Magic window review update#

This was depressing but less depressing than another failed attempt at resurrection. I soon began thinking of the redesign as a suicide mission and put it down hoping that I could just leave the app alone and continue to watch it slowly die under the pressure of the store.

Magic window review update#

If I charge for the update some set of people will riot, and I don't have time for that. Doing an update would drop it to 0 and likely sink an already sinking ship. The app was sitting on 167 amazing five star reviews. The more I considered it the more updating seemed like a sure mistake. No one wants to hear about a resurrected 3.5 year old app - there's too many other truly new and shiny things out there to stand out.

It has already been covered by countless blogs. It has already been in Apple's television commercials. The app has already been featured on the front page of the App Store. Worse was recognizing the likely reality that this work would not be rewarded in any way. Still, I knew that beyond the tinkering was a deep and extensive set of work that would take at best weeks and at worst months. It didn't take long for the app to start to take on a truly new form and given the amount of work it took I started to think maybe an update would be possible.Įxperimenting - early iOS7 explorations with Tahoe Blue. I started deleting all the gradients and gaudy icons. I started experimenting with blurring and parallax. I figured even if I didn't ship I'd at least get some practice with the new techniques that I could apply to another new app.

Not knowing if the bug would be fixed I didn't want to go too far. Three weeks out from iOS7 release I finally had some time to sit down and start experimenting with applying iOS7 design concepts. If it wasn't fixed, I'd have to pull the app. The bug persisted through every iOS beta. I spent a week alone isolating the bug and reporting it to Apple and after they marked it as duplicate all I could do was wait and hope. A low level OS bug caused the app to flicker white in a way that would instantly send an epileptic to the hospital. When the first iOS7 beta came out the app was 'a strobe light in your face' as Brad Smith so succinctly put it. However I knew there was a chance that I wouldn't have a choice, that some bug could pop up that would force me to ship, and once it did I would have to do some amount of redesign.Įxpanding - the Magic Window 2.0 demo video circa January 2011 And honestly that's what I really wanted to do. The advice from pretty much everyone I spoke with was to just leave Magic Window alone and start building something new. In the back of my mind I kept looking for an excuse not to do it. TUAW's first review.īy subscribing, you are agreeing to Engadget's Terms and Privacy Policy. I don't know what the App Store equivalent to dog years is but the design of the app as it stood seemed ancient.īeginning - First demo video for Magic Window 1.0 circa April 2010. Magic Window was introduced in the first month the iPad was available which seems like ages ago. When I first sat down to consider updating Magic Window for iOS7 the task seemed overwhelming. Below is the story of Magic Window's latest update, version 5, available now in the App Store.įear and Loathing in iOS7: Remaking Magic Window If you ever get a chance to hear him speak (and he's been at 360intersect, altWWDC and plenty of other conferences), by all means do so. There are people who love what they do, then there are people who live what they do.

I met Josh a few years ago and was struck by his enthusiasm for his work. The following is a guest post from Josh Michaels, the creator of Magic Window, Earthlapse and Tahoe Blue.