ifoi ware

The day will finally arrive: copy, cut, & paste on the IPhone. No kidding.

Ah yes, and IPhone OS 3.0. Almost forgot about it. Unfortunately, ZugInfo was not yet IPhone OS 3.0 ready. Today I submitted a compatible version (2.0.2). But the people in the App Store review department seemed to be quite busy theses days. I am still waiting for the approval for a RegenRadar update I submitted 10 days ago.

Well, let’s hope for the best and keep the fingers crossed that the update will arrive in time.

I will throw out a quick update to fix some of the annoyances that found there way into ZugInfo 2.0. The update should address the following problems:

• Input text fields disappear and only re-appear after restart
• Inconsistent departure/arrival settings
• Wrong times in details view for connections after a transition stop
• Inconsistent behavior across different time-zone

Let’s see how long Apple will take this time …

I just submitted ZugInfo 2.0 for review to the App Store. Workers day, hurray!

UPDATE (May 10): 9 days and still waiting for the update to get the approval from Apple. What is taking the guys so long? It seems that I have been lucky before. My average review time was less then 3 days…

Redesign is long and painful process. You start of with a working program and end up with a big mess that needs hours of debugging. And have I already mentioned my low graphic design skills? And my heavy daytime job workload? Ok, I quit complaining and better show a few screenshots from the latest beta of ZugInfo, which will get the a new major version number (2.0!) to reflect the work that went into it:

shiny buttons - all handmade

So, with the minor delay of about 1.5 months, I will ship this new version in about a week or so (it needs some more beta testing on the device). Thanks again to everyone who sent in comments and suggestions!

Me and the boys.

It’s been a while. I have been busy with my daytime job the last few weeks and there was not much time left for ZugInfo and friends. In the mean time, Apple decided to feature my App on the ITunes Store frontpage with a nice picture. Thanks for that! And thanks to everyone who wrote such nice things about ZugInfo.

In the next two weeks I will spend considerable time on trains, the perfect place to work on ZI. Currently, I am aiming for two updates in the near future, one of them is already finished and and runs beta testing on my IPhone: ZugInfo 1.5.1. It will deliver:

• Delay information (again).
  This was implemented in 1.5, but shortly after the release the Deutsche Bahn changed their webpage (again) and I had to adopt the html parser accordingly.
• User interface improvements
  e.g. date information for the saved connections.

This should be submitted to App Store next week. For the more distant future (and a release in about 3-4 weeks) I am working on ZugInfo 1.6, which should/could/would include

• Updated user interface, to allow for an optional “Zwischenhalt”
• Arrivals/Departures for a stop
• Save queries/Favorites

I hear you

delay dots

So, there will be dots. During my research to find an unobtrusive way to integrate the information on delayed trains in the ZugInfo design I came across the LED like dots. Works like a charm. And before you start asking: green dots don’t go well with the ZugInfo design, so I opted for blue.

Hmm, maybe it’s time I start writing a manual for ZugInfo. With all the new options etc. it’s getting a bit complicated. I had a first complain, why there is no way to save stations in ZugInfo. Of course there is. ZugInfo will remember them for you, you don’t have to do nothing.

Here a little rundown on the features, which should make it in ZugInfo 1.5:

• Add note to saved connections
  (a feature I already included in the stability update 1.4.1 of ZugInfo Donation)
• Price information for 1st class
• Train delay times and (probably) arrival/departure tables

For the more distant future I plan to include a favorite system to store your queries and a feature to get all stops for a train line.

One of the main goals of ZugInfo is to provide fast access to the informations you need, so I have to wrap my mind around all the new features to integrate them nicely without cluttering the interface.

bb-bar

I found some time to work on ZugInfo 1.4 over Christmas. Long promised features finally got implemented:

• Save connections (for convenient offline viewing)
• Mail connection

There are also some GUI tweaks (some inspired by FahrInfo Berlin). Should not be too long to submit.

Thanks again to everyone who bought ZugInfo Donation. Your support is appreciated! Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

[UPDATE] I submitted ZugInfo 1.4 two days ago (12/31), so it should arrive in the App Store beginning of next week. In addition, ZugInfo 1.4 is again compatible with IPhone OS 2.1 (the last version was only compatible with 2.2, due to a wrong setting in XCode).

[UPDATE2] There we go: 48h and the app is “ready for sale” in the store. Enjoy.

Error codes are extremely helpful for the developer. They let you easily pin down a bug or problem. In the hand of the user they can sometimes turn on you .

Error code 201 in ZugInfo means, we did get back a reply from the server, but I could not find any connections in it. And the most likely reason for that is: there are none. Good example: try to get a long distant connection (ICE/IC) on a bus or tram line.

But that there is a simple fix for this: don’t ask for such a connection. Just set your traintype to all. Done.

And in the next version I will try to come up with something more accessible, e.g. “No connection found”.

The IPhone SDK core location services are notorious difficult to the debug. The documentation is somewhat sparse, the example code works, but what all the parameters really mean and do is not clear. The precision of localization crucially depends on reception, the more towers the better, and, if you are lucky, a clear sky for GPS.

After a first misguided attempt to improve my localization modul (I introduced a cut on the precision of 1km), I went with “take what you get”: ask for the best precision and take the first location, which does not come from the cache. It probably won’t get any better.¹ Let’s see how this one works in the “wild”.

¹Of course, this not for precision GPS tracking. But for your standard location aware App it should be fine.