(Two posts combined into one due to giant waves and radioactive lizards.)
First, a few quick things I forgot to mention in the last post:
Easy media moves: One of the nice side effects of the soft deletion feature is that it’s much easier to move your media around. You could do this in the last version, but it’s much simpler now, since the media can disappear for a while between scans, and nothing is lost.
Poster/Art downloads: Another tweak we’ve made is to download the full resolution poster and art files during a refresh, in order to ensure that even if the site goes down, the media is always there for you.
Massive refresh on the iOS application: It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll let graphics do most of the talking in this post. It’s actually hard to exhaustively list all the changes, since the application has been so thoroughly overhauled.
This first set of screenshots shows off the new grid view, and improved UI around channels. It turns out that “plug-ins” is a rather technical term (who knew?), segregating them by class wasn’t a great idea (people tend to only use a handful), and getting from installation to channel was way too clunky. So we’ve worked on cleaning up and streamlining the experience, and we’ll be bringing this improved flow to the desktop client as well.
So what’s the edited out tab button in the middle? You’ll just have to wait and see…(anyone care to guess?)
We’ve eliminated the second level menu from library browsing, and replaced it with a filter button, which should, again, improve efficiency. Yes, we will be bringing that change over to the desktop client as well, although not in the next release (patience, grasshopper). Yes, there are unanswered questions about the third image.
The iPad version is a huge improvement over the last version as well, with rich new views and tweaked typography. It looks great, and feels responsive, this is really your media as you’ve never seen it before.
Oh yeah, and a few more things people have been asking for: TV Out, and Airplay. And even more things: playing multi-part media, and image caching. And yes (more on this later) subtitles and audio stream selection.
We’re aiming to submit to the app store within the next few days, so it should be in your hands very shortly. Even with the all the new features, this is a free upgrade for all current users. Thank you all for your support, and we hope you love the new version as much as we do!