Movie Draft Development Update

Hi guys. Well, as you know I'm a one-man band at the moment and trying to get Movie Draft off the ground is proving to be a lot harder than I thought, time-wise.

There are so many great features and subtle improvements that I want / need to make - some fantastic suggestions from some of you too - but I also have a website to create, marketing to erm, market, screen casts to record and bills to pay, and there are only so many hours in the day.

So, in light of burning the candle at both ends I have thought long and hard and decided that my top priority for the time being needs to be:

Complete my website and stop coding

"WHAT?!" I hear you say. "We need those features - NOW!"

Well, whilst what I *really* want to do is just code Movie Draft and respond to the great feedback you have all provided, I think that for me to be able to respond productively and efficiently (and to take Movie Draft to the heights that I want to take it) I need to complete my website first. [This is something Frail has already commented on in some of my posts]

Why? Well it's simple. At the moment any updates I want to release to you, my customers, have to go through the Mac App Store review process. Typically this takes anything between a week to a month. This means that if I have a critical update available to Movie Draft - no matter how quickly I code it, we both have to play the waiting game for Apple to release the update on the Mac App Store and then (as more than likely I won't have your email address) I can't even contact you to tell you that the update is even available. Sure, I'll post it on Twitter but there's only a small percentage of users that follow me on Twitter so not everyone will be aware of that update.

On the other hand, when the website's finished I'll be able to release updates immediately and I'd even be able to provide "nightly builds" for those interested in getting beta releases. Additionally I will also be able to email you (if you choose that) when updates become available, so the whole process would run far smoother.

Finally, if you're using a Mac that is running an older OS X than 10.6.6, (you need 10.6.6 or above to use the Mac App Store) you'll be able to download a version of Movie Draft that will work on your older machine. In fact, you'll be able to download a version that will run on 10.4.11(!), so it means more people can use Movie Draft, and that can only be a good thing.

But what if I bought from the Mac App Store? Can I download from the website too, or do I have to wait until it's on the Mac App Store?

It won't matter whether you purchased from the Mac App Store or from the yet-to-be-finished website, you'll still be able to download the latest build from the website and be notified of any new releases. That's the key thing here. For example, if you found a bug which caused Movie Draft to crash when you typed "CRASH! DO IT, DO IT NOW!" I could potentially have a fix verified, out and available to download the same day.

So if that's ok with everyone I'll put coding of Movie Draft on hold for a couple of weeks whilst I turn my hand to the website, and thus creating a more efficient way of providing you, the end user, with a better product.

Drop me a note on here if you think I'm heading in the right direction with this and as always, thank you for your continued support.

You stay classy, San Diego.

Mark.
www.moviedraft.com