Bookshelf Apps

Supporting Existing SongBook DS Users

May 12th, 2011 1

Apple doesn’t make it easy for us, but we think we have found a way to provide SongBook ’11 UPNP to new customers while still providing updates to SongBook DS.

The background to this is that we have replaced SongBook DS with two new products, SongBook ’11 UPNP for iPhone and iPad. These are new applications so SongBook DS was removed from sale. The trouble with this is that by removing SongBook DS from sale we removed our ability to provide updates.

This is important to us for a few reasons. We have two updates planned for SongBook DS. The first, an update with fixes and speed improvements is available today. The second is to provide Davaar support for existing users. We said we would try and do this, and I think we have found a way.

Another reason to have SongBook DS in the store still is so that existing users can download it again if they lose their copy. Just because we are not selling SongBook DS to new customers does not mean that existing customers should stop using it.

So we want to have SongBook DS in the store, but for nobody to purchase it ( they should purchase SongBook ’11 UPNP). The only solution we came up with was to make SongBook DS available as before, but to set the price to the highest available ($999). So from today SongBook DS goes on sale at US$999. We’ve added a note at the top of the description to explain this, so hopefully it doesn’t cause any confusion, but past experience shows that a lot of people don’t read the descriptions. I really hope that nobody purchases a copy by accident.

So while this does feel like a very strange thing to do, it should achieve the desired result. Just please don’t go telling people that we have raised our prices to US$999.00.

 

And one more thing, while updating the SongBook DS listing we were presented with this helpful message from Apple:

 

Untitled

 

 

SongBook ’11 and custom Twonky trees

May 10th, 2011 0

SongBook ’11 by default presents an album based view of your media files. This lets you filter your music down to find what you want. It has a lot more flexibility than the standard browse tree, but it also relies on more advanced twonky features. Some twonky users have customised their browse tree in a way that is not compatible with the new SongBook by removing groups that SongBook relies on. It’s not hard to fix this up once you are aware of what is required.

Most people with custom trees have used the tree that Briain (on various forums) has developed. Briain has updated this tree to work with SongBook ’11, so if you use Briain’s customised tree you should update to the latest version. It’ll still work the same with other control points, but will now also work correctly with SongBook ’11. Briain also tells me he has found some speed improvements, so it’s a good upgrade all around.

I’ve attached the files to this post so that you can download them directly from here. There’s two versions, one makes use of the AlbumArtist tag and the other doesn’t. The files contain all the standard twonky groups, but when you select ‘Advanced Default View’ in twonky you also get Briain’s improved music tree.

Briain has more information and installation instructions in a series of posts at the twonky forum.

Here’s the files…

2011_04 ArtistOnly.zip

2011_04 AlbumArtist.zip

And if you have customised the twonky tree yourself, as long as you leave the default groups available you should have no trouble. You can still change the tree in any way that you want, but SongBook relies on the “music/*” groups being available.

 

Linn Davaar

May 5th, 2011 4

Today Linn released Davaar, their latest DS firmware. If you want to upgrade to this firmware you also need to upgrade SongBook. SongBook ’11 UPNP for the iPad is available on the App Store now, so if you have an iPad you can download and use this new application right away. SongBook ’11 UPNP for the iPhone and iPod touch is ready for Apple’s review, so should be released and available on the store in a few days time.

SongBook DS only supports Cara, so will not work with Davaar devices, you’ll need one of the versions of SongBook ’11 for UPNP if you upgrade.

In the next few days we’ll be updating the web site with details of these new applications. They’ve been in development for quite a while, so expect quite a few new features and improvements.

For now, here’s a screenshot of SongBook ’11 on the iPad:

 

Screenshot 2011 05 05 17 10 53

 

Naim and Volume Control

May 5th, 2011 0

With the new SongBook product range we have made some changes to our products for Naim. These changes should make things simpler to understand and will enable us to support Naim devices even better in the future. SongBook Naim was a very popular product, but it did cause some confusion amongst users. As mentioned in the last post, SongBook Naim has been retired, so what SongBook should you use for your Naim products now.

If you have a HDX, NS01, NS03, or want to use the sound output on your UnitiServe, then you should use SongBook DigiFi. You should have at least firmware version 1.5 on these devices. This has been out for a long time, so it is very likely you have it already. As for the future, we’ve got a big upgrade to SongBook DigiFi almost ready to go. It will be released in the next few weeks.

If you have a Uniti, UnitiQute, or NDX then SongBook UPNP is the right version for you. We’ve done a lot of work improving the support here, so the latest SongBook should work well with these products. One feature that has been sadly lacking was volume control, but with the 3.0 firmware from Naim this is now fully supported. Most of these products should have this firmware (the NDX comes with it as standard), but if you have an older Uniti then you may need to contact your dealer for an upgrade.

 

SongBook ’11

May 4th, 2011 0

We’ve got some great new updates coming out in the next few weeks. Because the changes are so large we’re renaming some of the products too, this gives us a chance to simplify the product range and better address the needs of our users. The new products are named SongBook ’11 to differentiate them from the existing applications. One of the biggest changes is that we are splitting the iPhone and iPad versions out to their own releases. In the early stages it made sense to have a universal application, so that existing users could update to the iPad version without having to repurchase, but over time this has become more and more of a problem. I think once you see Songbook ’11 on the iPad you’ll see that this has really paid off, instead of a bigger iPhone application the new iPad app was developed from scratch for the iPad and this really shows.

Screenshot 2011 04 11 21 00 31

New Apps

The new range will consist of these apps:

SongBookUPNP

SongBook ’11 for UPNP (iPhone)

An iPhone application for UPNP based systems. For the first time ever this merges the UPNP products and the Linn DS products. The reason for this is that they both share the same underlying technology, they both use the same media servers, and in many cases both UPNP and Linn devices are used on the same network. So one new product going forward.

Highlights include:

SongBook ’11 for UPNP (iPad)

A completely new iPad user interface that makes use of the large screen like never before. Advanced library browsing and searching features enable you to see your music like never before. Available on the App Store today.

SongBookDigiFi

SongBook ’11 for DigiFi (iPhone)

Updated DigiFi release adds many new features and improvements.

SongBook ’11 for DigiFi (iPad)

New user interface provides more information, like composer details.

Mac Applications

SongBook Mac will be updated over the next few weeks to add these features too, it will also have a user interface update to be more consistent with the new iPad applications.

Retirements

What about the other applications?

SongBook Naim

SongBook Naim is going away. This was a combined UPNP and DigiFi application, but we found that there were just not enough users to justify this. To make use of this application you needed to have a HDX and one or more Uniti’s, and that is not a really common setup. It was also very complex to understand the interactions between the DigiFi and UPNP sides of the application, and a lot of people bought this app when they would have been better off with either SongBook UPNP or SongBook DigiFi. So to simplify the range we have withdrawn this application. Users with Naim HDX’s should use SongBook ’11 DigiFi, and users with Naim Uniti’s should use SongBook ’11 UPNP.

SongBook DS

The functionality of SongBook DS has moved in to SongBook UPNP. If you are an existing user of SongBook DS you can continue to use it for as long as you want, but if you want the new features of SongBook ’11 you will need to purchase a new version. We would love to offer upgrade pricing here, but this is just not something that Apple lets us do. What we’ve done instead is offer special introductory pricing on SongBook ’11 UPNP for the next month.

We thought long and hard about this, but due to the inflexibility of the App Store we didn’t have many options. If we split the iPhone and iPad applications then they needed to be new products, so no upgrade path was possible. For users that purchased recently this may be a bit disappointing. You can continue to use SongBook DS, so nothing is being taken away, but we had to make a cutoff somewhere. On the other hand a user that purchased SongBook 1.0 has had a really good run. SongBook 1.0 was really very basic. Along the way we added lots of new features, all for free, including iPad support, OS upgrades and new features, and built in RadioTime (now renamed TuneIn Radio). We pay a license fee for the TuneIn support, so this update cost us money and we didn’t pass this on to existing customers.

Release Schedule

As each application is released we’ll let you know. The first one to be available will be SongBook ’11 UPNP for the iPad, closely followed by the iPhone version.