The Future of PointOut for iOS

Before I get down to revealing what PointOut’s developer, Marek Moi, has planned for the future, I would like to take a minute to talk about the latest 1.2.1 update, which just made me laugh out in glee.

1.2.1 Past Midnight

When I posted my PointOut 1.2 review, I naturally included a few screenshots from the app. In doing so, I accidentally found a bug — Marek Moi’s scaling algorithm would round the pixels up incorrectly, producing a 1 pixel thin white line at the top of the image. This was quite apparent in my example, especially since I went crazy and used an orange background for the article itself. I did not dare mention this to him, knowing full well that instead of going to spend time with his family and later going to bed, he would not be able to think about anything else until he got it fixed. A few hours later, around 16:00, I received a message from Marek saying that he noticed it. Two hours later he found the bug in his code. His last one was after midnight — he got up out of bed, fixed the bug, submitted it to Apple, and went back to sleep.

The Future

PointOut, as you may or may not have noticed, only works in portrait on the iPad. This is not a feature. Marek calls himself an old-timer, preferring to code in ways he is familiar and comfortable with. This means he barely used any of the tools provided by Xcode and he did not listen to me, when I told him to use Auto Layout. This is not good news, mostly for him. The good news for us, his users, is that PointOut will be rewritten practically from scratch, to fully support Auto Layout and all the cool new iOS 9 features such as Split View and Slide Over, and he has a few good ideas how to make it better. I’ve also been told that he will rework the UI to make it more appealing and perhaps a bit fresher, not that I find anything especially wrong with it at the moment. It will be simpler and easier to use, however.

The best part that has me most excited are his plans to expand the loupe and markup capabilities of the app. He asked me not to speak of this yet in detail, since nothing is yet finalised, but if he builds what we spoke of, it will be one stunning and unique piece of software for iOS. I’m sure Ally Kazmucha will be thrilled!

Wish I could tell you more, but I can’t, because I promised. In the meantime, go download PointOut [App Store link] by Marek — the app is free to use and if you buy him a coffee (for $0.99, $1.99 or $4.99 — you get to choose how much you want to donate), you will unlock all current and future tools. Let’s keep him awake so that rewrite comes along quickly!