Mobile SongBook released
SongBook is now listed on the Apple App Store. The release came through in record time. For those of you that are not aware an iPhone application must go through an approval process by Apple. My first iPhone application, SecretBook, took quite a while to get approved, partially because there was a large backlog of applications at the time and partially because Apple requested that I change the user interface slightly to better comply with their user interface guidelines. In contrast SongBook was approved and listed in 1 day, which caught me by surprise.
There are some bugs that have been reported in the first release version (1.0). I have addressed these issues in version 1.0.1 which at the time of writing is still in the approval process. I know this can be frustrating to download a new app and have it not work, but as with any new software release I cannot test every possible usage situation, so some initial bugs are almost inevitable. I will work to fix these as quickly as I can.
The bugs reported so far are related to device discovery. The main issue here is that I was concerned about application startup time and I optimised the device search to be as fast as possible, and it looks like for some peoples network I went to far. I’ve made the code more conservative now so it should work much better. It has been tested and works fine in some less than optimal networks (powerline ethernet, multiple wireless links etc) and it is working fine. I’m also discussing the issue with Linn to get the benefit of their experience with LinnGUI.
The other issue is Majik DS support. I have an Akurate DS and Sneaky Music DS for testing and thought that this gave me quite good coverage of the Linn devices. Unfortunately the Majik DS is a bit different in some ways and this caused problems. I actually found this bug before the App Store listing became live, and with the help of one Majik DS owner I have tested and confirmed a solution to this issue as well.
All of these fixes were submitted to Apple last Thursday so should appear as software updates soon.
Everyone has been very helpful and patient with these initial issues so far, and I want to say thanks for that. It is a little frustrating waiting for a release to come out on the App Store, if it was a Mac app I could have released the download immediately, that’s just a fact of live with the Apple Store though.
3 Responses
- Phil Blaustein
November 2nd, 2008 Hey there,
just downloaded the app to my ipod touch .. it picks up the server and gets my library fine. However, I have two different rooms in my system, and the room page is blank on the ipod. Things still working perfectly from desktop and notebook. Any thing i’m doing wrong?
- Neil Parry
November 14th, 2008 Hello Jason,
I’m a Linn employee, (I deal with technical support) and bought a iTouch for company use.
I have done a search for Songbook on the Apps store and get no result. What is this code listed under.
Regards
Neil- Jason
November 16th, 2008 See my later postings for updates. The short version is that the version of SongBook that was on the App Store had problems with discovery on some networks. Instead of letting users discover this for themselves I choose to withdraw SongBook until the updated version is approved. I have had a lot of trouble with Apple rejecting my updates, mostly due to the mistaken assumption that SongBook is a music player and should produce sound. I have informed the reviewers that SongBook itself does not produce sound, but unfortunately each time the app is reviewed it goes to a new reviewer that makes the same mistake.
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