Apple started taking orders this morning (March 12) at 7:30AM CST for the new iPad. The WiFi version ships in time to arrive at your home on April 3, while the WiFi+3G version ships in late April.

You can place your order at store.apple.com. The 16GB WiFi version is $499. 32GB is $599 and 64GB is $699. Add $130 to each of those prices if you want 3G. You’ll have to pay for a 3G data plan separately, of course.

As we’ve said before, we don’t talk about what may or may not be under development. But you can expect some new iPad-specific features in PocketBible that we think will make it an even more compelling application than it is on the iPhone and rival what we offer in PocketBible for Windows. We’ll get more details out as we get closer to a ship date.

And don’t worry about migrating your notes, highlights, bookmarks, and reading progress to the iPad. Before it arrives, we’ll have an update that will allow you to synchronize or backup your data to our server, then synchronize or restore it to PocketBible on your new iPad. Of course this feature will also let you move any user-created data you had on your old Palm or Windows Mobile phone to your iPhone assuming you have PocketBible for Windows running on your desktop or laptop. You’ll sync your Palm or WinMob phone to PocketBIble for Windows, then sync PocketBible for Windows with our server. Then sync your iPhone with the server and you’re done.

So if you want to be the first on your block to own an iPad, get your order placed as soon as you can. By the way, you can ignore the temptation to pay for expedited shipping. Your new iPad will be shipped in time to arrive on April 3 and the shipping is free. The 2-3 shipping option applies only to the accessories you order with your iPad, which will ship later.

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We’ve just released our final volume of the IVP New Testament Commentary Series: 2 Peter & Jude. This completes the 20-volume set.

The IVP New Testament Commentary Series offers readable commentary and reliable research on the New Testament. Great for those who teach or preach!

20 volumes, each available separately - $7.99 to $9.99 each. Or as a set for $129.99.

Available for iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, Windows PC and Palm OS.

If you’ve previously purchased the series, this last volume is available to you at no charge by logging into your Laridian account and redownloading the IVP New Testament Series file. Simply reinstall to get the new volume included as part of the series.

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Apple announced its long awaited iPad tablet device last week, and like you we were all anxious to see it.

What we’re being told is that it will run most iPhone apps unmodified. They will only take up about 1/4 of the screen, since the iPad screen is significantly larger than the iPhone. We don’t have any reason to believe PocketBible won’t run on the iPad, but we’re doing what we can to make sure.

While the SDK has been distributed to developers, it is only a beta and we are unable to build what Apple calls “universal apps” that will allow the same binary file to run on either an iPhone or an iPad. We also don’t have access to pre-production devices, so we can only run in the emulator that is built into the development tools. So we have some reason to believe that PocketBible will work as-is but can’t be absolutely sure at this point because we’ve never seen it run on a device.

There are some simple user interface changes we’ll be making in the short term to better take advantage of the iPad’s capabilities. In addition, there are some new capabilities in the iPad version of the OS that aren’t yet in the iPhone that we’d like to investigate — what Apple calls “Core Text” is at the top of that list.

It’s not obvious from the end-user point of view, but PocketBible pushes the limits of the iPhone’s abilities when it comes to displaying text. PocketBible is exactly the type of application that the iPhone OS was not designed for — that is, an app that does sophisticated text rendering. The new iPad, with its bigger screen and potentially more usable keyboard, invites applications like word processors that need sophisticated layout capabilities. PocketBible is in that camp.

This is not unique to the iPhone. Windows Mobile also lacks key text rendering capabilities that are present in its big brother, Windows on the desktop. For example, it’s not possible in Windows Mobile to accurately measure the width of a piece of text as it will be displayed on the screen. You can almost do it, but it doesn’t work right for bold and italics. So we’ve had to implement our own functions for this.

We could probably get into a lengthy discussion of whether or not this form factor is something the public will accept. I’ve seen everything from people who want it to replace their phone (assuming they can keep from knocking themselves unconscious when they answer it) to those who point out that tablet computers with full-blown operating systems have failed to capture consumer attention, which causes one to question whether a similar device with a mobile OS stands a chance.

That said, one of my long-standing complaints about devices such as the Sony Reader and the Kindle are that they don’t allow any kind of third-party software. (Or at least until recently when Amazon announced a “Kindle Developer’s Kit” for Kindle.) My Kindle is great, but it’s horrible for Bible study because the software simply doesn’t have the features you need to access an integrated Bible library, or even perform moderately sophisticated searches. Viewed as a souped-up e-book reader, the iPad may stand a chance. While it’s hard to imagine anyone beating Amazon’s selection of e-books for Kindle, if anyone has a chance of doing so it would be Apple.

The iPad could actually be the perfect electronic Bible study device. It’s just portable enough to be truly portable, while being large enough to facilitate convenient cross-referencing between titles.

From a developer’s standpoint there’s not a whole lot to complain about. It’s like a big iPhone, so everything we’ve learned about iPhone and Mac programming transfers painlessly to the iPad. We’re not crazy about the shortsightedness of some of their new features (”split views” being at the top of that list for you programmers) but we’ve also seen initial shortsightedness in the iPhone OS get repaired in subsequent releases. Unfortunately, like the similar issues that arose years ago on the Palm OS, by the time the official solutions are released everyone has already coded their own work-arounds to meet user demand.

What all this boils down to is that we fully plan to support the iPad and in fact enhance PocketBible over time to take advantage of unique iPad features. We think it could be an ideal Bible study platform for those who have the spare change to invest in one.

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A few weeks ago (around the turn of the year), I answered a technical support query about whether any of our eTracts for the Pocket PC had been published for the iPhone. They haven’t been, so it was an easy question to answer. However, that question planted a seed, which sprouted and leads to today’s announcement: our RomansRoad eTract is now available for the iPhone.

RomansRoad eTract is a Scripture-based discussion guide to help you share your Christian faith. Based upon the familiar “Romans Road” series of verses from the book of Romans, this witnessing tool uses a unique question and answer format to provide a framework to help you share your faith. As each new key verse is presented, probing questions and explanatory answers are also provided to help you both explain the Scripture and answer common questions that arise.

For example, Romans 3:23 states that all have sinned. Upon presenting this key verse, the RomansRoad eTract provides the following questions:

• What is sin?
• Who has sinned?
• Does that include you and me?
• Not convinced that you are a sinner?

Answers to these questions are provided using everyday language.

This format — presentation of a key verse with concise, clear commentary in a question and answer format — provides a framework allowing you to share your faith while personalizing your discussion. Since it is discussion-based, you are able to listen and respond to the questions you receive, and be sensitive to God’s leading.

An individual page or all pages can be emailed, facilitating both further consideration and follow-up at a later date.

If you find the RomansRoad eTract a helpful resource in sharing your faith, we’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment on this article and/or post a review on the App Store with your experiences.

Find It On the App Store

The RomansRoad eTract is available on the App Store for 99 cents. Click here to go to the iTunes App Store now.

The RomansRoad eTract is fully stand-alone. It does not require PocketBible nor any other Laridian product. So, even if you use some one else’s Bible software on your iPhone (though you should try PocketBible, it’s free!), you can still use the RomansRoad eTract.

Some More of the Backstory

I first wrote and published this eTract for use on the Pocket PC. Since then, the text has been revised and expanded several times. I’d estimate that this is really the fourth or fifth edition of the text. I’ve published previous editions in paper format as well.

Last week, I posted the RomansRoad eTract icon on our facebook “fan page” and invited guesses about the program. Several were close, and a few were exactly right!

If you follow me on Twitter, this is what I have been referring to as my “#newsecretiphoneproject”.

Screen Shots

Sample Screen

 

Preferences

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A few months ago Verizon started running some pretty obvious ads for those of us who use both Verizon and AT&T. They compared their 3G coverage map to AT&T’s. AT&T came up wanting.

AT&T fired back, saying that their 3G network covers 97% of cell phone users, and that it’s faster. They further brag that AT&T users can surf the Web while they’re on the phone.

I’m sitting here this morning using a Verizon 3G modem connected to my MacBook, writing code for the iPhone in my pocket. On a whim I went to speedtest.net on both the Mac and iPhone to see what the results would be.

Speedtest.net on the iPhone took me to the App Store to download their free native app. On the Mac, Speedtest.net runs in your Web browser. I downloaded the app to my iPhone and made sure both the Mac and iPhone were connecting to the same server in Kalamazoo, MI.

The results of three tests tests on each device are summarized below:

	Verizon		AT&T
	Download	Upload	Download	Upload
Run 1	790 Kbps	60 Kbps	205 Kbps	233 Kbps
Run 2	230 Kbps	60 Kbps	105 Kbps	130 Kbps
Run 3	430 Kbps	110 Kbps	70 Kbps	190 Kbps
Average	483 Kbps	77 Kbps	127 Kbps	184 Kbps
Overall	280 Kbps		156 Kbps

AT&T has an upload advantage, but most mobile Web surfing and email activity depends on download speed, not upload speed. Furthermore, AT&T’s overall speed (average of upload and download) is lower. So even if you did an equal amount of uploading and downloading (which would be very unusual), Verizon is faster.

This seems to undermine AT&T’s argument that their network, while covering very little of the geographic area of the US, is faster. It appears to me based on my one sample location (Coffee Emporium in Hiawatha, IA) that this is not true.

And while I may be able to surf and talk at the same time with my iPhone, if you read the fine print you’ll find out that only applies when you’re in 3G coverage. The one time I’ve needed to do it in the last two years I was not in 3G coverage and therefore couldn’t surf while I was on the phone.

The iPhone is a great device and if you live in certain areas of the country very close to an ocean you have great coverage. And the connection speed, while slower than Verizon, is certainly adequate for mobile Web and email activities. I really like my iPhone and recommend them to everyone. However, AT&T is its weak spot.

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We’ve known about the NET Bible since its beginnings, and several years ago we licensed the NET Bible for use in our products. We knew the Bible had extensive notes but didn’t think that would be a problem for PocketBible.

We put one of our employees to work on it and after several months it became clear that the challenges it presented were going to be greater than the potential revenue we could gain from it would justify. The problems were related to converting the original language references in the notes from a variety of proprietary fonts into the standard Unicode notation we use in PocketBible. I don’t recall all the details but do recall a meeting in which we decided to just drop the project.

A year or so later we heard from a programmer who had extensive experience with the NET Bible and wondered why we hadn’t yet made it available. I explained the issues and he said he’d be happy to tackle it. I sent him everything he needed to tag the NET Bible and notes for PocketBible. He asked a couple questions over the next week or two, but then disappeared. The NET Bible had taken another victim.

Then last November I heard from David Richards. David is a long-time Laridian customer and a fan of the NET Bible. He had been experimenting with our BookBuilder program, which allows anyone to create reference materials that are compatible with PocketBible, and wondered if we had plans to publish the NET Bible. I told him the story and warned him of the bodies it had left in its path. He seemed undeterred, so we came to terms on a price for his work and he set out to work on it. I figured that would be the last we’d hear from him, and went about my business.

Surprisingly, when I heard from David it wasn’t to ask questions. It was to give me samples from what he had gotten done. Before long he had made it through all 60,000 notes. We ran a brief test with a group of testers left over from PocketBible for iPhone and after just one update the NET Bible was ready to ship.

I wanted to tell you David’s story for a couple reasons. First is that we’re pretty excited about finally having the NET Bible and know what an accomplishment it was for him. He deserves a little recognition for his efforts.

Second is that David’s is a story we’ve seen play out a couple of times in the past and we’d like to see it happen more often. We’ll be releasing a collection of reference books in the next couple of weeks that were tagged by another customer who got interested in BookBuilder a year or two ago and has since tagged a couple of projects for us after doing some of his own. Our A.W. Pink, F.B. Meyer, and Andrew Murray collections were tagged by a customer, as was the Dake Study Bible Notes.

Of course tagging books isn’t for everyone. It usually requires extensive use of what’s called “pattern matching”, “regular expression”, or “grep” search-and-replace operations to convert a book from whatever format it might be to begin with into our HTML-based format for BookBuilder. You need to have a head for details and it doesn’t hurt to have a little programming background.

David and each of these other taggers are being compensated in some way for their work. We’d love to add you to our list of available taggers for new projects. You can get the standard BookBuilder program for $29.99 and see if it’s something you want to try. We have an inexhaustible list of books that need to be tagged. Maybe you have a favorite commentary series or reference title you’d like to see in PocketBible. Rather than wait for us to get around to it, why not volunteer to do it yourself?

Feel free to contact me directly if you’re interested: craigr@laridian.com.

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We have released the often-requested Bible translation: The NET BIBLE for use with PocketBible for iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile or Windows PC.

The NET BIBLE is a completely new translation of the Bible from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation has been optimized for readability and elegance and is accompanied by over 60,000 Translator Notes that provide additional accuracy and insight into the meaning of the original languages.

The NET BIBLE sells for $14.99. For more information, click on your desired platform:

iPhone/iPod Touch | Windows Mobile | Windows PC

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PrayerPartner for the iPhone has been updated to version 1.0.2, and is now available on the Apple App Store. Search for “PrayerPartner” in the App Store, or try this link.

This is a free update for all PrayerPartner owners. If you’ve previously purchased PrayerPartner, then either iTunes or your iPhone (or iPod touch) will notify you that the update is available.

This version fixes a rather obvious problem with the PIN support added in version 1.0.1. Embarrassingly, the entry page for the PIN included a “back” button that allowed the PIN entry to be skipped entirely. Sometimes the most difficult to see bugs are the most obvious ones.

(A friend’s recent Facebook status update: “Apparently, the best spot during Hide and Seek is to sit on the couch. The children, ages 3 and 5, looked right at me as they told their mother, sitting next to me, that they can’t find me.”)

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If you’re on Facebook, you can become a fan of PocketBible. Just sign up here: www.facebook.com/PocketBible. PocketBible fans on Facebook sometimes receive special offers and are among the first to receive our announcements. Plus, by being a fan, you share your appreciation of the Bible and PocketBible with your Facebook friends in a non-threatening way.

If you Twitter, you can follow us at www.twitter.com/PocketBible. Our official tweats sometimes include special offers, sometimes announcements, and occasionally some “insider” information. Plus, when you think we say something interesting, you can retweat to let your followers know.

Additionally, you can follow some of our staff via their personal accounts for some more insight into what we are working on (or our quirky opinions about life). The PocketBible Twitter account follows some of our staff, so you can easily find us from the PocketBible page at Twitter. Just click the “following” link.

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2010 is just around the corner.  A new year.  New beginnings.  A fresh start.  There are so many opportunities with a new year.  To begin again . . . or just begin.  And if one of your beginnings is a desire to start your new year drawing closer to God, what a great time to begin a new daily devotional.  In the month of December, Laridian has released 5 new devotional titles: two from popular preacher and teacher John MacArthur, a new devotional for women, written by women of faith, a heart challenging compilation of select readings from John Calvin’s Commentary of the Psalms and Daily with the King: A Devotional for Self-Discipleship. 

To me, you can’t go wrong with John MacArthur.  His teaching is always sound, insightful and purposeful.  And these two volumes of Daily Readings from the Life of Christ are no exception.  Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, Vol. 1 follows Jesus’ first year of ministry.  From his public baptism and start of his ministry, through His teaching with parables, John MacArthur walks us daily through the first 13 chapters of Matthew and Jesus’ earthly ministry.  I can’t think of a better teacher in the ways of God and the Christian life than our Savior.  Even though many entries are stories Christians know by heart, there is new learning and revelation each time we meditate and study God’s word.  Circumstances of life change, and though God’s word never does; how God uses His word to touch us and teach us in those circumstances is always new and refreshing.

Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, Vol. 2 goes deeper into the miracles of Jesus and his confrontations with the Jewish leaders by focusing on the Gospels of Matthew and John.  I especially enjoyed the days covering the calling of the Disciples and their commission.  MacArthur gives at least one day to each disciple, giving insight into who each man was and how each man’s character traits were chosen and used by Jesus.  It is interesting to see how Jesus used men with characteristics just like mine and people I know, both good and “bad”, to bring about the spreading of his gospel and the furthering of his kingdom.  For example, my 10 year old son can inundate me with questions.  Sometimes I think he spends his day trying to think of questions to ask me, but when I read the account of Jesus’ calling of Peter, I realized in reading that paragraph, that Peter was a lot like my son.  He is described as “constantly asking questions . . . and though many were superficial and immature . . . self-centered and off the mark . . . .”Jesus used Peter’s questioning as opportunities to train him in leadership.  To be the leader of the apostles he intended Peter to be.  As a parent, I have learned, that reacted to in the proper manner, my son’s questions can be an opportunity for me to mold him into a proper leader (a character trait he naturally exhibits).  Will he be a Peter?  Only the God who has called him to himself can answer that, but I now better understand how my reactions to his questions can train him, having either a positive or negative impact on the man he will become.

I can’t leave this review without touching for just a moment on Daily Seeds from Women Who Walk in Faith.  As I skimmed through the pages while preparing this for PocketBible, I was drawn to the stories of the women in this devotional.  As a daughter, wife, mother and friend, there is much I can learn from these women who have experienced life’s trials and joys and the lessons they have to share. 

As this new year approaches, there are many ways we can begin anew.  No beginning will enrich your life more than a new beginning with the Savior.  So whether you have resolved to begin a daily quiet time with God, or are looking for a new devotional to continue your existing quiet times, I highly encourage you to take a look at what’s new from Laridian.

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Features Devotional Reading Progress Tracking

PocketBible 1.2.0 has been approved by Apple and is available in the App Store.

The new version wraps up what we call our “user-created data” functionality. That is, the program now supports the creation of notes, highlights, bookmarks, and the tracking of your progress as you read through devotional (daily reading) books. This is a fairly major milestone for PocketBible. Initially we weren’t even going to ship version 1.0 until these features were implemented. Our early alpha testers convinced us to ship as soon as possible and wrap up the rest of the features in a series of point releases, which is what we ended up doing.

There are other minor improvements to the program as well. In particular, we took advantage of the extra space in landscape mode and added two additional buttons to the toolbar: “Forward” (the “Back” button seemed lonely) and “Bookmarks” (gives you a quick path to your list of bookmarks). And check out the new, very colorful, Go TO Verse screen.

New Features in 1.2.0

• PocketBible now tracks your progress reading through devotional (daily reading) books like through-the-Bible reading plans.
  • Select a start date for each devotional book
  • Mark today’s reading, current reading, or selected reading as “completed”
  • Title bar turns green for readings you’ve read; red for those you need to read
  • Today button now activates new Devotional menu when selected while a devotional is active. Gives access to devotional features including new reading progress view and settings
  • “Catch Up” function lets you quickly adjust your reading plan to put you back on schedule
  • Open Book screen uses color coding to indicate which devotional books you need to read today to stay on schedule
  • Progress tracking is optional
• Added frequently requested “Forward” and “Bookmarks” buttons to the tool bar when in landscape mode (where there is room for more buttons than in portrait).
• Color-coded the book name buttons in the Go To Verse “Bk/Ch/Vs” selection process. Colors correspond to well-known sections of the Bible (Pentateuch, History, Wisdom, etc.) to make it easier to spot a particular book.
• Added more “short-cut” buttons to the Go To Verse spinner corresponding to the sections of the Bible mentioned above.
• Minor updates to the Context menu for non-Bibles to remove inactive choices.
• Improved handling of saving your notes when the phone rings or you get a text (or simply exit the program) to eliminate potential loss of data.

Next up is providing you a way to sync your user-created data to our server and from there to your PC and other mobile devices. As usual there will be other improvements included in each update.

If you have suggestions, send them to me at craigr@laridian.com rather than posting them here in comments.

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PrayerPartner for the iPhone has been updated to version 1.0.1, and is now available on the Apple App Store. Search for “PrayerPartner” in the App Store, or try this link.

This is a free update for all PrayerPartner owners. If you’ve previously purchased PrayerPartner, then either iTunes or your iPhone (or iPod touch) will notify you that the update is available.

New Features in 1.0.1

• In response to customer requests, an optional passcode (PIN) requirement has been added. The optional PIN allows you to protect any sensitive information that you’ve added to your prayer list. (The PIN applies to the entire program, preventing access to all prayer requests if the PIN is not known.) Simply turn on the PIN requirement and select up to a 4-digit PIN. PrayerPartner will then prompt you for this PIN every time that PrayerPartner starts.

• Automatic saving of data when PrayerPartner exits, such as when the phone rings or a text is received, has been improved.

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We haven’t announced any plans regarding Android and Android phones.

You may be able to use our free iPocketBible.com service to access your Laridian books and Bibles on an Android phone using it’s Web browser and Internet connection. To try it, go to www.iPocketBible.com.

There’s only one trick: when used with anything other than an iPhone or iPod touch (such as an Android phone), two-fingered scrolling should be immediately turned off. After initially logging in to iPocketBible.com, select options and then set the Scroll Mode to One Finger Scrolling (Popup Menus). One Finger Scrolling uses the default scroll method of your browser, rather than the iPhone-specific scrolling, and also applies less constraints to the formatting to make it more likely to work with your screen size. To access the menu again, tap or click near the right side of the browser window. (You may find it easier to change these settings from a PC-based browser, rather than your phone.)

Remember, after changing to “One Finger Scrolling (Popup Menus)”, the toolbar will not be shown on the web page. Instead, tap or click near the right edge of the screen to access the toolbar.

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PrayerPartner for the iPhone is now available on the Apple App Store. Search for “PrayerPartner” in the App Store, or try this link.

For only $1.99 (you may have paid more for a cup of coffee today), PrayerPartner helps you manage an important spiritual discipline: prayer.

PrayerPartner helps you by maintaining lists of prayer requests, keeping track of which ones have been answered, which ones you’d like to pray for today, and which ones have already been prayed for today. Each request can be categorized, associated with a contact from your Contacts Address Book, and scheduled to be prayed for daily, on certain days of the week, or certain days of the month. Customizable email templates let you quickly mail a personal note of encouragement to a request’s contact. Plus, use the dated journal to record your thoughts as you pray.

Not Excited Yet? Keep Reading

Many of our PocketBible beta testers jumped on board to help with final testing of PrayerPartner. One common comment from them went something like… well, let’s hear from a few directly.

“PrayerPartner has given me the push I need to stay on top of other people’s requests. How many times do people specifically ask for prayer, and we somehow forget to ever petition the Lord on their behalf? This app is helping me make sure that I take their requests seriously, and it makes it easier to follow up with them when their prayers are answered.”
— Lawson C.

“I have found PrayerPartner to be indispensable. I did not know I had a need for an app like this until I started using it, and now it is on my home screen with the applications I use all the time.”
— Paul W.

“I didn’t know how valuable PrayerPartner would be until I started using it. Now I use PrayerPartner every day!”
— Mike O.

It’s interesting that a common theme developed: “I wasn’t really interested in a prayer-related program, but I found that it’s been good for me.”

Sort of like eating vegetables and flossing, I guess.

Seriously, though, I’ve found this to be true for me as well. Now that I’m through developing and testing, I’ve been adding my requests. Here’s what I’ve added so far.

• a daily praise, different for every day of the month
• a daily prayer for my children, a different topic every day of the month
• some friends to be prayed for weekly (some on Monday, some on Tuesday, etc.); I make notes of special needs or stresses so that I can remember to pray for them
• prayer for our pastor, church and its ministries

Like our beta testers, I’m finding that PrayerPartner is helping me be both more focused and disciplined.

Screen Shots

PrayerPartner Home Screen

Adding or Editing a Request

Picking a Category

Viewing the Full Request

Still To Come?

If PrayerPartner proves successful, we have ideas that would allow sharing requests with others, even (potentially) PrayerPartner users on other platforms.

Comments (21)

A recently posted comment questioned the wisdom of our policy of not talking about what may or may not be under development here. I thought I had discussed that policy here but apparently I haven’t.

As you know, before we started Laridian 11 years ago (October 1998) we spent ten years working at Parsons Technology. It was great to be able to make our mistakes at someone else’s expense before launching our own company. One of the things we learned was not to talk about our release dates before we were ready to ship a product.

There are two main reasons we’ve kept this policy over all these years and through two different companies. First, we don’t want to signal our plans to our competitors. We all compete for a limited number of customers. If we signal our intentions it helps other Bible software companies know how to allocate their limited resources to better compete with us.

The second reason we keep quiet about what we may or may not be working on is to avoid the extra work it creates. If we announce a product, we start getting calls and emails from people who want to know when it’s going to ship. If we announce a date and miss it (which is about a 100% probability in our business) then we have to deal with the customers who call or write to ask what’s going on. They always want to know an updated ship date, though if we missed it the first time I’m not sure why they think we’d get it right the second, third, or fourth time.

If we ignore those requests we’re perceived as unfriendly to our customers. So we have to take time to respond. You might argue that we have the same problem when we choose not to comment on what we’re doing. I can tell you, though, that it’s significantly different. When I can say, “We don’t talk about what may or may not be under development, but we appreciate your suggestions” it brings the discussion to a close. In fact in Tech Support that’s a predefined response that we can just paste into our reply and move on quickly. On the other hand, once we’ve opened the box and projected a ship date, we can’t easily close the box.

We have tried lifting this policy at various times. We did it for iPhone and it was OK for a while but when we ran into some technical issues that delayed the project by six months we ended up having to just shut off the flow of information for a while until we could figure out how to handle the issues. The combination of not really having anything helpful to say and having to answer a few customers who were downright nasty was difficult to deal with.

This raises the point that plans often change or are disrupted. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve completely changed our direction in an afternoon. Our decision to develop the original Web-based app for the iPhone (back when that was the only way you could do iPhone apps) was made on July 3, 2007 and a large amount of development on it happened on the July 4 holiday. Projects we had previously been working on were abandoned or delayed while we dedicated people to iPhone development. However, because none of this was public information, there was no time wasted explaining this massive change of direction to anyone. We didn’t have to apologize for missing a ship date, or reveal our plans for this new platform until we were completely ready to do so. (We actually hinted at it on July 5, but we didn’t really formally announce it until about three weeks later, when most of the work was done.)

I think part of our problem is that we want to be friendly and accessible. I think we’re way more accessible than most other software companies. I reply to every email sent to me, and we reply to all our tech support email in a timely fashion. (Just don’t call me at home. I mean, seriously, some people have no boundaries.) I reply to comments here on the blog. So the more information we have available and out there to talk about, the more time it takes. If we limit the information it helps us also limit the amount of communicating we have to do.

For example, I haven’t been tempted to give a long dissertation on the Android. It’s sufficient to say we may or may not be working on it. If you want to argue that it’s the Next Big Thing and that Google is obviously taking over the world and that we should just get over it and develop for Android, I can end the conversation by saying “we may or may not already be working on it”. I don’t have to get into a discussion of the relative size of the Android market vs. other platforms, the technical challenges of porting to Java, the state and maturity of the SDK, etc. I may or may not already agree with you. There’s no need for me to go into more detail. If I disagree with you, saying so might reveal our plans for the platform. If I agree with you, that also might reveal our plans. And I might be working on it while disagreeing with you on how great the platform is. Or I might not be working on it now, but agree with you and have plans to do it in the future. No matter what the situation is, commenting on it could lead you to the right or wrong conclusion, and now we’re back to the problem of signaling our intent to competitors and having to take time to communicate about it.

The obvious problem with this policy is that it may cost us some customers in the short term. However, if we’re not developing for a particular platform, then we plan to lose those customers anyway. If we are developing for the platform, we could still lose them in the time it takes for us to get our product out the door. So no matter what we do or plan to do, and no matter what we say, we still risk losing customers at any time. So if the other factors outweigh the benefits of talking about projects in advance, it’s worth not talking about them.

This isn’t always an easy rule to maintain, but every time we’ve broken it we’ve been stung by it sooner or later. We’re currently on a pretty tight-lipped phase after having been bit earlier this year. I’m sure we’ll loosen up again in the future and who knows, maybe our experience will be better. At least now you have some idea of our thought process on this policy and I hope that helps.

In the meantime, we may or may not be working on whatever it is you want us to be working on.

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We have released five new devotionals just in time for the New Year.

	Daily with the King by W. Glyn Evans offers 366 revealing, personal messages that will stir you, strengthen you, and bring you closer to God, the King, in a way you never imagined. Whether you’ve been away from God for a while, or you’re looking for a way to keep your daily devotions fresh, you now have a new appointment book.    Palm OS | Windows Mobile | Windows PC | iPhone or iPod touch
	Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, Volume One offers 365 devotional readings from the Gospel of Matthew by John MacArthur. The goal of the series is to help you develop consistency in reading and meditating on the truths of the Bible—and to equip you for your journey with directions you can understand from a trustworthy guide.    Palm OS | Windows Mobile | Windows PC | iPhone or iPod touch
	Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, Volume Two focuses primarily on the gospel of John. Practical and encouraging, these devotions by John MacArthur are sure to challenge and uplift your heart as you come face-to-face with the infinite wonders of our Savior’s life on earth.    Palm OS | Windows Mobile | Windows PC | iPhone or iPod touch
	Heart Aflame These select daily readings from Calvin’s Commentaries on the Psalms provide you with a year’s worth of sure-footed daily meditations. Calvin wrote as one whose own experience is mirrored in the Psalms. Here we witness his remarkable knack for seeing the real issues, particularly how Christ is the focus of all of Scripture.    Palm OS | Windows Mobile | Windows PC | iPhone or iPod touch
	Daily Seeds from Women who Walk in Faith Written by more than seventy contributors from an array of life experiences, these selections will meet you on the paths you walk—of busyness, loneliness, search for purpose, financial stress, envy, loss, changing friendships, and many others.    Learn from women like yourself how you can wait on God for His perfect gifts, honor Him with your work, savor the simple pleasures He gives, exercise your imagination, and, as one writer puts it, “keep your eyes on the Instructor of the dance of life.” Palm OS | Windows Mobile | Windows PC | iPhone or iPod touch

Devotional Sale! Now until January 3, 2010 get these new titles and all our devotional and Bible reading titles for 20% off by using Priority Code DEVSALE on the order form. Titles above are regularly $9.99 each, now only $7.99 each. Other devotional titles range in price from $7.99 to $14.99.

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PrayerPartner for the iPhone has completed beta testing and been submitted to the Apple App Store. We expect it to be available in the App Store “soon”.

PrayerPartner helps you manage an important spiritual discipline: prayer.

PrayerPartner helps you by maintaining lists of prayer requests, keeping track of which ones have been answered, which ones you’d like to pray for today, and which ones have already been prayed for today. Each request can be categorized, associated with a contact from your Contacts Address Book, and scheduled to be prayed for daily, on certain days of the week, or certain days of the month. Customizable email templates let you quickly mail a personal note of encouragement to a request’s contact. Plus, use the dated journal to record your thoughts as you pray.

When approved for sale in the App Store, PrayerPartner will be available with an introductory price of $1.99.

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I guess I’m going to have to address this issue at some point, so here we go.

Apparently one of the more controversial decisions we made with PocketBible for the iPhone was to follow the other major eBook reader software like Kindle and eReader and present the text a page at a time rather than continuously scrolling. That is, to move through the text of a PocketBible Bible or book, you swipe right to left (or just tap on the right side of the page) to “turn the page”. The new page enters from the right.

The alternative is to present Bibles and books as a long stream of continuously scrolling text and allow you to use drags and flicks to smoothly scroll the text. This method is followed (with some variations) by some other Bible software programs.

You Only Think You’ve Seen Continuously Scrolling Text Everywhere

People tend to point to applications like Safari, which lets you flick around on a Web page to scroll up, down, left and right, and claim that “all iPhone apps let you flick to scroll”. This is true when you have a limited amount of text, but not when the text is virtually unlimited. For example, a Web page is a finite amount of text (and images and whatever). It can be rendered once into an in-memory buffer, then portions of that buffer can be moved onto the screen as needed. More importantly, the overall dimensions of the page are easily determined. The programmer can tell the iPhone “I’ll be scrolling around on a 1391- by 3287- pixel image of this page.” That way, the iPhone knows when you’ve hit the “top” or “bottom” of the page and can do that cool “bounce” animation it does when you try to go past the edges.

Even large scrolling lists — like your list of contacts or PocketBible’s search results list — have bounds that are easily determined. It’s easy to count your contacts or your PocketBible search results, multiply by the height of one contact or search result entry in the list, and tell the iPhone the result. So 25,000 search results times 80 pixels is 2,000,000 pixels. If you go past 2,000,000 the iPhone knows you’re at the end and stops asking for more (in this case it actually stops because you’re looking at the 25,000th item, but down inside the code it’s animating the end-of-list behavior based on the y-coordinate being greater than or equal to 2,000,000).

The iPhone needs to know how tall your view is going to be. The problem with the text in PocketBible is that it’s practically infinite in length, and the time it would take to calculate the height needed is probably measured in hours (or at least in minutes), not the milliseconds you expect when you open a book or change the font/size you’re using to display text. The iPhone needs to know this height and we can’t calculate it in a timely fashion.

There are ways around this, but because we can’t calculate the height in advance we’re violating a built-in assumption the iPhone has about scrolling views. So that means we have to code our own scrolling view or at a minimum do some nasty jury-rigging to fake the iPhone into believing it has a finite-length view when in fact it doesn’t.

You’ve probably run into apps like Facebook which shows you 25-50 items in a list then allows you to press a button to load more. Again, you think you’re seeing a long, continuous list but in reality you’re seeing a short, finite-length list and you have an option to see a longer, finite-length list. You just think it’s an infinitely long list.

When To Load the Text?

Because the text of the Bible or a reference book is so long, it’s impractical to load the whole thing into memory at once (both to determine its size and to have it available for continuous scrolling). So we use techniques that allow us to load the text in pieces. (In our case, one paragraph at a time.) The problem, of course, is that it takes just as long to load the whole book one paragraph at a time as it does to simply load the whole book into memory. To get around this, we make use of idle moments (such as while the view is “coasting to a stop” after a flick) to load some more text. Normally the processor isn’t doing anything during this time, so you don’t notice that we’re loading text at that time.

The problem is that it can take longer than that time to load a paragraph. And you may be furiously flicking through text, not giving us time to do any loading. In these cases, we end up using time that is normally spent to recognize your input gestures. As a result, the system seems to be slow to recognize your gestures, and the motion of the text gets jerky.

At some point, we have to draw the text to the screen, which also takes time. One option is to launch a second thread to draw text that has been loaded and decompressed. But since the iPhone has only one processor with one core, this second thread is no more efficient than the method described above (using idle time on the main thread).

Furthermore, there are limits on what kind of drawing you can do in a second thread. Because the iPhone is a relatively new OS and doesn’t have the maturity of, say, Windows Mobile (which, like iPhone OS vs. Mac OS, is also a subset of its desktop counterpart), there are significant missing components for drawing text in anything but the main thread. Apple assumes you’re going to do all your text rendering with its built-in Web view component. But it, too, is an immature component and doesn’t have all the features we need to support everything we need to do with and to the text. So they give us one really nice why to draw text, but limit it to only being used in the main thread of the application. The text functions that can be accessed from other threads are more limited in their scope.

A Little History

Our initial implementation of PocketBible used continuous scrolling. We released an alpha version (a preliminary release that was nowhere near feature-complete) to a small group of testers in January 2009 with the goal of releasing the finished product in March. Because of all the problems described above (and more), the scrolling was a bit clunky. I actually thought it wasn’t horrible once you got used to it, but the alpha testers hated it and sent us back to the drawing board.

For the next six months I tried variations on when to load text, how much text to load, what thread to load text in, when to draw, what thread to draw in, etc., eventually writing at least four complete, from the ground-up, implementations of loading, rendering, and scrolling text. Late in the process I threw it all away and started again and had a relatively good implementation. We released beta 1 and the testers weren’t happy with the scrolling performance.

This was pretty disappointing. We were tempted to just go ahead with this implementation, but when we tested with the newly released OS 3.0 the performance was significantly worse. Something had changed with the new OS and would have required starting over again.

What do the Other Guys Do?

At this point I paused and did a survey of other similar software. I wanted to see what kind of performance they were getting during scrolling, and if there was anything I could divine from applying a programmer’s eye to the use of their software. I opted to look at general ebook software like Kindle, eReader, and Stanza. I chose not to look at other Bible software because the general ebook readers have larger user bases and well-funded, professional development teams.

What I found was a constant use of a “paging” metaphor as opposed to “scrolling”. This was interesting. If they were “getting away with this” with their enormous customer bases then potentially we could do likewise.

User Fatigue and Reading Comprehension

Within a couple days I had a paginated user interface up and running and for the most part, the beta testers liked it. Sure, there were those who really wanted to scroll. But there were others who actually preferred the paginated approach. They found it required a lot less concentration on manipulating the text and allowed them to focus on reading. Their fingers weren’t in the way all the time. And when they tapped the screen they knew it was going to move exactly one page instead of flicking and having to figure out when/if to stop it from scrolling too far, then having to find their place.

This was encouraging because it gave us some very real benefits to the new approach. Paging required less interaction and less concentration on navigating, thus allowing more concentration on reading and comprehension. And the performance was adequate and the implementation simple.

At about the same time my daughter was complaining about a college class that required them to read hundreds of pages of PDF files from the professor’s Web site. The school made the case that this was part of their “green” initiative, but my daughter found that in order to easily read and mark up the text it was necessary to first print it, thus negating the green argument and costing her a fortune in paper and ink. (Ironically, whereas the school could easily have printed this material on a two-sided printer, my daughter could only print on one side, thus costing TWICE as many trees as the “non-green” solution.)

This led me to do some research on online reading vs. reading in print. It seems to be a consistent conclusion that offline reading (from paper) results in better reading comprehension. One of the reasons that was cited was that the eyes can easily go from line to line and from page to page in print, but when reading from the screen the eyes have to constantly adjust for the motion caused by scrolling. The difficulty of moving the screen to the next full screen of text resulted in the eyes and brain having to continuously re-locate their position in the text. The resulting diminished comprehension negatively impacts test scores and was one more point against my daughter’s school’s “green” initiative.

Interestingly, the results of this research could easily be applied to what we were doing on PocketBible. When you flick the text you have to stop and figure out where you’re at. When you turn a page you know right where to continue reading. If you avoid this by slowly scrolling as you read, your eyes can’t move from line to line as easily as they can when those lines aren’t moving. And your fingers get in the way.

So Where do we Stand?

In summary, the reason PocketBible doesn’t have continuous scrolling isn’t because we haven’t thought of it. It’s because we’ve tried several ways of doing it and none has resulted in acceptable performance.

While pagination started as a second-choice user interface, it turns out it’s used by all the large, well-funded, popular ebook reader software for the iPhone. And it turns out it has documented benefits when it comes to user fatigue and reading comprehension.

It cannot be argued that pagination is “not the iPhone way”. The large, continuously scrolling text often cited as examples of “the iPhone way” isn’t actually as large as our text. And there are lots of similar applications that don’t use scrolling as their user interface for books. So while it can be said that continuous scrolling is an iPhone way to interact with books, it cannot be said that it is the iPhone way.

I’m aware of the fact that other Bible software uses scrolling instead of paging. I’ve heard conflicting reports on whether they do this successfully or just “acceptably” in the opinion of their users. I’ve also heard that some do continuous scrolling within a chapter (thus avoiding the problem of having a large amount of text) but then have another gesture that means “next chapter”. This is great for Bibles but doesn’t solve anything for other types of reference books. And it creates a weird concept of “sometimes you flick to scroll and sometimes you have to do something else” to see the next bit of text.

I don’t have any insight into the other guys’ code so I can’t comment on why they may get acceptable scrolling behavior when we don’t. Maybe their standards aren’t as high. Maybe their code isn’t as feature-rich. Maybe they’re better programmers than we are. In the end it’s irrelevant. We are all playing the cards we were dealt. Knowing someone else at another table has a better hand than I do doesn’t mean I can win at my table. To continue but convolute the metaphor, you can either stay in the game with us or you can go play with someone else. We can’t control your behavior.

We have not disclosed our plans for any future features of PocketBible, other than to say we’re continuously working on it, and that the features you see in other versions of PocketBible will find their way into the iPhone version in the future. We have a long list of must-have features in PocketBible and a long-list of suggestions from all of you. We consider the must-have list to be the more important one at this time. We’ve been implementing little things from the suggestion list as we work through big things on the must-have list, but are prioritizing useful new functionality over simply changing the way things work.

Pagination is a feature that is not broken and doesn’t need to be fixed. While we may look at wasting another six months on scrolling in the future, we’ll do that at a time when it won’t cause other very necessary features to be delayed.

Before You Comment…

This article is meant to be informative, not to launch discussion. We already know that some of you would prefer to scroll rather than page through the text. If you’re just writing to tell us that, then you must not have comprehended this article very well. Try paging through it instead of scrolling.

Furthermore, this article summarizes some complicated programming issues into imprecise layperson’s terminology. Like a paraphrase of the Bible, there is a lot lost in the process. If you are not a programmer and think you have an idea for doing this in a way we haven’t tried, don’t bother to comment. Chances are good you don’t really understand the issues and I won’t be able to tell you that without insulting you. If you’re a programmer and are sure you know how to do this better than we do, I remind you you haven’t seen our code so don’t know what we’re working with, then ask you to send completed, working code to me by email instead of discussing it here where we’ll only confuse the masses.

Comments are moderated. I will remove references to other iPhone programs. I will remove feature requests and off-topic posts. I will remove links to other sites. I may remove other things I haven’t thought of.

Now, other than the above, feel free to comment.

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Yesterday, I posted an article inviting interested persons to apply to be a beta tester on my #secretiphoneproject. I also tweeted, inviting our Twitter followers to come to the blog and read about it.

I have enough applications, so the article has been removed and the application process is closed.

Thanks to all who expressed interest. If you applied and haven’t heard back from me yet, you will soon.

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Apple approved PocketBible 1.1.0 for iPhone earlier today. A list of new and improved features is here.

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I’ve been helping with technical support on and off this past week, and a recurring question has been something like this:

“Are you working on Bible software for the Android phone? When will it be available? Will it support ___ (insert your favorite feature here)?”

My response:

“We haven’t announced any plans regarding Android. Such announcements are usually made at our blog: http://blog.laridian.com.”

You shouldn’t assume that this means that we are (or that we are not) working on an Android product. It just means that we haven’t announced anything. If you read our blog regularly, you know that this is similar to what we’d said about the Palm Pre until we recently announced a partnership.

After giving this answer more than a few times, I saw one of Patty’s replies to a similar question. In addition to my response above, Patty also cleverly pointed out that our free iPocketBible.com service (www.ipocketbible.com) can be used from many web-enabled phones, and suggested that customers with a web-enabled phone may want to give it a try. While iPocketBible.com was designed for use with the iPhone, we’ve found that it also works from many Web browsers. There’s only one trick: when used with anything other than an iPhone or iPod touch, two-fingered scrolling should be immediately turned off. After initially logging in to iPocketBible.com, select options and then set the Scroll Mode to One Finger Scrolling (Popup Menus). One Finger Scrolling uses the default scroll method of your browser, rather than the iPhone-specific scrolling, and also applies less constraints to the formatting to make it more likely to work with your screen size. To access the menu again, tap or click near the right side of the browser window. (You may find it easier to change these settings from a PC-based browser, rather than your phone.)

Remember, after changing to “One Finger Scrolling (Popup Menus)”, the toolbar will not be shown on the web page. Instead, tap or click near the right edge of the screen to access the toolbar. This technique allows you to access all of your Laridian content via many Web browsers, whether on a Windows PC, a Mac, or a web-enabled phone.

So, what about Android? We haven’t announced any plans regarding Android. Our iPocketBible.com service may work with Android and other web-enabled phones. It’s free, so you can give it a try if you want to. Check it out at www.ipocketbible.com.

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I’ve been thinking all week I was just about done with this semi-major point-release of PocketBible for iPhone but then something else would leap out and I’d have to take a day and fix it. I thought I’d take a few minutes to let you know what’s coming in this update.

Notes

The major new feature is notes. You can associate notes with any Bible verse. Notes are independent of the Bible you’re reading. So a note on John 3:16 in the KJV also shows up on John 3:16 in the NIV.

Notes are indicated by a “Note” link at the start of the verse. Tap the link to view the note, or simply tap-and-hold anywhere on the verse to open the context menu and from there, choose to view or create a note.

Any references to Bible verses in your notes will be automatically linked. While viewing a note, just tap the reference to view the Bible verse. Notes are happy to be just plain text, but if you’re comfortable with HTML you can use most HTML tags in your notes. We provide a menu of HTML tags you can easily insert, and bold and italics are available from a toolbar in the note editor. So select the word you want to italicize, then use the <i> button to italicize it. No advanced HTML tagging knowledge required.

The note editor supports undo and redo. Few iPhone apps do, and for good reason. The current state of the text editing features on the iPhone is pretty primitive. It’s difficult to get access to everything you need to support undo/redo.

Pasteboard (aka Clipboard) Support

The other major feature is “Copy Verse” and “Copy Passage” (actually two features, but very closely related). Both are accessed from the context menu. Tap and hold on a verse then select Copy Verse to copy the verse to the clipboard. From there you can paste it into any app, or into a PocketBible note. Similarly, you can select Copy Passage from the context menu, then select the start and end verse you want to copy.

We save both a plain-text and HTML version of the verse on the clipboard. If your other app supports HTML you get really nicely formatted verses. There are options to control how and if verse numbers are included in the passage, and whether your notes should be included.

Rotation Lock

Finally, in terms of significant new features, we’ve added a simple rotation lock. Rotate the device into the position you want, select Rotation Lock from the Settings menu, and then you can lie down, stand on your head, or whatever it is you guys all do that requires rotation locking. Just an aside: This should be a feature of the device. It’s silly to ask hundreds of thousands of applications to implement it instead of doing it once in the OS.

Usability Tweaks and Bug Fixes

I’ve also added some usability features. These include:

• Changed layout of search input to avoid selecting highlights and categories. Users are accidentally searching non-existent highlights and getting zero search results. The new layout will help.
• Added more info to “no matches found” message to avoid the same problem as above.
• Changed tap-and-hold delay to 500 msec from 1000 msec to more closely match Apple’s tap-and-hold delay.
• Close the context menu after choosing to toggle Strong’s numbers on/off
• Implemented underline and strike-through
• Be more rigorous about the way we determine the type of the book. This will move a very small number of books from the “dictionary” or “commentary” section to “other” books.
• In connection with the last change, send “look up” requests to “other” books so they can try to respond if possible. Again, a very small number of books are impacted.
• Changed the title field on search results to truncate on the left instead of on the right so you can see the most detailed portion of the title in non-Bibles. (This makes sense when you see it but is hard to describe.)

And finally, I’ve fixed a few bugs:

• Fixed proximity picker position in landscape mode
• Fixed Spanish book names in both 3-tap and spinner go-to controls
• Fixed OT/NT buttons in Spanish Bibles
• Fixed reversed Hebrew strings
• Ignore touches that come in while we’re in the process of going somewhere. Otherwise we can have weird zooming issues.

Release Schedule

I’ll post another blog article when I deliver this version to the App Store. It will be a couple weeks after that before it’s available for download. I just need to finish up the Help to cover the new features.

Next up: Daily devotional tracking and other features related to devotional books.

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When it comes to “Word Study” as it relates to the Bible, I consider myself a lightweight. But what I lack in expert opinion I hope to make up for by simply opening each of the word study tools we offer and telling you what they can do for you. Trust me, it won’t be too technical!

My Word Study “go-to” book is the Amplified Bible. I always have a copy of it installed on my current device, along with my preferred English translation. I don’t normally use the Amplified for devotional reading but it is great for comparing with another translation and the place I start when I want to understand a verse better, even before I consult a commentary.

The Amplified uses a unique system of brackets, parantheses and italics to define and expand key words and phrases right in the Bible text. For example, John 3:3 in the Amplified says: “Jesus answered him, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, that unless a person is born again (anew, from above), he cannot ever see (know, be acquainted with, and experience) the kingdom of God.” The key words here are expanded in such a way that you come away with a fuller understanding of what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus without having to consult a dictionary.

(more…)

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We’re announcing today that we’ve signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bits of God Software to be the exclusive provider of Bibles and other reference materials for an upcoming version of the popular Simple Bible application for the Palm Pre. Once completed, this will give current Laridian customers who have chosen the Palm Pre as their mobile platform access to the Bibles and reference books they already own for other platforms. It will also give new Simple Bible users immediate access to one of the largest collections of Bible-related content for mobile devices. The new program from Bits of God Software, currently referred to as Simple Bible Pro, will allow users to download new Bibles and reference content directly into the program from their account on Laridian’s site.

As we’ve said here before, programming for the Pre is a whole new challenge. Our existing code that runs on Windows Mobile, iPhone, Windows desktop, and Palm OS really gives us no leverage on the Pre. With that in mind we sought a partner, and when it comes to Bible software on the Pre, the guys at Bits of God are the best. We’re pretty excited about partnering with them.

Our current agreement is “an agreement to agree” so there are many details to be worked out yet. We’ve agreed in principle on most of the more difficult points of our relationship, so we don’t anticipate any problems. The important thing is that it looks like current PocketBible and MyBible customers will have a migration path if they choose the Pre, and that Simple Bible Pro will get a jump start over other Bible software on the device by having access to Laridian’s growing library of content.

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Our technical support site was down for upgrades between the afternoon of Monday, October 12, and the morning of Friday, October 16. The upgrade has been completed, and technical support is available again. Thank you for your patience if you’ve been trying to contact us.

During the upgrade period, emails sent to technical support departments were returned as undeliverable. If you sent an email during that period and it was returned as undeliverable, you’ll need to send it again.

Additionally, due to an outage on October 9-11, we may not have received all emails sent to us on those days. If you wrote to us during that period, and did not receive a response, please contact us again. Remember to include all of the pertinent details.

Again, thank you for your understanding and patience.

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We are upgrading our technical support software.

During the upgrade process, technical support will be unavailable. Email sent to us may be returned as undeliverable.

We hope that the upgrade process will be smooth and quick and that technical support will be available “soon”. However, a more realistic expectation is that support will available again within a few days.

This is a good time to point out that all of our products include either built-in help or a user guide (or both!). We find that most questions that we receive are answered in these resources. So, even though we might not be here to help you for a few days, you may find the help you need in the built-in help or user guide.

Thanks for your patience during this upgrade process.

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Apple has approved the first maintenance release for PocketBible. You’ll be happy to see synchronization can actually be turned on and off now. When it’s turned off, you can synchronize all your open Bibles and commentaries to any verse by tapping-and-holding on the verse, then selecting “Sync To…” from the context menu. When it’s turned on (Menu > Settings > Synchronization), all your open Bibles and commentaries should track to the active Bible.

A related problem came up when you were using a Bible with Strong’s numbers. Going to the dictionary for a particular number would show you the correct entry in your preferred Strong’s dictionary, but if you had other Strong’s dictionaries open they would not move to the new entry. This is fixed now so you could have several Strong’s dictionaries open and they’ll all go to the right entry (as long as synchronization is turned on in the Settings menu.

After the nightmare of the first 24 hours after PocketBible shipped, we’ve updated the network error reporting to include more detail than the classic “(null) (null) Customer ID (null)” message that was so informative in the last version.

We’re currently working on the note feature. That will be the next update. I don’t have a time-frame yet but it’s coming along nicely. There are also a couple more little bug fixes that will be rolled into that version.

Fixes in 1.0.1

• Synchronization was effectively always on. Fixed so it honors the setting in the menu.
• Once zoomed for link disambiguation, it was possible to choose something from the menu or tap the title bar and confuse the app about the zoom state of the text. Fixed so that any interaction with the program resets the zoom state.
• Following a link to a Strong’s number would display the preferred (or default) Strong’s dictionary, but other Strong’s dictionaries would not follow when synchronization was on. Fixed so all sync links to dictionaries result in proper synchronization.
• Registering an email address containing a + (plus sign) failed. Probably other special characters would fail, too. Fixed to use proper URL encoding.
• Significantly beefed up the error handling while communicating with the server to register new users, send login credentials, and download your books. Eliminated the now-famous “(null)(null) Customer ID (null)” message that was so informative.
• Changing from “reference only” search results to one of the results with excerpts would result in a correct results list but some excerpts missing. Fixed to always check the selected results format and always reformat each result.
• Fixed typos in Welcome and Help documents. (These are downloadable now using Add/Remove Books.)
• Built with book reader engine 1.066 which contains support for a new Bible translation.

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When I lived in Virginia, I was blessed to be in a church and under the tutelage of a man on fire for God. He remains to this day my favorite Pastor and as I have moved and traveled in the years since, I still miss being taught by him. His style of breaking down scripture, verse-by-verse and phrase-by-phrase—really dissecting God’s word and all its meaning helped me to grow more than I had before in my Christian walk. His style is a lot like that of pastor and author, John MacArthur. And though I can’t hear the pastor that I love, I can continue my study of the Bible in the same manner through MacArthur’s Study Bible Notes.

MacArthur’s verse-by-verse dissection of Scripture lets me study the Bible the way I want to—in-depth, serious study. From the beginning with an article on “How to Study Your Bible,” through the use of over 50 Bible maps, charts and diagrams, book introductions and outlines and, of course, MacArthur’s own words giving detailed descriptions and explanations of each verse in every book, I can truly dig deep and understand the context of God’s Word. To me, studying God’s word is much more than a morality speech, or a feel good sermon. To study God’s word is to truly seek out the meanings and truth behind it, to help me grow—closer to the Author of Scripture and stronger in my Christian walk. MacArthur’s Study Bible Notes is an excellent text that is everything needed to dig deep into God’s word in one complete volume and is probably (in my opinion) one of the best study Bibles out there.

Laridian offers nine study Bibles ranging in price from $14.99 to $39.99. Here is some key information on our top-selling study Bibles to help you in choosing the one that is right for you:

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We just sent out an email to current customers offering 20% off all iPhone Bibles and books. You can use priority code PBEL99 through the end of the month to save 20% on all Bibles and reference books for iPhone. Just go to www.laridian.com, select the iPhone site, then select Order Form from the upper right corner of the screen. Select the books you want to order and enter PBEL99 in the priority code field at the bottom of the order form.

iPocketBible.com Subscribers: Wait for Your Email Before Ordering

If you’ve been a monthly or annual subscriber to iPocketBible.com, you’re entitled to an additional 10% discount for a total of 30% off any PocketBible for iPhone Bible or book. Details are in the email you should receive later today.

Speaking of iPocketBible.com, subscriptions are now free. If you already have a monthly subscription, you’ve already made your final payment and won’t be charged again this month. If you have an annual subscription, you will continue to have access to the service beyond the end of your subscription.

“Donating” to Laridian

Many of you have asked if there is a way to donate to Laridian as a way of saying “thanks” for making PocketBible for iPhone free. We’re truly humbled by the suggestion and appreciate your generosity. However, we don’t want to give the impression that we’re a non-profit, charitable organization as some of our competitors do, so we’ve decided not to put a “donate button” at the site.

However, if you’d like to say “thanks” you can do so by simply not using the priority code when you place your order. It doesn’t have the same feel-good vibe as a “donate button” but the effect is the same. And we’ll get the message. Again, we’re really moved by your response to our efforts.

Don’t Have an iPhone?

You can still take advantage of this offer. First, verify the book you want to purchase is available for your particular platform (Windows Mobile, Windows desktop, Blackberry, or Palm OS) by going to the appropriate area of our site and checking the order form. Then go to the iPhone area of our site and place your order using the priority code. If you order a book or Bible for the iPhone that is available for your platform, you’ll be able to download that version through your download account. It’s a little tricky, yes, but we don’t mind. In fact we encourage it!

Comments (17)

We’ve been notified by Apple that PocketBible has been approved for sale in the App Store. It was fun hearing that it was available in different countries as each local App Store enabled it for their users around the world.

Now that it’s approved I can tell you what the original problem was. It seems the testers at Apple chose not to register the app and download the 39 free books that are included. As a result, when they went to the “Open Book” dialog to open a new book, they saw that only the “Bibles” and “Other Books” categories were active (the former contains the KJV and the latter the help files). They assumed that meant that PocketBible was a “lite” version that did not include the ability to view commentaries, dictionaries, and devotionals, because those categories were grayed out. If true, that would be a violation of the rules of the App Store. We explained that those categories were grayed out because they hadn’t downloaded any commentaries, dictionaries, or devotionals. That must’ve been sufficient because they later approved the app.

If you can give us some positive reviews at the App Store that would be great. If you can’t think of anything nice to say, send your negative comments to me by email so I can fix the program to your satisfaction.

It’s getting hard to pick out our answers to your questions in the comments below. It might be best to send them to Tech Support. Select the Help Desk link on our site.

Comments (122)