1.0 Approaches
That latest beta of Syrinx (v1.0b4) has been good and stable over the last day. I think this will be the one to make it out as a full 1.0. I am away this weekend to do some maintenance on the Saab, so I think Monday or Tuesday when I get back will be a good time to push it out.
I’m excited to see how the website works under a little more strenuous load. As an added bonus, for the first time I’ll have file-level tracking, so I’ll be able to get a much better estimation of how many times Syrinx is downloaded. Previously, being hosted off .Mac(Mobile Me), I could only tell how many page hits I received, but I never knew how many of those hits turned into downloads. No longer will I have to estimate from MacUpdate and VersionTracker results as I have with NameChanger.
I think overall Syrinx will be well received. Is it as feature rich as I would like? Of course not, but at some point you have to release. ”Release early and often” has become difficult for this 1.0, but I hope once I get it out, the dot releases will flow earlier and more often.
I would also like to update NameChanger in the coming weeks, to further generate some traffic to the site, and maybe those folks will stop by and see the new site and notice Syrinx. One downside, perhaps one of the only ones, of Sparkle updates is that folks no longer have to come by the website, so they/I/we miss out on the opportunity to share new products. Even so, the ability to get updates, especially for bug fixes, into user’s hands quickly and easily far outweighs any other concerns. After all, the usability of a single app needs to take priority over the possibility of pimping out your other applications and your website.