Bob Pritchett, When will highlighting be available for the iPad? I believe you said last June (2011) that it was coming "very soon." Please don't tell me 2000 years! Could you please clarify this? Thank you.
Anthony,
Should be in another week or two.
When Logos 4.5 goes gold (already in release candidate), then shortly afterward they will release the Logos 2.0 iOS app (which has already been submitted to the App Store).
This information comes straight from Bob Pritchett. Let me see if I can track down what he actually said...
Found it!
http://community.logos.com/forums/p/5923/321264.aspx#321264
I'm very sorry for the frustration about sync. I've experienced a bug in it myself, and it's very annoying. We haven't changed the copy on the app page because it's still accurate: the app does sync reading plans. There is, however (as in so many software packages), a bug. This bug apparently shows up when you have a synced plan you're reading on two devices, and change the document (usually by marking a reading read) on Device B before Device A has finished syncing the change. Normally we should be able to gracefully handle this conflict, but there's a bug we haven't found. Even more importantly, you shouldn't come across the situation very often, because syncing should be nearly instantaneous. The original sync framework was designed for desktop software, which typically has different behaviors than mobile software. Your desktop software can typically sync large documents with few problems, and typically is either connected or disconnected -- it rarely is moving in and out of sporadic and/or slow coverage the way a phone does. Moreover, we only have so many desktop Logos Bible Software users. To accommodate mobile syncing, we had to build an intermediate service with different performance / bandwidth / etc. characteristics. Since then we've had literally 10 times as many people download our mobile app as ever used the desktop, dramatically increasing our bandwidth. This extra large user base, bandwidth requirement, less consistent "sync before quitting the app" behavior, etc. are what cause the increased frequency of Device A (your mobile device) not having completed syncing before you go to Device B (your desktop or other device) and modify the document there. So our previously rare bug is occurring a lot more. We've learned a lot about the less reliable/consistent behavior of mobile Internet connections (which were not part of our original design). (This is also why we've been unable to deliver mobile notes and highlighting so far -- the document architecture and bandwidth needs.) So we embarked on a complete re-write of the sync framework designed for millions of users and a wide variety of devices with much less reliable / consistent data connections. The new sync framework requires a lot less bandwidth for common behaviors, too. The new sync framework is basically done, and ready to deploy for v4.5 of the desktop and v2.0 of mobile apps. The v2.0 version of the iOS app is in the app store and ready for release when the desktop is ready. This features Sync v2 for what had been the number one user demand -- notes and highlighting on iOS devices. We're right now (and I mean right now -- it's late on Thursday night and much of our team is here working away at the office) hunting down and eliminating performance bugs in the Sync v2 framework. It's a big, big change and it involves user data, so we want to be very careful to get everything right. Sometime very soon we'll ship a desktop v4.5 Release Candidate. Within a week of that release we'll make it final, and it'll roll out to everyone. Within a day or so of that we should be able to release the new iOS app with notes and highlighting syncing In parallel, developers are working to get Reading Plans to Sync v2 as well. This may still be a few weeks out; I very much wish it wasn't, and we're all acutely aware that many people start reading plans on January 1, and we're disappointed that we were unable to deliver this before then. And, until recently, we thought we'd be able to, or that the release was right around the corner. But there are 50+ people on the development team, and the holidays introduced 50+ differing vacation schedules, and quite a few people have a piece of such a large system migration, so communication has suffered. But we're almost all back (by Monday everyone is, I believe) and we're putting everything together and shipping it as soon as we can. Just as trivia... we're also deploying a massive amount of new storage, servers, and firewalls to handle the increased load. This is itself a non-trivial project. And, of course, we still have other products and features (Logos Mac, for example) on which other users rightly desire our attention. I'm sorry reading plans aren't first on the list -- they're important to me, too! -- but I know that lack of notes and highlighting on mobile was equally important to other "I'm going to write you a bad review in the app store!" users -- right after lack of NIV support. :-) But at least we were able to add that recently. I know this doesn't fix the pain point, but I hope it helps you understand where we're at, and why we're doing things the way we are. Sync v2 should result in a superior experience very soon. In the meantime, you might make a reading plan and try to either just use it on mobile, or give the mobile app some time to sync while connected to the Internet before going back to the home page (or at least before you mark off a reading on another device). This should reduce your chance of hitting the bug. -- Bob
I'm very sorry for the frustration about sync. I've experienced a bug in it myself, and it's very annoying.
We haven't changed the copy on the app page because it's still accurate: the app does sync reading plans.
There is, however (as in so many software packages), a bug. This bug apparently shows up when you have a synced plan you're reading on two devices, and change the document (usually by marking a reading read) on Device B before Device A has finished syncing the change. Normally we should be able to gracefully handle this conflict, but there's a bug we haven't found. Even more importantly, you shouldn't come across the situation very often, because syncing should be nearly instantaneous.
The original sync framework was designed for desktop software, which typically has different behaviors than mobile software. Your desktop software can typically sync large documents with few problems, and typically is either connected or disconnected -- it rarely is moving in and out of sporadic and/or slow coverage the way a phone does.
Moreover, we only have so many desktop Logos Bible Software users.
To accommodate mobile syncing, we had to build an intermediate service with different performance / bandwidth / etc. characteristics.
Since then we've had literally 10 times as many people download our mobile app as ever used the desktop, dramatically increasing our bandwidth.
This extra large user base, bandwidth requirement, less consistent "sync before quitting the app" behavior, etc. are what cause the increased frequency of Device A (your mobile device) not having completed syncing before you go to Device B (your desktop or other device) and modify the document there. So our previously rare bug is occurring a lot more.
We've learned a lot about the less reliable/consistent behavior of mobile Internet connections (which were not part of our original design).
(This is also why we've been unable to deliver mobile notes and highlighting so far -- the document architecture and bandwidth needs.)
So we embarked on a complete re-write of the sync framework designed for millions of users and a wide variety of devices with much less reliable / consistent data connections. The new sync framework requires a lot less bandwidth for common behaviors, too.
The new sync framework is basically done, and ready to deploy for v4.5 of the desktop and v2.0 of mobile apps. The v2.0 version of the iOS app is in the app store and ready for release when the desktop is ready. This features Sync v2 for what had been the number one user demand -- notes and highlighting on iOS devices.
We're right now (and I mean right now -- it's late on Thursday night and much of our team is here working away at the office) hunting down and eliminating performance bugs in the Sync v2 framework. It's a big, big change and it involves user data, so we want to be very careful to get everything right.
Sometime very soon we'll ship a desktop v4.5 Release Candidate. Within a week of that release we'll make it final, and it'll roll out to everyone. Within a day or so of that we should be able to release the new iOS app with notes and highlighting syncing
In parallel, developers are working to get Reading Plans to Sync v2 as well. This may still be a few weeks out; I very much wish it wasn't, and we're all acutely aware that many people start reading plans on January 1, and we're disappointed that we were unable to deliver this before then. And, until recently, we thought we'd be able to, or that the release was right around the corner. But there are 50+ people on the development team, and the holidays introduced 50+ differing vacation schedules, and quite a few people have a piece of such a large system migration, so communication has suffered.
But we're almost all back (by Monday everyone is, I believe) and we're putting everything together and shipping it as soon as we can.
Just as trivia... we're also deploying a massive amount of new storage, servers, and firewalls to handle the increased load. This is itself a non-trivial project.
And, of course, we still have other products and features (Logos Mac, for example) on which other users rightly desire our attention. I'm sorry reading plans aren't first on the list -- they're important to me, too! -- but I know that lack of notes and highlighting on mobile was equally important to other "I'm going to write you a bad review in the app store!" users -- right after lack of NIV support. :-) But at least we were able to add that recently.
I know this doesn't fix the pain point, but I hope it helps you understand where we're at, and why we're doing things the way we are. Sync v2 should result in a superior experience very soon.
In the meantime, you might make a reading plan and try to either just use it on mobile, or give the mobile app some time to sync while connected to the Internet before going back to the home page (or at least before you mark off a reading on another device). This should reduce your chance of hitting the bug.
-- Bob
This question has been answered several times recently. The iPad app has been updated for highlighting, but has not yet been made available. That's because the new app requires Logos 4.5 to sync with, and 4.5 isn't ready yet. However, 4.5 is in release candidate stage, which means it is very, very close to being made available. Yesterday the lead developer said it would be within two weeks.
Yes it's very frustrating to see other free bible apps with all these cool features, and the one program I payed a bunch of money for can't come up with an app good enough to highlight, bookmark, make notes, adjust reading plans etc...
Before all the Logos apologists (of which I am one sometimes) tell you that the app is free, let me say that it's not free just because I don't pay money to Logos. The cost is built into the books and such that we bought when we bought Logos 4 base packages.
The good news - highlighting and notes on the iPad seems to be immanent not "coming soon" in the biblical sense that most people misunderstand it but in the truly biblical sense in that it will come at an instant and in the modern sense as in it won't be long now.
