As you all know, I also work on Starling and Flox, which take away a huge part of my time -- thus, the progress of Sparrow has become much too slow lately. The release of Apple's SpriteKit has made things even more complicated. How should Sparrow stay competitive when I cannot spend as much time with it as it requires?
While I was pondering about these problems, sitting on a branch of an old tree in the Swamps of Sadness, I suddenly heard a strange sound. I turned my eyes towards the sky ... the clouds disappeared, the sun came out, and there were harps and divine chimes!
No doubt, I was witnessing a miracle!
That miracle, of course, goes by the name "Rob", and he created an amazing Sparrow fork most of you will have seen by now. 😃
[For those who haven't, he managed to double the performance of Sparrow by using MRC instead of ARC and some other great improvements! Furthermore, his version allows OS X deployment. How cool is that?!]
Since Rob is doing such a great job with these changes, I humbly asked him if he would be interested in helping me out with the future development of Sparrow. And you won't believe it -- he accepted! (I must have reached him in a weak moment 😉 )
So, please give him a huge applause! 😛
Rob already sent me a pull request containing the MRC changes. Step by step, we will integrate his changes into the official Sparrow version, and make that "Sparrow 2.1".
I hope you're as happy about this development as I am!
Of course, any help from you guys is appreciated! Stick with us, follow the developments of the new version and test it to its limits, so that it's going to be a release that's as stable as it's awesome!
Cheers,
Daniel