard is actually slower than booting into Leopard, even on the same Mac Book Pro I use at work. Odd.
Dear Pixelamator Team:
it is nice to see that you do respond to some post here
I am very, VERY interested in buying Pixelmator 1.5, but what is holding me back is 1.6. Not knowing some kind of time frame that this new version will be released. Is there anything you could give me of a estimate time frame.
By all means i want the P. Team to take all the time they need to make the best product and not have some sort of date hanging over your head.(only pushes the last refinements)
Again is there any around the water cooler talk at the corp labs of when they would like to see it released?
Dear Pixelmator Team:
I personally support you fully on taking this decision. Working towards the greatest and the latest may not be most viable solution for everyone in terms of finances but it certainly good for supporting the technolog growth.
This fits perfectly with the Apple mentality as well… Long days ago, Apple was more towards supporting their older products but nowadays the technology grows so fast that sometimes everyone is forced to put their foot down and stop supporting “dated” technologies.
I was a happy Power PC user and had no problem Apple moving towards Intel, if it was going to give me the speed, the compatibility and the products I love to get from Apple. I am one of the lucky people that I can afford to own a new Intel Mac computer, and I totally understand the frustration of some Power PC users may have with this decision. But Power PC is now a very old processor. Apple keeps developing their OS and can not be expected to support dated configurations.
Pixelmator 1.5 Spider is already one of the best image editors out there that you can use on an older Mac. But the show must go on. If you have managed delivering stunning Pixelmator to us so far, I can’t imagine what is down the road for Pixelmator 1.6, 1.7 and finally 2.0 that all of us are waiting for.
Thanks a lot guys! Keep up the good work.
Sweeet! Damn… 1.5.1 still bugging, no updates to remove theese bugs, and yet you are moved to 10.6 and from PowerPC support. Thaks to you, i will completely broke to use Pixelmator. Don’t have money to transit on intel-mac.
Thanks, but not thanks, you may create some bug fixes after all in the end of PowerPC supporting, but noooo… Goodbye!
First of all, this is a great app to replace old Photoshop and we – design production – are seriously thinking of use this app as a main graphic tool. But I was quite disappointed with ‘Snowleopard only’ decision. I’ve been personally using Snowleopard but I cannot force my crew to upgrade because it is not perfectly finished yet, still buggy. Normal users might not notice it but it is seriously affecting professional productions like us. That is why many productions do not upgrade until last build release. And because of that I cannot upgrade to 1.6… sad :( Snowleopard is a disaster to media productions.
Maybe we will come back again when OSX 10.7 comes out, hoping that Lions gonna be much more stable.