I have some bittersweet news: many of you will have seen the keynote given by Steve Jobs at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) earlier this week. There were some fantastic announcements, including iOS 5, the (potentially) incredible iCloud and finally Mac OS X ‘Lion’. Lion introduces a brand new way to manage your application’s windows called ‘Mission Control’ — you can read more about Mission Control on Apple’s Lion site — it’s a great addition, and having used it I can honestly say that if you’re a Hyperspaces user under Snow Leopard, you’re going to love using it.

But I said ‘bittersweet’: Mission Control replaces Spaces entirely, and part of that replacement means that I cannot make Hyperspaces work under Mac OS X ‘Lion’. This isn’t a matter of skill, or fiddling about until things fall into place — the changes are such that it’s just not possible to make an application like Hyperspaces anymore. I can’t go into too much technical detail until Lion is actually released due to my agreements with Apple, but if you have access to Lion and would like more information about the change I’m happy to discuss it directly with you.

So I have two thoughts at this point:

  1. I want to do the right thing by you — so I’m letting you know about this now, and not in a couple of months time when Lion is released. I’ll keep supporting Hyperspaces for the foreseeable future, so please don’t worry that you won’t be able to contact me for support — of course you can, please do!
  2. I’m sad, but proud — Hyperspaces represents a couple of years of my blood, sweat and tears and I’m really proud of the app. I am disappointed that things have to end this way, without any warning for myself or for you, nor any way for me to have an effect on the situation. Thank you to everyone that has contributed to Hyperspaces in any way.

I am seeing this situation as optimistically as I can — with all the great announcements here at WWDC, I’m able to focus my time on producing a couple of great new apps that will be specifically designed for Mac OS X ‘Lion’ and iOS 5. More on those when there’s more to share.

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