Hello beeps! First, my apologies, yes I know, it’s been too long since my last post. We’re behind our schedule. I’m here everyday, all day, coding away. Mark answers all email which comes to support@midnightbeep.com but we both have had trouble keeping up with the forum (any volunteers for moderators?). Being a small developer means being pressed to make promises about when new releases will be available, and as anyone who writes software knows, things often take much longer than you think they will. Here’s what’s going on:
Grand interruptions
The developer conference was great this year, but the timing was poor for our Mac and iPhone development efforts. Having to take time away from coding in order to prep for the conference, go to the conference, and then follow-up from it: takes about three weeks away from normal operations. It was worth it of course. I’d gotten enough done on Inbox for the iPhone that I was prepared with my questions and was able to make some real headway on some of its most difficult problems.
Though I and my Mac dev friends felt a bit outnumbered by iPhone crazed newbies, the iPhone sessions were pretty much the thing, and as such it was a relief to find them well organized and well presented. Lots of helpful information, and not all basic stuff as I feared: the sessions were detailed and went deep. The iPhone is truly an amazing device and OS X has been used extremely wisely. And perhaps most amazing is how fast all this stuff is coming. Apple’s teams are really cranking, making it very hard for the rest of us to keep up.
Inbox 1.5
Before Inbox can be successful on the iPhone, the Mac version needs an overhaul. This is what Inbox 1.5 is and what is taking longer than planned. Inbox 1.5 is a complete re-building of Inbox. The goal was to use the experience of building the 2.0 alpha to very quickly re-create 1.0’s feature set making it super fast and rock solid. The good news is that 1.5 is “super fast and rock solid” — the bad news is that the “very quickly” part was a huge over estimate. Inevitably as I went through the re-building, refinements to the workflow and architecture have slipped in. And further, with the parallel development of Inbox for the iPhone, I’ve had to build in support for it as well.
Right now I’m guessing that Inbox 1.5 is about 70% complete — nearing beta. It only shares about 10% of the code from the 1.3 version. And it uses about 30% of the code from the 2.0 alpha. It has a completely overhauled workflow and data model (different even than 2.0). The interface has all been rebuilt. And the whole project is designed to grow. It’s object-class architecture is proving to be a very good foundation to build upon for the long-term (unlike the Inbox 1.0 code). And yes, it’s a free upgrade.
Inbox Touch
So what about the iPhone version? It’s currently in alpha and looking very good. I wanted of course to have it ready for the big launch of the App Store (this Friday!), but with everything that needs to be done for the Mac version, this just hasn’t been the right priority. Better to be the best than to be the first.
The iPhone version of Inbox has the same full data model and workflow of the desktop version, allowing it to stand on its own as a complete version of Inbox. It will of course have iPhone specific features, like that cool location stuff, and interaction with the phone itself. The biggest challenge of Inbox for the iPhone — is syncing it with the Mac version — Apple hasn’t provided any good way to do this (no the MobileMe stuff doesn’t do it, that’s just for very limited notifications), so until they do provide an ideal solution, I’m having to create my own syncing methods — very difficult but going okay so far. I don’t want to say too much more about the iPhone version until it’s ready, but that it does indeed exist and will hopefully be available in the next month or two.
Inbox 2.0
Unfortunately even after all the blog posts about 2.0 last year and the Team Beep previews earlier this year — 2.0 is right now even further away. 2.0 will now be built on top of the 1.5 work, and it’ll be better for it. So while Inbox 1 is modal-oriented (sheets for editing data), with a single window interface, limited syncing and scripting, and supports both Tiger and Leopard — Inbox 2 is non-modal (editing right in the window), has a multi-window interface, fully automatic syncing and complete scriptability, and is only for Leopard (maybe even only for Snow Leopard). But Inbox 2 will now also have the refined workflow and data model from 1.5. And if you followed this blog all through last year, all the other features talked about for 2.0 will be included, code exists for them all, it’s just a matter of updating and integrating it.
And as for Team Beep — all the folks who’ve signed up to try out and provide feedback for Inbox 2.0 — we’ll be providing builds of 1.5 and 2.0 when they’re ready. In the meantime the feedback from the first round with 2.0 was indispensable and very much appreciated. Much of the Team Beep feedback is in fact finding its way directly into the versions in development. We’ll be re-opening Team Beep sign-up with the release of the beta of Inbox 1.5.
Midnight Beep
And the one more thing? Well with the release of Inbox 1.5, we’ll be making changes to how we do things day-to-day to better serve our community of users. We have an all new web site and all new support materials in development. We’ll be expanding our use of ticket tracking for customer service and adding more staff hours to keep responses and updates timely.
So that’s what going on, for those of you whom are interested to know. And as always, you can email us at support@midnightbeep.com for a personal reply.
Beep!