Version 2.0.5 is now released!

Version 2..0.5 was approved and has been released to the App Store.

The biggest feature of this release is that it now works on Mavericks.  I had many reports from customers who pointed out to me that LuckNews wasn't working properly on Mavericks.  I was able to download Mavericks a week ago and was able to fix the application quickly.  I submitted version 2.0.5 to the App Store on the 26th and it was approved today, the 31st.  That was a pretty quick turnaround by Apple.

Thanks you to everybody for being patient.  Many of you offered positive feedback about the app to me when you sent your note pointing out that there was a problem.  It was nice to hear from all of you!

In the last release I suggested that you needed to restore your in-app purchases in order for them to take effect.  It appears this may no longer be the case.  If after opening the LuckNews in-app store you see the product you previously purchased is being recognized, then you don't have to do anything else.

I have had two reports that restoring the in-app purchases has damaged the application causing the user to have to reinstall LuckNews.  This problem is out of my hands!  The in-app purchase restore functionality is handled by Apple.  If you run into this problem, please read this page so that you can copy your subscriptions to a backup location before re-installing:
    http://lucknewsapp.blogspot.com/p/help-opml-backup-files.html

So please, if your in-app purchases are present, do not try to restore them again.

The problem with LuckNews being reported as being damaged is out of my control.  The restore functionality is handled by Apple.  I've reported this as a bug to them.

Aside from the Mavericks fix, I was also able to fix a problem in displaying HTML web pages for some sites in non-english languages.  For example, this is an example of a German subscription shown as HTML in the previous version, 2.0.4:

Note all the black question marks, which indicate text encoding errors during rendering.  The same page now renders correctly in 2.0.5:

The text for this site is rendered correctly when not viewed as HTML in both versions.

There are a few other small fixes as well.

As always, if you have any suggestions or improvements to LuckNews, please let me know.

LuckNews 2.0.4 and Mavericks

I've received a number of reports that LuckNews is not working correctly in Mavericks, Apple's latest version of OS X.  I will be upgrading to Mavericks in the next few days and will work on a fix.  Just to set expectations - the fix likely will not be available for a few weeks.

A partial explanation for the delay - I recently left Seattle where I was living for the last year and have been sailing down the west coast of America toward Mexico.  I am currently in Oxnard, California on my sailboat Luckness.  The wi-fi connection I have here is slow, it is going to take two days to download the 5.2G bytes of Mavericks.  Once that is complete, the Xcode update will take some more time.  While I am here in Oxnard I am also working on boat projects and my sailboat/home is currently torn apart inside to the degree that I barely have a flat surface to work on.  By early next week the boat will be back in the state where I should be able to work on programming projects again.

I remain committed to LuckNews, but as I travel over the next few years there will be periods when I won't be able to respond as quickly as I have in the past.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience.


ps.  Its cool that Apple released Mavericks for free!  Way to go Apple.


[update 10/26/13] I have just submitted an update to LuckNews, version 2.0.5, to the AppStore.  This version works on Mavericks and has a few other changes that some people have asked me for.  The normal review process for Apple has been a week long, and I expect that they are busy after Mavericks came out and so the app may take longer than a week for them to review it.  I expect the new version to be available sometime around November 4th?