The Loss of Steve Jobs

It is with a heavy heart that the team here at ApApp, Inc. submits our update to Wasted Time to the App Store.  We had planned on getting the iOS5 version ready for submission today (the day that Apple would allow apps to be submitted), but when we heard of Steve Job's death... Well It certainly made us pause.  It was obvious when he stepped down for Apple that things were not going well.  And watching the iPhone 4s launch with the open chair in the front row, after hearing all the rumors that maybe Steve would be there and do a formal hand off to Tim Cook, it foreshadowed the loss that we are feeling today.

We are still submitting WastedTime tonight, and we are removing any cost on the app.  We have changed it to add supported, with only one small add on the newly re-added help screen.  We hope that you will manage your time with the app, in a small way like Steve managed Apple.  Helping the world enjoy the experiences, and not get too bogged down in what other people think.  Focus on the details, in order to enjoy the big picture.  And to paraphrase the Science guy, dare we say it, "Change the world!".

Wasted Time 1.4 - Tweet about it!

Well, we got version 1.4 on to the Apple Store Wednesday night, but due to the holiday in the US we just got the post written.  You can download the app here.  It's still only $0.99 in the US store.  The twitter integration is working great, and we can't wait to get your feedback.  Please rate the app on the app store or drop us a note here at support@theapapp.com   We'd love to hear from you.

Twitter Integration Released to Apple

Well we did it!  We finally got the twitter integration done and to a level we like.  It's been a lot of fun, but like all good things, the development must be released into the wild.  Holy crap, we mixed a lot of metaphors there. 

Anyway, released 1.4 is fully tested with iOS 4.2 and has gotten the twitter integration right.  Can't wait to see all your tweets about meetings you are improving.  Now on to starting up the design of our second app.  Hope to have some thoughts about it soon for your reviews and comments.

Problem resolved! Twitter is coming

Well, after doing a serious set of debugging, we figured out that the problem was we never cleared the access token from the device.  What this causes is if you revoke access to the app from twitter.com, you will never be prompted to reenable the app.  Of course in our testing we wanted to authorize and deauthorize, etc.  This causes a problem if you only can do it once.

Anyway, since we now have a working twitter interface, it is time to fix the popups!  Hope to have version 1.4 sent to Apple in a few days.  We've already submitted 1.3 to Apple to ensure that WastedTime works on iOS 4.2, we will now have a new update shortly after 4.2 is released!

It's been a productive day.

What have we been up to?

Well, it's been a while since we've posted a blog entry, or released an update.  You may ask yourself, what's going on over at ApApp?  To be honest... too much going on lately, and we've been discussing an Adroid version of the app, graphic changes, and how to best process time if the app is running in the background on an iPhone.

In order to correctly handle how Apple deals with "multi-tasking" we've had to undertake a pretty dramatic change to how we were dealing with the timer.  Apple only really allows 3 functions to run in the background, and our timer function is not one of them.  So the app had to actually know it was going to sleep and then start back up from where it was, calculate the time it was asleep, and then keep going.  This meant we had to rewrite the timer.  We also have to enable the functions of knowing that it is being put to sleep and that it woke back up.  Hopefully we will be submitting a version of the updated App to the app store soon.

We are also looking at adding Twitter support, so that you can tweet out the amount of waste to start a meeting and total cost of your meetings.  Do you think we should hold up the release until we have Twitter integration done?

Let us know!!