Archive for January, 2010

Charge

All of the Pixelmator Team crew members (except for the support master, of course) just returned from a nearly three-month vacation. Yes, I realize that is an unusually long break. But if you take into account the considerable number and quality of recent Pixelmator releases(including Firestarter, Kitten, Draftsman, Tempo, Sprinkle, and finally, the glorious Spider), I hope that you can find it in your heart to grant us the time we took to slow down a bit so as to prepare ourselves for even greater accomplishments.

What’s more, our vacation was absolutely perfect for the following reasons:

• It was agreed that our vacation time would be unlimited, with each crew member taking as much time as needed before missing worktop such an extent that one cannot but resist returning.
• We visited Germany’s Munich, Alps, and some impressive Alpine castles, all of which contributed to making this a mentally refreshing and restorative trip.
• We set up our new office, which is turning out to be a much more well-suited place in which to work and for our company to grow:

• It looks as though Pixelmator is selling everywhere – from our tiny Web store to such giants as Apple Store, Amazon, and almost anywhere else you can think of.
• Not surprisingly, Pixelmator 1.5 Spider happened to be the most successful Pixelmator release ever. Spider is still selling like hotcakes, and your feedback regarding the current version is great.
• And because Spider has been so successful and other Pixelmator releases were also very strong, we have made lots of money.
• Since we have a bit of money, we are looking to put the majority of it into Pixelmator’s development, perhaps investing in some new technology, hiring some good developers to help us out, and so forth.
• With clearer heads from our vacation, we have also reviewed the Pixelmator flight plan, which looks better than ever. The plan is, in fact, so inspiring that the whole team cannot wait to reveal it to you in future Pixelmator updates.

Power-Up

Currently, the Pixelmator Team is working on the 1.5.1 update, which will provide numerous improvements and enhancements. It is to be released at the end of this month or sometime in early February. If you happen to have any problems with Spider, now is the perfect time to let us know about them; we might be able to add the change or improvement into 1.5.1.

Run

For those of you wondering whether or not the Pixelmator Team is working on version 2.0, I can assure you that we are, in fact, doing so! And working very hard at it, too. To be more precise, we have been working on it (UI, features, foundation) for almost a year now, but it is still months, maybe even years away from release – it certainly won’t happen in 2010.Reasons for this delay include:

a) Pixelmator 1.X is the foundation for 2.0 and, by our standards, still needs a lot of improvements;
b) Since 2.0 has more than enough features, some of them should really be introduced in the 1.X era;
c) We would like to polish up certain important features in 1.X before adding new features;
d) Lastly, it really does take time to develop impressive stuff.

Thus, there will be no less than two or three major updates for Pixelmator 1.X. The newest one to be released once it is finished is called Pixelmator 1.6 Nucleus.

I am more than happy to confirm that after such a long vacation and such great news about Pixelmator, the Pixelmator Team’s batteries are once more fully charged and ready for a triumphant Pixelmator journey into the future.

Stay tuned.