Before we begin: Thank you so much for your very positive feedback either per email or as ratings and reviews in the App Store. That is so motivating! Releasing a software is always a very exciting experience as you never know if users love your app or think it’s a piece of crap. It looks like Copper seems to fall in the first category and this makes us work even harder.
Today, we are releasing Copper 1.1. This is what Copper looks like now:
He have added a lot of features and have fixed every bug that has been reported. Copper 1.1 is available now as a trial and in a few days in Mac App Store when Apple has reviewed the update. If you already own Copper and are curious to update immediately, we can send you a license key to activate the full version. Please send an email to support@copper-app.com.
Schematic Viewer
We have already announced this feature in a previous post and we are thrilled to bring this important addition to Copper with todays release. It’s now possible to view and visualize the schematics of your board. Instead of one mode in 2D visualization there are now four.
- Board Layout (this is what you are used to)
- Schematics
- Horizontally splitted view showing schematics and layout at the same time
- Vertically splitted view showing schematics and layout at the same time
Of course we have implemented all those features you hopefully love, like exporting schematics as an image with lot of options for sharing gorgeous images of your work. And if you hover over a signal in either view this signal is highlighted in the other, too (in split view). This way you can easily verify the signals just by hovering your mouse over a trace or net.
Loupe
I really like this feature. It’s great in layout, but it’s awesome in schematic split view mode. With the loupe you can peak places of interest in the schematics without constant zooming and panning the view all the time. There are easy to use shortcurs for quick access. Just press the Comma key (,) to activate and disable the loupe. You may also change to size and magnification of the loupe. Look in the menu for all options and keyboard shortcuts. Check it out, you’ll love it.
Performance optimizations
We have optimized the render engine and added a lot of modern OS X techniques to increase render performance. You should notice it when zooming and panning the view. It’s much faster now. We noticeable increased performance in other areas, too. Like sorting and searching parts in Parts Browser.
Bugfixes and Stability
There have been a few bugs that crashed the app. I am very sorry that happened. Our goal is to provide a stable software you can count on. And we did kind of fail here. We have fixed every bug that has been reported by you or automated reporting systems in this release. Thank you very much for your support and for your bug reports.
Selling through FastSpring
Although we have received very positive feedback, sales haven’t been as good as we hoped. That is ok. It’s a long road. But Mac App Store has its flaws. It’s a black box. We had quite a lot of clicks on the “Buy Now” button, but the conversion rates in Mac App Store are terrible (for our software). Conversion rates are always terrible, but typically you have possibilities to analyze and optimize them. In Mac App Store you absolutely have no chance to do that. You see number of sales, that’s it.
There have been quite a few requests of people asking for a trial. And I think that’s a good thing. Searching for a solution I came across FastSpring/DevMate combo. Both provide more or less the same functionality as Mac App Store and much more. And it’s been the favorite method a sale for a lot of respected Mac developers. Recently Sketch switched to FastSpring completely leaving Mac App Store behind.
We don’t want to do that and keep on pushing our updates to Mac App Store. This way you keep the convenience of Mac App Store. But we will update our native version immediately upon release, the MAS version will be around 7-10 days later as this is the time Apple needs for reviews at the moment. If you want to stay ahead and are interested in receiving updates to Copper as fast as possible, please contact us at support@copper-app.com to make the switch.
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