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?

Version 2.0.4 is out - how to restore your In-App purchases

Version 2.0.4 of LuckNews was released today.  This is a small update to LuckNews, containing:

• Changes to help improve the performance of large Subscription/Article databases 
• Fixes a bug with Notification Center integration related to the window being closed or minimized 
• Other minor changes 

If you had earlier purchased additional subscription capacity in LuckNews, you will need to restore your In-App purchase in order for LuckNews to recognize your purchase.  To do this:

1. Open the File menu and select the 'Open In-App Purchase Store...' menu item
2. In the dialog window which is presented, press the button labeled 'Restore In-App Purchase' in the lower left corner
3. Continue with the dialog's, verifying to the Apple App store that you are who you say you are
4. At the end of this (short) process, you will have your prior purchases restored

There is no charge for restore an earlier purchase - once you upgrade the capacity in LuckNews once, that purchase is good for all future updates.

Enjoy!

Version 2.0.3 is now out!

Version 2.0.3 was released on July 3rd.  This is now the 11th version of LuckNews.

Google Reader has now been turned off.  This is a little unfortunate for those people who have been using it.  If you've been using Google Reader and are looking for an alternative - try LuckNews!  Its a free download.  Try LuckNews with up to 8 subscriptions for free.  Beyond 8 subscriptions there are in-app purchases available to expand the capacity.  In the US you can purchase an unlimited download capacity for only $1.99 - its inexpensive.  Give it a try.

Version 2.0.3 is a bug fix release not a feature release.  The changes in this version is fairly minor.  Anybody who has been using an earlier version without any issues won't find anything new in this version.

All of the changes in this version are there as a result of feedback I have received from customers.  I had a customer in Australia report a number of problems when he imported his Google Reader data.  He was kind enough to provide me with his data and it is all importing very well now.  I also had a customer who ran into problems with articles he had read which were re-appearing as unread articles.  I have modified the rules for how and when articles are deleted from the database to avoid this problem in the future.

The fixes are:

• Fixes a bug where a subscription containing articles which had absolutely no content would cause a problem when updating the database
• Improvements to OPML import. Google Reader is providing some interesting data, which is now handled
• Subscriptions imported from OPML which refer to invalid feeds are now imported rather than being ignored. I decided it was better to let the user deal with this error rather than ignoring the errors
• Improved the article deletion rules


As a reminder - if you are a user of LuckNews, and like it, please add a comment to the Apple App store.  If you like the app and have other friends who use Mac's - help spread the word :-)


Thank you for your support!


Cheers,
  Craig.

Version 2.0.2 is now available

Apple just approved version 2.0.2 of LuckNews, and it will be available on all of the various app stores  within 24 hours (of early June 24th.)

I'm pretty happy with this release.  The changes in the release are:

• Improvements to swiping and the page transitions
• Improvements to the new 'show newest article' mode when selecting a new subsription (or set of subscriptions)
• Improvements to article refresh to avoid duplicated articles
• Improvements to the context menu displayed in the Article view
• Found another subscription which provided malformed dates. They are now handled
• Other minor changes 

I found a problem in 2.0.1 where, if you were viewing unread articles and you swiped to the next article just as the previous one was disappearing from the list, you might view the same article again.  I'm surprised that nobody else reported this to me.  Just as a reminder - if you find a problem with LuckNews, please report it, I'm always happy to hear of problems encountered so that I can fix them.

In 2.0.1 I introduced a new mode which gave you the option of which article to view when you switched to viewing a new subscription.  By default, you always view the most recent article you viewed in that list.  The new option let you view the newest article in the list.  I've modified how the initial article is marked as 'having been read' slightly to allow you to click on many subscriptions in a row and to not mark the article 'been read' until you pause slightly.  I hope this addresses a workflow issue of clicking on the wrong subscription by accident.  Nobody wrote to me complaining about anything, but regardless, I prefer this new workflow.  Its a little subtle, try it out.  Let me know if you like it.

I was also noticing, and had reported, that some subscriptions would sometimes show an old article again.  This was related to the 'keep articles in LuckNews until they expire from the subscription' option.  I believe this is fixed now.

The context menu in the article view pane is now much more complete - it has the types of items that are normally present in applications such as Safari.  So you can now copy a link, copy an image, open an image and other options.  The menu is context sensitive and generally contains more options.

There are also a few other minor things that were fixed.

A short note on the app price.  LuckNews has been out for two releases now in its new format, which is as a free download with an available in-app purchase.  LuckNews comes with the capacity to hold 8 subscriptions, if you need more than that you can purchase additional capacity for a small charge.  Its interesting to me that the vast majority of the downloads of LuckNews have not upgraded to additional capacity.  I have over 50 subscriptions I monitor in LuckNews.  Come on people - there are all sorts of interesting things to read out there  :-)

One last short note.  If you haven't added a comment to the Apple App store, and you like the app, please add a comment.  Developers such as myself depend on favorable comments in order to have the application be more widely accepted and downloaded.  If you add a comment, or already have added a comment, you have my sincere thanks!

Please let me know if you find any problems.  

All in all, its a pretty good deal for free, or almost free for those of you who have upgraded, right?

Enjoy!

Craig.

Version 2.0.1 is now available

I have been working on a small update to LuckNews.  It was submitted to the AppStore last week and has just been approved by Apple.  Version 2.0.1 should be available to everyone as soon as their respective AppStores receive the update.

For those of you who had purchased an upgrade using the In-App purchase option, you may need to restore the products you have purchased by using the 'Restore In-App Purchase' button in the LuckNews In-App store, which is available in the File menu.  For those of you who haven't yet purchased an upgrade - please consider doing so - rest assured that I'll spend any revenue the app generates wisely (mainly on morning coffee.)


The new version fixes a crash that could have been encountered in rare circumstances, if you had turned off the 'keep unread articles' option for a subscription.  With the update it is no longer an issue.

There is also a fix that when swiping through articles, if you changed you mind about which article you wanted to see just after the swipe was finished and started a new one quickly, you could have been left in a state where you didn't see anything.

Along with these fixes there are a number of small improvements.

I had a number of requests to change the initial article which you view when switching to a new subscription (or set of subscriptions.)  The old behavior was to show you the most recently read article, the request was to show the newest article.  I have added a preference that gives you the choice.

With the old behavior, when switching to a new subscription that had new articles to read, you would read them in the order oldest to newest - you start from where you left off last time and page forward through time to the newest article.  If you select the new preference, then you end up reading new articles in the order newest to oldest.  Its your choice.

A second change is to slightly alter what the article list view shows as you page between the articles.  It continues to show the selected article - the one you are viewing.  The change is that if you have elected to only view the unread articles in that list, the previous article (the one you have just finished reading) is also retained momentarily in the list.  This allows you to swipe back to the previous article if you choose to do so.  If you don't swipe back to the previous article within a few seconds, then it is removed from the list.  This fixes something that I found annoying - when I was quickly swiping through articles I would occasionally see something on an article just as it started to go away - but getting back to it was tedious as it would be removed from the unread list.  Now if you quickly change your mind you can swipe back to it and continue reading.  Give it a try - it will be easier to understand as you use it than it is to describe.  It may look a little odd at first seeing two unread articles in the list momentarily, but I hope its a good change.  Let me know what you think.

A third change is that there is now a context menu on the article view.  This is the 'right click' menu, which you get to with either a two finger click on the article, or an option click.  There are no items in the menu which aren't available via different means in the application, but the items are easier to access with this method.


There are a few other small changes, but nothing dramatic.


If you have any suggestions for future improvements, please let me know.

Importing data from Google Reader

As many people are now aware, Google Reader is going to be going away on July 1st.  If you have a Google Reader account and want to get your subscriptions into LuckNews, its relatively painless.


1) Go to Google Takeout and either select the 'Choose Services' link at the top of the page, or simply follow this link

2) Press the 'Create Archive' button

3) Google now prepares your download.  When it is finished, press the 'Download' button.  You may need to sign in to Google Reader at this point, and you may need to press the 'Download' button again

4) Now that the file is downloaded to your Mac, go back to LuckNews

5) In the File menu, select the 'Import Subscriptions...' menu item

6) Navigate to the file Google downloaded for you.  It may be in your Downloads folder off of your home directory.  In the Downloads folder, look for an item with your email address followed by '-takeout'.  Open that directory which should contain a Reader directory.  Open the Reader directory and select the file named 'subscriptions.xml'

7) You are then presented with a dialog in LuckNews, simply select the subscriptions you wish to keep, and then accept them

You now have all of your Google Reader subscriptions in LuckNews, ready to read.

Enjoy!