I just pushed InstaDesk 2.0.1 to Apple review. It brings lot of bug fixes for problems that didn’t appear during the 2.0 beta testing phase. All in all, based on the feedback I got from customers so far, 2.0.1 should be more stable and a bit faster (again!) than 2.0.
After the desaster with the Instagram outage that lead to lots of unfair reviews (even though it wasn’t InstaDesks fault since it was Instagram that went offline), I hope that InstaDesk 2.0.1 will excite people about the fantastic 2.0 release.
However, even though it is mostly a bug fix release, I nevertheless managed to sneak a couple of important additions in, that didn’t make it into 2.0 due to time constraints.
InstaDesk 2.0 stayed in Apple review almost one month. When I initially uploaded it for review, my plan was to take a bit of time after release in order to work on Mountain Lion compatiblity. However, since the 2.0 review took almost a month, and since Mountain Lion is about to be released, I decided to cut some corners here and add basic Mountain Lion support in 2.0.1 while adding full support in the next big update. This means that InstaDesk 2.0.1 will run on Mountain Lion, and it will support the new Mountain Lion User Notification Center as a Growl alternative.
What it doesn’t support is the system-wide share service. This will be added in the next update.
I pushed InstaDesk 2.0 into Apple review before the retina release during WWDC2012. I had hoped that I’d done everything right for retina support, but I hadn’t. I had created high quality version of all pictures, and I had taken care to use code instead of graphics in all situations. However, there were some additional retina adjustments necessary that I didn’t learn about until WWDC. This has been done now, and retina InstaDesk looks awesome.
When seeing the screenshot, you will notice that the quality of the Instagram pictures is not as good as the quality of the interface. Instagram offers three image resolutions: 150x150, 306x306 and 612x612. On non retina displays, InstaDesk uses 150x150 for the small icon view, 306x306 for the big icon view, and 612x612 for the detail view. On retina screens, it would make sense to use the 306x306 for the small icon view, the 612x612 for the big icon view, and the 612x612 again (maybe in a scaled variant) for the detail view. However, I decided against this since it would also double the bandwith requirements of InstaDesk and thus slow down the speed of the app by 50%.
That’s InstaDesk 2.0.1. In addition to the above, it will also contain several small enhancements based on direct user feedback after the release of version 2.0.1.
Let’s hope that Apple releases it faster than 2.0.
Benedikt
>> Also Read: How the Instagram severly outage hurt InstaDesk ratings