Instacast iOS 5 Roadmap
The release of Instacast 1.3 did not go as well as I hoped for. And yes, part of it is a bug I introduced by mistake. I'll fix this right away and issue an update as soon as possible. But also part of it is because there are apparently a lot of users already using iOS 5 on their main phone and not only on test devices as Apple recommends it. The first thing I want to get out is: please don't rate Instacast in iTunes based on it not working on iOS 5. The other thing is that I want to give you a quick look out what the roadmap for iOS 5 is.
So, in Instacast 1.3 I rewrote the whole playback engine, mainly to get Video AirPlay right into the enhanced podcast player and to get rid of the "System Player" setting, which was kind of confusing. I don't want to go to much into details, but this involved rebasing the player from a lower level media framework to a more higher level one. Hence it turns out that the higher level media framework has been itself totally rewritten in iOS 5, because it was originally not based on the lower level media framework itself. This naturally introduces new behaviors and bugs in iOS 5 concerning this framework.
So for iOS 5 I need to go back and rebase the player again on the lower level media framework, which is possible because Apple integrated Video AirPlay into it. This fact now makes Instacast 1.3 pretty much unusable on iOS 5 until I get this done. So, if you can't stand it and absolutely need to be on iOS 5 with your main mobile device, the best thing would be to go back to Instacast 1.2.2 until I fix all the issues. However I will need some time for that, so don't expect it to be finished next week.
The main goal on iOS 5 is to fix every issue that currently renders Instacast unusable. The second goal is to make more use of new feature in iOS 5, and there are a lot! So by the time iOS 5 comes out officially in fall, there should be a bug free version available that is specifically optimized for iOS 5 and still works on iOS 4.1.
I'll keep you updated on this blog and on Twitter if you happen to follow me.
July 1st, 2011 • Permalink
More articles about Blog Posts
05/09/2012 - New Specs on Podlove.org
05/09/2012 - Excellent Write-up of Instacast 2.0
05/07/2012 - Instacast 2.0 Available
05/06/2012 - Instacast HD Rejected over Flattr Integration
05/02/2012 - Multi-Format Podcast Feeds
04/26/2012 - Instacast 2.0 First Impressions
04/05/2012 - Patching iCloud Sync
03/29/2012 - The Podlove Initiative
03/28/2012 - Auphonic now Open for the Public
03/26/2012 - What's next with Instacast?
03/26/2012 - State of Support and iCloud