Back in the summer we talked a little about our Mac Desktop plans and its been awhile so I wanted to give you a status update. Chris has been hard at work on Mac Desktop for almost a year. A lot our iOS code is usable on the Mac, but almost all the UI isn’t. Right now, a ton of stuff is getting finished – editors for events, tasks, calendars, and more, but we still have a long way to go.
As a reminder, we plan to release an “Early Access” version at a hugely discounted price for early adopters. The goal here is a win-win. We’ve heard from a lot of people who are very interested in getting their hands at desktop and we’d like to get as much feedback as possible before our final 1.0 release. We also know that people want to see a feature-parity version of Desktop, while in the meantime still get usable functionality while we work towards that. Finally, this does help us continue to fund all of our efforts on desktop and mobile and it helps us move forward with our vision for the future. We’ve been stretched a little thin internally as we’ve diverted resources to Desktop while continuing to provide some great updates for our mobile app without the ability to add any extra engineers to help with the additional workload just yet.
Right now, I’m hoping to see that Early Access release coming soon, but the actual release date may be a surprise. Here is what you can expect to see:
- Calendar Views
- Tasks Views
- Task and Event editing
- Calendar Editing
- Template Editing
- Google Calendar, Task sync
- Toodledo Sync
- Informant Sync
- Quick Entry
- Filtering
- Search
Here are some things that you won’t see in Early Access but we do plan to have by the final
- Printing
- Map/Locations (this may be in early access or soon after)
- Notes View
- Rich Text editing
- Saved Filters
Some other notes are that mobile isn’t going to be sitting around. We have several major short term and a huge long-term plan – and Desktop is key to that. So Desktop will keep up, but obviously we can’t talk about that now.
As you can see, our Early Access release is going to be great – but it won’t have feature parity with our mobile app just yet. We really want to honor everyone who chooses to participate in our Early Release program – so, in a nutshell, here’s what you can look forward to:
- A great discount
- Get Informant running on your Mac as soon as humanly possible
- Frequent updates during the Early Release period
- You’ll be the first people on the block to give feedback. You’ll get a chance to help shape some of our priorities for 1.0.
- A private forum for Early Access user
- Upgrade to the final 1.0 release for free when it is complete (our target is spring/summer 2015, depending on your feedback)
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Week
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Month
These screenshots haven’t gone through any polish – which we plan to do during the Early Access phase, but I think it gives a good visual 🙂
And as a reminder, if you want to get emails when Desktop Early Access is ready – sign up here:
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