Highlighting for iPad

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

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.