Bookshelf Apps

SecretBook becomes SecretBox

March 1st, 2009 3

As of today SecretBook is for sale no more. A short while ago app4mac started work on an updated version that goes on sale today. They’ve called it SecretBox, it has a much improved look, some bug fixes and some new features, so it is a worthwhile upgrade.

When I made the agreement with app4mac, one of the most important things for me was to ensure that existing users were looked after. The big issue for me was that I did not have time to update SecretBook as it needed. I think users expect an application to be growing over time, otherwise it is dieing. I also did not have time for marketing SecretBook. Any successful Mac app these days needs a lot of work to get heard above the masses of other apps, and that requires a lot of work to acheive. With the resources of app4mac behind SecretBox we will see a steady stream of updates and improvements, they’ve already put more resources behind SecretBox than I could have.

One word of caution for existing users though. app4mac have not released the updated iPhone version yet, so if you use SecretBook on your iPhone you may want to wait until the update is out before upgrading your Mac to SecretBox. The code I passed on to them has some good upgrades, so the new release will be a good one.

And finally, in any business deal like this there is potential for difficulty, but app4mac have been really good to deal with on this transition. They’ve been easy to work with on the terms of the sale, and their developers have done a great job of updating the code in a short period of time. It’s all looking good so far.

App Store Apps may be unavailable for a short period

February 2nd, 2009 3

I’m migrating my iPhone apps from a personal registration to a company registration with Apple, they have informed me that when they do the migration the apps may be unavailable for a short period. So if you have problems purchasing SecretBook or SongBook over the next few hours, just wait a short period and try again and it should all work.

Update: Apps are unavailable at the moment. I have completed all changes that are required so I expect that everything will be back to normal in a few hours.

SongBook discovery issues

December 1st, 2008 2

Some users have been reporting errors with SongBook startup. This has been narrowed down to users that do not have the latest Linn firmware, so the fastest solution is to upgrade your firmware (using LinnConfig) to the latest Linn version.

I do think that SongBook should be compatible with all firmware within a particular compatibility family though, that seems reasonable unless there is a serious bug in a particular firmware release that meant you were better off avoiding it. So in this case I do consider this to be a SongBook issue that should be resolved.

I have found and fixed the discovery problem with old firmware, but there is also another bug with adding songs to a playlist. To solve this one I need to downgrade one of my Linn DS’s to older firmware and test. I’m working on this now.

There will be a new release as soon as I have sorted this issue out. It contains a number of small improvements as well as these fixes.

SongBook back on App Store

December 1st, 2008 1

A late announcement here, but as some people may have noticed I have been very busy lately.

Apple have approved the latest SongBook iPhone release. I was rejected 3 times because SongBook would not play music, which, of course it was never designed to do. In the end I resorted to changing the code to pop up alerts at appropriate points to inform the user/tester that you couldn’t play music without a Linn DS. Probably a useful thing to have anyway, but I did think it was kind of obvious.

Of the 3 rejections one did come up with a legitimate bug, attempting to play a movie file caused SongBook to crash. I’d never tested this as Linn only make music players, but a crash is a crash, so at least Apple did find something.

There is a bit of version numbering confusion out there at the moment too. The first version I submitted to Apple was version 1.0.1. For each Ad Hoc version I sent out I incremented the version number until we came to version 1.0.5. The problem is that once you submit an update to Apple you can submit new code, but you can’t change the version number. Now that I know this I will be more careful with numbering Ad Hoc releases.

SecretBook 4.0.1

September 15th, 2008 0

The inevitable x.1 release is out, bringing you fixes to a number of issues that people have reported to me. A couple of these were really tricky to track down, so I’m not 100% certain that I have everything sorted out.

This is the list of changes:

You can download at the usual location.

Mobile SecretBook now available at App Store

September 11th, 2008 8

I just received confirmation a few hours ago to say that Mobile SecretBook has been approved. I’ve already had one support request, and that means at least one purchase so it must all be there.

If you do download a copy remember that you need SecretBook 4 to sync (your version 3 license will work with 4 during the preview release). You also need to explicitly turn on network syncing on your Mac. It’s the last option on the first settings page. You can access settings through the toolbar in your document window, it’s the first icon.

Network sync is not on by default because it’s bad manners to do anything network related without telling the user first :-) .

UPDATE: As people have noticed it appears that the availability in the App Store is a bit uncertain. From what I can tell from users the US store is fine, both on the iPhone and inside iTunes. My own experience in the UK App Store is that SecretBook does not seem to be available on the iPhone App Store. It is available in the iTunes App Store, but you cannot search for it. If you go to the Productivity and order by Release Date (the default) then SecretBook is currently the first item on the second page. I presume that things will sort themselves out over time, but I’m only guessing.

New Beta of SecretBook 4

August 20th, 2008 7

Details are on the Beta Page, but I think we are almost there. I’ve still got an issue with file updates from SecretBook 3 to 4, but that is the only major issue left.