Archive for November, 2007

We just finished putting the final touches on Pixelmator 1.1 Kitten. It has some pretty neat features and a bunch of bug fixes. Well, this is the bright side. The dark side of the current situation is that, unfortunately, because of Core Image memory leak, we can’t release it yet.

Some Pixelmator users have encountered a not so tiny memory leak that dramatically slows down the application, but this is not the worst thing. The really bad thing is what we found after we spent a lot of time trying to find and fix it. At first we thought this was a Pixelmator problem, but sadly this problem is not in Pixelmator; it is hiding deep in Core Image itself and probably affects not only Pixelmator, but also other apps that take advantage of Core Image. Currently there is no workaround available for this leak, and I believe this thing has to be fixed before I can give Kitten to you.

Anyway, the good news is that we are working closely with Apple (yup, mothership takes good care of its developers) to fix this bug in Core Image as soon as possible. I just hope Apple won’t take forever to take care of it—keep your fingers crossed.

A small update for Pixelmator is available for download. 1.0.2 includes Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility, major bug fixes, and minor improvements. This update does not include new features, but I highly recommend downloading it.

As I mentioned before, the real-Leopard version of Pixelmator, called Pixelmator 1.1 Kitten, will be out later this month. You can follow the Kitten development on Twitter.

I am so sorry if I am late with this article. I know you’ve missed us a lot and we missed you too. Anyway, let me explain what is going on here.

First of all, Pixelmator is doing amazingly well. We are growing very fast in all respects, and this not only brings us happiness, excitement and motivation, it also brings more problems that we have to solve.

October was a very interesting, but difficult month for us. We’ve been traveling around the world for a few weeks now and have been working out of hotels and fast food restaurants. This is not a vacation, however. Not even close! We had about 20 meetings with some huge companies, distributors and others that want Pixelmator to become even more popular. I would love to tell you more details about what we are up to, but I think it would be better if you see the results for yourself.

The big problem for us is that we’ve tried to do everything by ourselves: fix bugs in Pixelmator, meet with people who want to help us, and keep our support alive. It seems to me that we haven’t been very successful at some of these things, as Pixelmator development and support was not good enough in October.

In any case, there is no reason to be sad. Everything is going to be better starting tomorrow. We are finally releasing the Leopard-friendly version of Pixelmator. It is not that major update (1.1 Kitten); it is just a pack of bug fixes (it’s 1.0.2) and small improvements that have mostly to do with Leopard.

The real-Leopard version of Pixelmator will be available later this month, and we are on track to ship it on time. I am sure you’ll love it.

Other news from the Pixelmator Team is that we are looking for a friendly person to help us handle all the Pixelmator support details. We have some ideas to dramatically improve Pixelmator’s help and support engine. I am doing my best to make sure that no one is left without help.

We have also moved to our new office, which is very cool. I promise to add some photos to Flickr as soon as I am done with the release.

For now, if you would like to get a detailed update of Pixelmator’s development, Aidas has set-up a Twitter account. To check out Pixelmator’s current status, just click here.