Observer Pro Status Update

Hello patient Observer Pro customers. I wanted to post an update here to let everyone know where things are at with Observer Pro development.

First of all, the current release of Observer Pro (version 1.2), works on all current devices (including the new iPhone XS and friends) as well as the latest release of iOS (12.0). However, Observer Pro has not been optimized for all of the screen sizes that you find on modern iOS devices, so you will see some letter boxing and potentially larger than normal text.

I have done a significant amount of work on building a new “engine” to power the next generation of Observer Pro. It’s more accurate and has a new database system that’s designed to be scalable for things like having multiple observing lists or adding new objects or catalogs of objects.

The other big piece of this work is to create a very powerful way to search and filter large numbers of objects to find exactly what you’re looking to observe or image. This system is much more powerful than just filtering by object properties (type, brightness, size, etc.) and I think you will find it as useful as I have while testing it out for my own imaging planning.

To get Observer Pro out the door and into your hands, I still need to re-work the user interface to go with the new engine. This includes support for modern Apple devices and many of the feature requests that you’ve sent over the years. Due to the amount of effort it takes to build this in my minimal free time (and how expensive a hobby astrophotography is), I’m planning on releasing Observer Pro 2 as a separate application. I know this will not be popular with everyone, but it’s just what I need to do to make the effort worthwhile.

My intent is to make enough time to finish it up over the next six months or so. I’ll endeavor to post more updates here as development makes progress. Thank you for your patience.

Clear skies,
Josh