AutoStitch Panorama 3.1 from Cloudburst Research has just hit the App Store. The improvements include optimizations for the iPod Touch 4th Gen, a new retina display-ready icon, bug fixes and a very nice feature I’ve been wanting for a while — background support for iOS 4.
In my opinion, AutoStitch Panorama is the best pano app available. It can be used to create much more than just panoramas. You can use it to create interesting ghost effects and “bend” effects as well. This update makes it much nicer to use in iOS 4.
In previous versions, backing out of AutoStitch caused you to lose the image that was being processed. As AutoStitch doesn’t have a camera, this was more of an inconvenience than a disaster. Especially if your image had a large number of of panes, though, you could lose a significant amount of time and battery if you had to reply to a text message or take a phone call in the middle of processing an image.
With the new update, AutoStitch finally takes advantage of iOS 4’s background state. It doesn’t actually process your image while in the background (It does. See the update below. =M=), but now you if you need to use your iPhone for another task, AutoStitch remains in the same state until you return to the app. You no longer lose the pano in progress. Nice!
AutoStitch Panorama is $2.99 and still works on any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running iOS 3.1, but you’ll need iOS 4 to take advantage of the cool new background feature.
=M=
UPDATE 11.09.10 17:55: According to Bob Hearn from AutoStitch, it actually does process your image while in the background. It just processes much slower while in the background, even on small panos. =M=
~~~~
