Orbit 1.0 - Week in Review

Orbit has been available a full week now, and has performed phenomenally in the market. It's about to cross the 50,000 users mark, and I thought it would be a good idea to share some statistics of the Cydia Store market.

Here's the device breakdown (of 45,254 devices):

It's interesting to note that the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS are almost identical in market share so far (in fact, for most of this week the 3GS was ahead by about 4%, but the 3G pulled ahead at the last minute). Remember, the 3GS is only a couple months old.

So, with that in mind, what OS is everyone running?

As you can see, the majority are on the latest version of iPhone OS, although there is a significant number remaining on 3.0.

Orbit has been received positively in the media, too, although the highlight of my week was getting the great Stephen Fry to use Orbit. From his e-mail to me, he said…

"Smooth and stable and genuinely useful. It’s there on my dock, the first app ever to deserve a place there…"

I can't wait to wrap up v1.1 and push it out to all of you - and if you like Orbit, please tell your friends! It's only $1.99 on the Cydia Store, and you get free updates.

Orbit - bringing 'SpringBoard Exposé' to life

Early this month Ocean Observations posted a video on YouTube of a concept they dubbed 'SpringBoard Exposé'; a way to quickly navigate the multitude of home screen pages many of us have on our iPhones or iPod touch.

In chatting with Louie over at The Iconfactory, he 'suggested' I go and see if I could make it into a reality. After two hours of work, I had the concept up and running on my iPhone.

Simply tap the Orbit icon and you're zoomed to what I dub the 'Orbital View' of your home screen, from there you can tap any of the pages to zoom directly there. For anyone with many pages of apps, this will change the way you use your device, I guarantee!

Fast forward to today, its first day of release, and Orbit is a huge hit on the Cydia Store. Louie cooked up some awesome artwork with a little prodding from me, and the reviews across the web have been outstanding. For posterity, here are some of the reactions from users on Twitter:

"Very polished, works flawless for me"

"Just bought Orbit from Cydia. It kicks ass!"

"Just purchased, and installed Orbit!!! This is the best iphone app I have on my phone.. I works GREAT!!! Thank You!!!"

"Just installed Orbit... My life is so much easier now. Thank you! Probably the best thing ever for the iPhone."

Orbit 1.0 is available now from the Cydia Store at $1.99, but the story only begins here. There are many awesome improvements in the pipeline, and I hope you all enjoy Orbit as much as I have enjoyed making it. Please spread the word!

'Expose' for iPhone

Working on this little [jailbreak] modification, hope you all get to see it very soon. Still trying to figure out a name for it (can't use Expose or Spaces, would be nice to have a name of its own). Haven't done any caching yet, so there are a load of speed improvements coming. But for anyone trying to navigate 11 home screens, even this as-is is really really cool.

Stack v3 Alpha 2 Released

Stack v3 Alpha 2 is now up for contributors; check here for more details.

Whatever you do, make sure to read the readme as there are some important gotchas!

New in Alpha 2:

• Multiple Stacks

• Dimming of screen when opening a Stack

• Reflective Dock support

• Support for iTunes 9's App Management

• Stack Update Notifications (notification when there's a new version available)

• New Grid View animations (temporary)

• Stacks are findable/openable using Spotlight