The first of four new PocketBible products is available on the App Store. “PocketBible FREE” was approved earlier this evening.

We’re still waiting for approval on the Life Application Study Bible Collection, the NIV Study Bible Collection, and the NIV Reference Collection. These are primarily targeted at new users of PocketBible, but depending on the state of your PocketBible Library, you might find them to be valuable as an existing customer.

The new version features a built-in link to the PocketBible Bookstore. The approval snuck up on me this evening and I’m not quite done with all the tweaks to the product catalog. If you find a problem with any of the product pages, send me an email at craigr@laridian.com. Please don’t post them here.

Note that when you purchase a book from the built-in bookstore, we’ll eventually be able to tell PocketBible to automatically download it when you go to Add/Remove Books. That feature requires some more work on the server, which I hoped to get done this weekend but it’s looking less and less likely. Soon.

This version should also fix any lingering task-switching problems for iPhone 4 owners.

We’ve updated PocketBible to fix an annoying little problem on iPhone 4 in which what we call the “launch options” screen is displayed when you re-start PocketBible after the OS has dumped it from memory while it was idle. While we were in there, we added a couple little features:

iPhone and iPad Features

• Added an option to enable/disable the use of colored buttons in the Bk/Ch/Vs verse selection forms to indicate sections of the Bible. Some people really hated what one of you called the “funky button colors” so we gave you the option to use a very un-funky gray for all the buttons.
• Added an option to set margins and line leading for single- and multiple-pane screen configurations. Some people wanted to see more text on the screen in the single-pane mode. This lets you do that. While we were at it we gave you the option of setting margins and leading in the multiple-pane view, too.
• Fixed a bug in which the temporary highlighting of the linked-to verse could disappear after synchronization with our server, removing or updating books, or coming out of the suspended state (iOS 4).

iPhone-only Features

• Added “Split Screen” to Context menu. It’s a little more convenient there than going to Menu, Settings, Open Panes, and choosing “2″.
• Fixed a bug that caused the launch options form to sometimes be displayed when coming out of the “suspended” state.

The next update won’t have any new features in it per se, but gives us the ability to sell our “collections” on the App Store and sets us up for in-app purchasing of books.

Today we submitted PocketBible 1.4.1 and PrayerPartner 1.1.0 to the App Store.

PrayerPartner has been updated for iOS 4. This is primarily related to making PrayerPartner aware of and compatible with multitasking. However, we are also taking advantage of a new feature of iOS 4 - a programmatic interface to the text messaging composition form. PrayerPartner has previously helped you send emails regarding requests on your prayer list. Now it can also help you send text messages.

We also took this opportunity to add some email and text messaging capability to PocketBible. While I ran into some problems that prevented me from including these features in our 1.4.0 update, those issues have been resolved. PocketBible now allows you to send Bible verses via email or text messaging to people in your contact list.

Note that the text messaging features are only available with iOS 4, and your device must be capable of sending text messages.

As always, we expect the approval process to take 2 to 10 days. When the updates are approved, iTunes will notify you that the updates are available.

This posting has been edited to reflect the fact that PocketBible 1.4.0 and RomansRoad 1.0.3 are now available on the App Store. Comments prior to the afternoon of 24 June were posted before the apps became available for download.

Both PocketBible and RomansRoad have been updated to account for new features in what Apple calls iOS 4 — version 4.0 of the iPhone OS.

What this boils down to is that the app saves its state when it is notified that the user wants to switch to another app, then restores its state when the OS notifies it that the user has switched back to it. These hoops would be completely unnecessary if Apple implemented “multitasking” the same way Windows, Windows Mobile, and even the Mac OS implements it. That is, your app doesn’t have to do anything special to run at the same time as other apps on those platforms. Leave it to Apple to reinvent the wheel — and the axle, differential, drive shaft, and engine.

The new version of PocketBible also implements several changes related to notes, highlights, bookmarks, and synchronization with the server:

• When saving notes we used to convert “special characters” like emdash, left- and right-double-quotes, bullets, etc. into HTML character entities. This is unnecessary and can be confusing the next time you open the note.
• When synchronizing notes with the server, we’re doing a more consistent job of handling those special characters.
• Previous versions made sure all the Toolbox panes were kept up-to-date even when they were not the active pane. As a result you could spend a lot of time waiting for a list that you never look at to be updated. The new version only updates panes when they are active or become active. This should speed up launching and updating the screen after synchronizing with the server.
• We sped up synchronization of large data sets by making some changes on the server but also by changing the algorithm that iterates over the notes on your device. This also sped up searching of notes.
• We gave you the ability to change the length of time the program will wait for a response from the server when synchronizing your data. This mostly affects users with a large number of notes, highlights and/or bookmarks (say, greater than 1000 of any of these).
• We optimized the case where you’re not really searching your notes but just asking for a list of all the notes in a particular Bible. This affects how quickly the Find Notes pane in the Toolbox can be updated.
• A previous version of PocketBible broke the rotation lock function on the iPhone. It is fixed in this version.

We still have a couple features we’re working on that take advantage of some iOS 4 features. If we can get those to work, they’ll be in 1.4.1.

Today we uploaded version 1.012 of PocketBible for Windows, and version 1.002 of the iPocketBible.com Server Synchronization Provider (formerly known as the iPhone Sync Provider). These updates address three issues:

1. Notes containing certain special characters could become corrupted in the synchronization process as those special characters were passed from platform to platform, each of which may have treated them differently.
2. Because of differences in the way the PC and our server implemented the synchronization algorithm, “old” data from the PC could be deleted when syncing with existing data from an iPhone.
3. Since we were making changes, we also changed the way the PC keeps track of the date/time of the last sync. The new method eliminates rare problems caused by differences in the system time between the server and your PC.

To get the latest version of PocketBible for Windows, simply log into your download account, download it, and install it.

To get the latest iPocketBible.com Server Sync Provider to replace your old iPhone Sync Provider, go to the PocketBible for Windows site (http://www.laridian.com/pc) and select “Synchronization Providers” from the Products menu at the top of the page. Follow the instructions near the bottom of the page to download and install the iPocketBible.com Sync Provider.

The previous version of PocketBible should refuse to work with the new sync provider, and the new sync provider will refuse to work with the old version of PocketBible. So if you don’t get them installed correctly the program will tell you.

An important new feature added to PocketBible for Windows is the ability to reset your sync history. This forces PocketBible to treat the next sync as if it is the first. If you ever have to restore your PocketBible for Windows user data database, you’ll want to reset the sync history or you risk confusing the sync algorithm. When it sees that you have old data in your database that is no longer on the server, it will delete the data you just restored from your backup (thinking that you deleted it from the server). If you reset your sync history, it may find duplicates and ask you about them, but it won’t delete anything.

iPhone/iPad Users: There will be an update to the iPhone/iPad version of PocketBible to make some adjustments to the way certain special characters are handled. We currently are planning to roll this into our “iPhone 4″ update, which will be uploaded to Apple just as soon as we can.

Thanks for your patience while we worked on these updates.

We just got an email from Apple saying PocketBible for iPhone/iPad is approved for the App Store. It could take 24 hours for it to become visible to you. The rest of this posting is a repeat of the announcement we made when we uploaded this new version.

Features are described here.

Video preview here: www.youtube.com/user/laridianinc.

This version adds new features to the iPhone/iPod touch and has native support for the iPad. Current users of PocketBible will see this new version as an update in the App Store app just like any other update.

If you have notes, bookmarks, etc. in MyBible for Palm OS, PocketBible for Windows Mobile, PocketBible for Windows, or iPocketBible.com you’ll be able to move these notes to your iPhone or iPad with this new version. If you have Palm OS or Windows Mobile you first need to synchronize this data with PocketBible for Windows (desktop). Then synchronize from there to iPocketBible.com. Details are here. PocketBible for iPhone/iPad syncs with iPocketBible.com so you need to get your data there to start with, then when you sync with PocketBible for iPhone/iPad it will get your notes, bookmarks, etc. from your other device(s).

Search results are displayed in the Toolbox at the bottom of the screen. Your entire library is searched, usually in a fraction of a second. Library results are on the left; results for the selected book are in the list on the right.

Split the screen into as many as five panes (three shown here) to reference commentaries and other reference books.

Here I’ve changed the font and expanded the Toolbox to give me more room to type my notes. The notes viewer supports HTML so I can create this outline using nested ordered lists. Bible text can be pasted in HTML. Here I’ve made verse numbers bold and made the text small. Any unambiguous references (such as “Col 1:3-8″ at the top) are automatically linked.

When the iPad is rotated, the Toolbox moves to the side (either right or left).

The new calculator-style verse selection method is shown here. Select the book from a drop-down list, then key in the chapter and verse on the keypad.

The Bk/Ch/Vs (”3-tap”) verse selector sports larger buttons on the iPad and is ten buttons wide to make it easier to find chapter and verse numbers.

PocketBible is great for daily devotional reading. Here Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening is shown on the left and the Bible on the right. The Reading Progress window show what you’ve already read (in green) and what you need to read (in red). I’ve hidden the Toolbox to maximize space for reading the text.

We took step one of getting our iPad version of PocketBible released by handing it off to our beta testers this afternoon. We have one known issue we’re still working on, plus whatever our testers find in the next few days.

Our intention (as always) is to have a very brief beta. You never know what you’re going to run into, but the code has been working well for us in-house and we’re hoping the beta testers have the same experience.

As I’ve mentioned before, Apple limits the number of devices we can install to outside the App Store. We have 46 beta testers, many of whom have multiple devices. 14 of them have iPads. That doesn’t include our own employees and company-owned devices. Between all of those we’re right on the edge of not being able to add new devices to our list. With iPhone 4 coming in June we didn’t think it was a good idea to add any beta testers at this point. So you didn’t miss the announcement — there wasn’t one.

While we’ve been promoting this as an iPad version, the fact is that it’s a “universal binary” that runs on both the iPhone and iPad. Many of the new or improved features are also going to be available on the iPhone (and of course, iPod touch). Here’s the feature list in no particular order:

BOTH iPHONE and iPAD

• User data synchronization with iPocketBible.com server
• User data backup/restore to iPocketBible.com server
• Screen brightness setting (Dim the screen for reading at night independent of the backlight setting)
• Multiple panes (Two for iPhone, five for iPad. View multiple books simultaneously, or multiple passages in the same book)
• Decreased page-loading time (thus launch time)
• Splash screen now covers window drawing, then fades (OK, not exactly a feature, but it’s cool)
• Gradiated title bars
• Calculator-style go-to for Bibles (Select the book, then use numeric pad to enter chapter and verse)
• Notes list now shows excerpt of note instead of excerpt of verse
• Improved error messages when nothing is found as the result of a search. Try to tell you how to fix it.
• Updated help

iPAD

• Control panel (Keeps search results and lists of notes, highlights and bookmarks available all the time.)
  • Library search (All searches search your entire library, not just the active book)
  • Notes search (Search your notes using Boolean operators, just like you search the Bible)
  • Book notes (Add notes to non-Bibles)
  • Edit note while using program (Makes it easier to copy/paste verses into your notes)
  • View search results, lists of highlights/bookmarks while using program
  • Lock panes so they don’t sync to content movement (Handy while writing notes or following cross-references out of a search)
• Additional margin and leading in single-book view (Makes for a pleasant reading experience)
• Bk/Ch/Vs go-to has bigger buttons for iPad; laid out 10 buttons wide
• Removed “lock rotation” setting. iPad has a hardware switch for this.
• New title bar style

I’ll post more screen shots and videos this week. Your patience will pay off in the end.

Our RomansRoad eTract for iPhone has been updated for full iPad compatibility. If you already use RomansRoad on your iPhone or iPad, iTunes will notify you that the update is available.

When the new iPad SDK (software development kit) was released, I used the RomansRoad project as a means to learn and experiment with some of the new features provided on the iPad. Since the RomansRoad is a relatively simple application, it proved to be an ideal platform for learning and experimenting with some of the new capabilities and preparing for our PocketBible update to support the iPad. In fact, the RomansRoad eTract has been iPad compatible since before the iPad launch date, but due to some hiccups with the submission process and the fact that we’ve been so busy making PocketBible for iPhone/iPad so awesome, it’s just now available.

RomansRoad is what’s called a “universal binary”, which means that the same program runs on an iPhone or an iPad, though the features on each may differ. (For instance, on the iPad, a table of contents is shown when the iPad is rotated into a landscape orientation.) Since it is a universal binary, you won’t look for “RomansRoad eTract for iPhone” and “RomansRoad eTract for iPad” on the AppStore. You’ll just look for “RomansRoad eTract.”

Frankly, I find that the RomansRoad eTract is much more visually appealing on an iPhone than on the iPad. However, the truth of the gospel transcends the glitzy appearance (or lack thereof)!

The RomansRoad eTract is available on the Apple AppStore.

I’ve uploaded a video preview of PocketBible for iPad to YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/laridianinc. Because the video resolution isn’t as good as the iPad screen resolution, I’ve reproduced some representative screen shots below. Click on the screen shot to see the full-resolution image.

Nearly full-page casual reading mode with increased line leading and margins. Tool bar and title bar can be removed if you really, really have to see one more line of text.

Control panel provides quick access to search results, highlights, bookmarks, notes, and eventually more features. Control panel follows home button as iPad is rotated and can be removed in portrait mode.

PocketBible for iPad quickly searches your entire library at one time and displays number of hits per book. Select a book to see list of results; select a result to see it in context in the book. Control panel shown expanded.

View a list of all your highlights, or all highlights in a particular color in your entire library. Similarly, you can see a list of all bookmarks or all bookmarks in a particular category.

Easily choose a different font and size. Dim the display for reading at night.

Split the screen to show two Bibles side-by-side. Bibles track each other — as you move through one, the other moves to the same verse.

Open a commentary beside a Bible and the two are synchronized. As you view a verse in the Bible, the commentary follows along.

Split the screen into up to five windows.

We reserve the right to make changes to the user interface (UI) and to functionality before we ship. In fact, there are a few things still in flux and at least one major feature that hasn’t been plugged into the new UI yet. So expect changes from what you see here.

We’re especially excited about the flexibility the control panel gives us for new features and for giving you instant access to search results and bookmarks. We also have enjoyed just reading the Bible in full-screen mode.

While the iPad is faster than the iPhone, we’ve also made changes to the code that have really sped up the display of text, making scrolling by verses and even chapters significantly more useful. The nice thing is that the iPhone and iPad code is the same at this level so the improvements will spill over to the iPhone.

Having said that, it should be obvious that not all the features of PocketBible for iPad will find their way to the iPhone. We’ll probably add split-screen, but not more than two windows.

One thing we’re concerned about is app approval times on the App Store. We submitted Romans Road for release on the April 3 iPad release date. We followed Apple’s instructions for making sure our app was available on April 3, but then we never heard anything further from them so we’re not sure what the status of that app is. We’ve heard the same thing from other developers.

We don’t have a schedule for releasing this version of PocketBible yet. As you can see it’s very nearly complete but there are some big features that need to be plugged in.

With the WiFi iPads shipping for delivery in less than a week, I thought we should update you on our status.

Today (March 27) is the last day to submit apps to the App Store and be guaranteed they’ll be available on the iPad App Store on its official release date (April 3). For a while that was our goal, but as time went on we realized it would be in everyone’s best interest if we had a chance to see what PocketBible looked like on the actual hardware. The emulator we run on our Macs is good, but it’s not the real hardware. We’re concerned about performance and simple things like the usability of the user interface, given that we can’t really tell how big our buttons are or what it’s going to “feel” like on a real device until we have one in our hands.

So, we won’t release a product to the App Store until we have a chance to see it running on real hardware. So that means sometime after April 3.

The great thing about the iPad is that it runs our iPhone code pretty much as-is. The bad thing is that it runs our iPhone code as-is. The experience of running an iPhone app on the iPad will be less than optimum, but it at least will give the iPad a couple hundred thousand apps on day one. Ideally, every iPhone developer will be customizing their apps for the iPad, and that’s what we’ve been doing.

While the iPad is a mobile device, it has the screen real estate of a desktop or laptop device (1024 x 768). That means while we’re using our iPhone code as a base, we have to think like we’re developing for the desktop. Not a desktop computer with a mouse and a real keyboard, though, but a desktop computer you operate with your fingers and type on a pop-up keyboard. So the interface is an interesting intersection of desktop and mobile paradigms.

So what will be new or different on the iPad? First, You’ll have plenty of space on the screen for some controls to be present all the time, just like on your desktop where menus and toolbars are generally always there. This makes it easier and more intuitive to get around.

Second, the bigger screen means there’s room to split the screen and show you more than one book at a time if you want.

Third, we’ve taken advantage of this opportunity to add a frequently requested feature: The ability to search your entire library at one time. The larger screen means there’s room to give you both a search results browser and a library browser at the same time. We think this is going to be a great addition to the program.

Finally, you can expect changes to how you open books and navigate within books. It should take fewer touches to find your way around your library.

We’ll post some more details as we get closer to releasing the product. With the actual release of the iPad itself coming up, we just wanted to give you some advance notice of what’s coming. We think you’re going to like it.

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.

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.”)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As I said before, I anticipated we’d have problems getting PocketBible for iPhone through the approval process at the App Store. It’s a complicated app for one thing, and Apple’s approval process has a bit of a checkered reputation for another.

Late last night we were notified that PocketBible was being rejected. The issue was a misunderstanding about how PocketBible works. We immediately submitted an explanation, added details on how they can access “help” from within the program, and resubmitted the application.

I don’t believe this puts us at the end of the approval queue, but even if it does it only took a week for them to look at the program.

So I’m expecting our next rejection within a week.

We’re at one week since submitting the app to the App Store and I want to answer a few questions that have come up in email and in the comments.

• We will not get any feedback from Apple until/unless the app is approved. The current status is “In Review” and that’s all we’ll know until they actually either approve or decline it. If they decline it, they’ll tell us why and tell us what to do to fix it. We don’t have any reason to believe they won’t approve it, or if they find problems, that they won’t approve it eventually.
• We appreciate your offers to give us donations to cover the cost of development. We’ve thought about formalizing that process but at the same time you can “donate” by simply not using our discount codes when you place an order for add-on books. We’re embarrassed to even suggest such a thing and are humbled by your generosity.
• We will be having some kind of site-wide sale once the new product is approved on the App Store. We’ll send an email out to current customers and probably post something here in the blog. If you’re interested in building your library, that will be a good time to do it.
• You will have access to all your current Bibles and reference books from inside PocketBible for iPhone. I’m not sure how to make this more clear. Take a look at the first video here. All I’m doing is logging into my existing account using my customer ID and password (you can also use your email address instead of customer ID if you don’t know it). Once I’m logged in, I see a list of everything I’ve previously purchased for any platform. I can download any of those titles to the iPhone.
• Memorize!, DailyReader for Palm OS, and the old PrayerPartner for Palm OS are programs, not reference books, and won’t be included in the titles you can download for iPhone. We have not announced our plans for a version of Memorize! or PrayerPartner for the iPhone. The features of DailyReader are built into PocketBible and will be enhanced in future releases of PocketBible for iPhone.
• MyBible users will probably have the biggest transition to make. As you might know, MyBible was written by an outside developer who was a Palm employee at the time. We marketed it on his behalf. At the same time, we developed PocketBible for Windows Mobile in-house. It was the original product that Jeff Wheeler and I wrote starting back in 1998 and which motivated us to leave Parsons Technology in late 1998/early 1999 together with Jim VanDuzer to start Laridian. PocketBible for iPhone is based on the Windows Mobile code base and overall philosophy of operation. The differences are subtle but you may notice them. For example, MyBible lets you highlight a single letter in a word. PocketBible highlights entire verses.
• Remember, this is version 1.0.0. Other versions are coming. If you don’t see a favorite feature, tell us about it, then wait. We’ll be constantly working on updates for the next few months. Those of you who got involved in iPocketBible.com in the very early stages remember that we issued updates every couple of weeks for a few months as we rounded out the feature list. We’ll be doing the same thing with PocketBible for iPhone.
• If you can find it in your hearts, give us a nice review. Early reviews are important. If you can do us the favor of complaining to us directly by email instead of through your reviews on the App Store, that would be great. We’re going to do everything we can to be responsive and make sure PocketBible for iPhone is everything you want it to be. If people express their complaints through App Store reviews instead of directly to us, the product could fail before we have the opportunity to finish it.
• We haven’t forgotten Windows Mobile. There will be a new release of WM next year and we currently plan to revisit PocketBible for Windows Mobile sometime before then and release an update. Nothing firm yet.

That’s it for now. I just checked and there’s no change in the status of the app as of this morning. I’m sure one of you will probably spot it before I do.

Just a quick note to let you know we released Beta 5 to the testers tonight. We consider this a true release candidate. In other words, if the testers don’t find anything wrong, there’s nothing left to do before it goes to Apple. (Nothing, that is, other than changing the version number and putting the official program icon into the program, which hasn’t been finished yet.)

We expect the beta testers will find some things that need to be fixed.

Apple is reporting that most apps are approved within two weeks based on the current volume of submissions. Since this is our first submission, we expect it to come back with things we need to fix before it can be accepted.

We appreciate your patience more than you know. We also want to remind you that once this version is released we will be following it with several updates in rapid succession to round out the feature list. So stick with us through 1.0.0 and your favorite features from our other programs will show up fairly quickly.

I put a link to these videos in my last post but some of you may have missed it since I edited an existing blog article.

I’ve posted some videos of PocketBible for the iPhone in action on our YouTube channel. You can view those videos here.

These videos were created while running the program in the iPhone Simulator on the Mac. It makes for a nice video but the program runs faster on a Mac than it does on the actual device.

I told you a few weeks ago I’d let you know when Beta 3 of PocketBible for iPhone went to the testers, but I forgot to do that. I’m here this evening to let you know that Beta 4 went out the door a few minutes ago.

Click here for a few videos showing PocketBible for iPhone in action.

I think the program is coming together well and we’re down to tasks like writing the documentation. One of the cool things about the iPhone app is that the documentation is “just another book” inside the program. So as we revise the User Guide, our testers just go to the “Add/Remove Books” function of the program and grab the latest version from our server. It is downloaded directly into the program.

Back in January we asked our Alpha testers, “Would you rather that we release the program as soon as possible but perhaps missing a few features, or wait until we’re completely done before releasing it?” They were very vocal in their opinion that we should get something out ASAP. So we’re going to be asking that you bear with us just a bit through the first 3-4 updates of the program once we release it to the App Store. Version 1.0.0 will be missing a few features that we fully intend to have in the program. In fact, by the time Apple approves 1.0.0 we’ll probably already have 1.0.1 ready to upload to the App Store with the additional features. I anticipate doing this very regularly for 3-4 versions until the program gets its full set of features.

This is not to say that the first release won’t be a useful program. It will support all our Bibles and reference books but will be missing a few things like note taking and tracking your devotional reading progress. Those features will come quickly after the initial version is released.

Thanks for your patience and prayers. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s looking less and less like an oncoming train.

It’s been a long six weeks since we released Beta 1 of our native version of PocketBible for iPhone. At the time I said we were expecting the beta period to be short. Needless to say I was wrong.

A Wrench in the Works

Two major things happened to really slow us down. First, we have been really struggling to get adequate performance out of our code to allow you to be able to smoothly scroll through the Bible like you would a Web page in Safari on the iPhone. Safari has the advantage of being able to render the entire page. Once that is done, scrolling around on it — even zooming in and out — is pretty easy with the features of the iPhone OS. In our case, however, we can’t render the entire Bible while you wait. We have to load it into memory in pieces. Unfortunately, computers can only do one thing at once and while it was busy loading the next chunk of text it needed to display, the scrolling would get clunky. It wouldn’t keep up with your finger motions.

We actually got to the point where it was working pretty well. We were loading text in a separate thread and drawing during otherwise idle times (say, while the graphics processor was busy animating the motion of the text). But then we installed the OS 3 SDK and things fell apart.

We couldn’t afford to take the time to figure out how and why the new version was causing us problems. Suffice to say that the particular functionality we were taking advantage of was rewritten for version 3, and in so doing the handling of touch events changed in ways that may not be significant to some applications but were significant to us.

As a simple example, when you’re tracking a touch event, the system can send you a “cancel” message. This means the phone is ringing or some other event has happened and your program needs to stop what it’s doing and let something more important take over. Well, with version 3 we’d be happily tracking a touch event and suddenly we’d get a “cancel” message. It seems the system was watching the touch events and had decided that the touches weren’t doing anything it cared about, so it told us to cancel our handling of those events. We could’ve ignored the “cancel” message (knowing it was just the OS trying to take over touch handling) but since the “cancel” message also means “really — the phone is ringing — you need to stop right now” we couldn’t afford to make that assumption.

Anyway, the end result was we threw out about six months worth of work and in about a day I coded a replacement that doesn’t depend on a lot of fancy background threads, idle-time drawing, or system touch event handling. The new user interface is simple, practical, and best of all — it’s done.

As if That Wasn’t Enough…

So as we’re recovering from that crisis, the 3GS is released. Now, when you’re developing for the iPhone there are some strict procedures you have to follow to install your program on your phone. Apple wants to make sure all program distribution happens through the App Store, so they limit how many devices you can install your app on outside the App Store. Every time we distribute a beta version (or even one of our own builds we do internally and install on our own phones) we have to identify exactly which phones it will run on. Apple lets us install on no more than 100 devices outside the App Store.

To manage this, developers maintain a list of “unique device ID’s” (UDIDs) in their account on the Apple Web site. Each phone as a UDID that uniquely identifies it. We ask all of our beta testers for their UDIDs and enter those at the Apple site. When we distribute a new build we request a certificate from Apple that contains all the UDIDs we want the program to run on.

So as I was saying, the 3GS was released. Jeff bought one for us to test with. A bunch of our beta testers bought them. So anticipating the release of Beta 2, I started collecting all these new UDIDs so I could update our account on the Apple site and create the new distribution certificate with everyone’s new UDID in it. I got about half way through entering them and the site told me I couldn’t enter any more. It said I had already used my 100 devices.

I only had 82 devices in my list. Turns out when you change someone’s UDID it counts as a new device. I had added 85 devices, deleted 3, and made 15 changes. When you delete a device you don’t get its “slot” back, so from Apple’s perspective the total was 100.

After several email, support forum, and telephone conversations with Apple and other developers, we concluded that we were out of luck. We had to wait until our annual program renewed on July 12. At that time, Apple said our device count would reset. We could delete all our devices and start over. But once we started adding devices, we were stuck with those for a year.

One thing that meant is that we couldn’t have 82 beta testers. We needed to cut the list dramatically. I wanted to get down around 40 testers. That would allow us to add some people over the next year and have room for device upgrades. We should be able to struggle through until Apple figures out that its developers aren’t trying to rip it off; we’re just trying to test our software.

So last week we sent out an email “firing” about half our testers. It wasn’t pleasant, but we had to do it. I think we have a pretty good group left. I can tell they’re good because I disagree with them most of the time. It’s good to be challenged to look at things a new way, and these folks are definitely keeping us honest.

Beta 2 Features

There are some notable features in Beta 2 that the testers will be looking at over the next week or two. These include:

• Easily navigate to the next/previous page, chapter, or verse using simple taps and gestures.
• Rotate between open books and Bibles with a tap or a swipe.
• Hide all controls including the system status bar for full-screen reading, while having instant access to all the controls with a tap.
• Search for words, phrases, and combinations of words using Boolean logic. Limit searches to any passage, book of the Bible, or range of books. Limit searches to only verses you’ve highlighted in a particular color or bookmarked in a particular category.
• Add books from your Laridian account. Purchase books at our Web site and download them directly into PocketBible. Remove books as needed to free up memory (just download and install them any time you need them again).
• Select from any installed font and font sizes from 8 to 72 points.
• Lots of customization options, and many more features….

What’s Next?

There will be at least one more beta version before we submit PocketBible to the App Store. We’ll post an article like this one when Beta 3 is released, and another article when we send PocketBible to the App Store.

Once submitted, it will take a while for Apple to approve it. They might send it back and ask us to make changes. There’s no way of knowing how long that process will take. Sometimes it takes just a few days or a couple weeks. Other times it takes six months by the time you make all the changes they want and submit version after version for review. We don’t anticipate it will take that long but we have no way of knowing.

Any Bibles or books you buy today for any platform will be accessible from PocketBible for iPhone.

The new version of MyBible now supports HTML tags. PocketBible for Windows Mobile and Windows desktop also support HTML tags. This gives you some very nice formatting options.

HTML is a “mark-up language” that allows you to control text formatting by inserting special “tags” in the text. For example, to make a word bold you just put <b> before the word and </b> after the word. This simple example demonstrates the basics of HTML: You have an “open” tag at the beginning (<b>) and a “close” tag at the end (</b>). Both tags are surrounded by less-than and greater-than (< and >). The closing tag has a slash after the less-than (</). The “name” of the tag is “b” in this case.

Remember you can always just type plain text notes in PocketBible or MyBible. There’s no need to worry about HTML tags. But if you want to do some more sophisticated notes, you have that ability if you learn a little HTML.

Ordered Lists

Outlines start with the concept of an ordered list. An ordered list is simply a list with numbers. By creating an ordered list instead of just numbering your items manually, you can re-order the items by using cut-and-paste because there are no numbers actually in the list — the numbers are created by the program when it displays your list.

Ordered lists start with <ol> and end with </ol>. In between those tags are “list items”. List items are the items in your list. They start with <li> and end with </li>. So a simple ordered list would look like this in the note editor:

<ol>
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
</ol>

Notice that the list has an open and close tag and each list item has an open and close tag. When you view this note it will look like this:

1. Light
2. Separation of water
3. Dry ground; plants
4. Sun and moon
5. Fish and birds
6. Land animals and humans

Note that there were no numbers in the original text above, but when you view it in PocketBible/MyBible the numbers are automatically inserted.

List Attributes

Before showing you an outline, let me point out a useful feature of ordered lists. HTML tags have names (we’ve seen “b”, “ol” and “li”). They also have “attributes”. An attribute is an optional feature of the tag that controls its appearance. One attribute of the <ol> tag is “type”. We use the type attribute to tell the <ol> tag what numbering system we want to use. If we say “type=A” we’ll get upper case letters instead of numbers. “type=a” gives us lower case letters; “type=I” and “type=”i” are Roman numerals, upper and lower case, respectively. So here’s the same list as above, but with Roman numerals:

<ol type="I">
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
</ol>

When rendered in PocketBible/MyBible you’ll see:

1. Light
2. Separation of water
3. Dry ground; plants
4. Sun and moon
5. Fish and birds
6. Land animals and humans

Note one of the advantages of using ordered lists instead of just manually numbering your items: You can make a small change to the <ol> tag and it completely changes how the list is numbered.

Sublists Within a List Item

We now have all the tools we need to create outlines except for one small thing: We need to know that list items can actually contain other lists. That is, instead of a list item being some text like “Separation of water” it can actually contain an entire ordered list. We still have to be careful to include the open and close tag for each ordered list and each list item, and this can get confusing. But if you’re careful it’s not hard to get good at it. Here’s a simple example of including a list inside a list item:

<ol type="I">
<li>Seven Days of Creation
<ol type="A">
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
</ol> (This is the end of the sublist under “Seven Days of Creation”)
</li> (This is the end of the list item “Seven Days of Creation”)
</ol> (This is the end of the main list)

Note that we don’t close the “Seven Days of Creation” list item until the end of the list that is under it. This is important and is what makes the outline work correctly. If you type the above into PocketBible/MyBible (without the italicized comments at the end) this is what you’ll see:

1. Seven Days of Creation
   
   1. Light
   2. Separation of water
   3. Dry ground; plants
   4. Sun and moon
   5. Fish and birds
   6. Land animals and humans

Outlines

We now have everything to create a complex outline. Here is the code you would type into the note editor, followed by what it looks like when fully rendered:

<ol type="I">
<li>The Account of Creation (Gen 1:1-2:4)
<ol type="A">
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
<li>God rests</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The Man and Woman in Eden
<ol type="A">
<li>Garden of Eden
<ol type="1">
<li>The conditions before
<ol type="a">
<li>No plants</li>
<li>No rain</li>
<li>No people</li>
<li>Springs came up to water the ground</li>
</ol></li>
<li>God plants a garden
<ol type="a">
<li>Where: In the East</li>
<li>Puts the man there</li>
<li>Fruit trees</li>
<li>Tree of Life</li>
<li>Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The river
<ol type="a">
<li>Flows out of Eden</li>
<li>Four branches
<ol type="i">
<li>Pishon</li>
<li>Gihon</li>
<li>Tigris</li>
<li>Euphrates</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>The Man and Woman
<ol type="1">
<li>Their purpose
<ol type="a">
<li>Tend it</li>
<li>Watch over it</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The warning
<ol type="a">
<li>Eat freely except...</li>
<li>Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil</li>
<li>Eat its fruit = death</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The helper
<ol type="a">
<li>Man was alone; not good</li>
<li>Animal parade</li>
<li>Man sleeps</li>
<li>God creates woman from his rib</li>
<li>Man happy</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>The Man and Woman Sin</li>
<li>Etc.....</li>
</ol>

1. The Account of Creation (Gen 1:1-2:4)
   
   1. Light
   2. Separation of water
   3. Dry ground; plants
   4. Sun and moon
   5. Fish and birds
   6. Land animals and humans
   7. God rests
2. The Man and Woman in Eden
   
   1. Garden of Eden
      
      1. The conditions before
         
         1. No plants
         2. No rain
         3. No people
         4. Springs came up to water the ground
      2. God plants a garden
         
         1. Where: In the East
         2. Puts the man there
         3. Fruit trees
         4. Tree of Life
         5. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
      3. The river
         
         1. Flows out of Eden
         2. Four branches
            
            1. Pishon
            2. Gihon
            3. Tigris
            4. Euphrates

   2. The Man and Woman
      
      1. Their purpose
         
         1. Tend it
         2. Watch over it
      2. The warning
         
         1. Eat freely except…
         2. Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
         3. Eat its fruit = death
      3. The helper
         
         1. Man was alone; not good
         2. Animal parade
         3. Man sleeps
         4. God creates woman from his rib
         5. Man happy
3. The Man and Woman Sin
4. Etc…..

MyBible has been updated to version 5.003. It includes the following updates.

1. A customer contacted us to report a problem while using Graffiti Anywhere on a Treo. MyBible’s Graffiti Go To feature could not be used with Graffiti Anywhere. We were able to determine why Graffiti Anywhere was aborting Graffiti Go To, and make provision for it. So, MyBible 5.003 is now compatible with the program Graffiti Anywhere.
2. Some TX users reported that the device reset when tapping a verse hyperlink in books such as commentaries. We were able to determine that the TX model uses some of the memory dedicated to MyBible, and resolve this error.

This is a recommended update for TX users and anyone that uses or wants to use the Graffiti Anywhere product.

Registered owners of MyBible 5 can download this free update. As always, just login to your personal download account at www.laridian.com to download your purchases and any available updates.

As a reminder, remember that technical support questions should be addressed at the Laridian help desk (and not as a comment to this blog article). Also, many common questions are already answered in the knowledge base, so you may find what you’re looking for there.

MyBible 5 has been updated to address two suggestions from our customers.

One consistent request related to the new MyBible 5 has been to make the autoscroll feature smoother, rather than line-by-line. MyBible 5.002 includes a new option to turn on smooth scrolling, which “slides” the text up the screen rather than jumping from line to line. Depending upon the speed of your handheld, the autoscroll rate you’ve selected, the number of notes you’ve written, and other factors, there may be slight pauses as MyBible considers how to fill in the text. However, the scrolling effect is quite visually pleasing.

(If you prefer the line-by-line scrolling, that option is still available.)

A second, though less-frequent, request was for the option to turn off images within books. Many of the newer books include some wonderful pictures and illustrations; however, these can take some time to load. When time is of the essence, all images can now be turned off so that you’ll never have to wait for a picture to load.

Registered owners of MyBible 5 can download this free update. As always, just login to your personal download account at www.laridian.com to download your purchases and any available updates.

It’s about time I got around to writing an article about PocketBible 4. It’s been a busy week.

On Tuesday we released an upgrade for both PocketBible for Pocket PC and PocketBible for Windows Mobile Smartphone. In order to reduce confusion about whether you have a Smartphone, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Standard, or Windows Mobile Professional device, we put both programs into one installer and called it PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile. Regardless of the type of Windows Mobile device you have, this product should work for you.

PocketBible for Windows Mobile should work on all Pocket PC’s back to Pocket PC 2000, including PocketPC 2002, 2003, and 2003SE. It works on the new Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. It works on the old Windows Mobile Smartphone 2002 and 2003. It works on any device that calls itself Windows Mobile Classic, Standard, or Professional.

Our excitement over reducing the confusion was short-lived. The problem now is that since the feature set is different between the two programs (PocketBible 4 for Pocket PC has a few more features than PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile Smartphone, to use the older device names), you all are looking at the features of one and deciding that’s what you want, then you’re confused when you install to your device only to discover you have a different feature set. All I can say is read carefully.

Jeff has written a good article on how to tell the difference between the different devices. It’s really quite simple: Just ask yourself, “Does my device have a touch-screen?” and “Is my device a phone?” Based on those answers, here’s what you have:

• Has a touchscreen, no phone: Windows Mobile Classic (it’s a Pocket PC)
• Has a touchscreen, is a phone: Windows Mobile Professional (it’s a Pocket PC Phone Edition)
• No touchscreen, but it is a phone: Windows Mobile Standard (it’s a Windows Mobile Smartphone)
• No touchscreen, no phone: Ummm… it’s a BlackBerry without a service plan? An iPod? A pencil?

You can tell which version of PocketBible is going to be installed on your device based on whether or not it has a touchscreen. If it has a touchscreen, you’ll get “PocketBible for Windows Mobile Classic/Professional/Pocket PC”. This is the one with the most features. If you don’t have a touchscreen you’ll get “PocketBible for Windows Mobile Smartphone”. This is the one that could be argued is the most improved. The previous version only let you view Bibles and didn’t have the ability to do notes, highlights, or bookmarks. It was pretty basic. The new version gives you access to commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, and all the rest of our books. Plus it has notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress.

The most common problems we’re seeing are mostly questions related to ordering and installing. For example: “Will PocketBible 4 work with my existing books or do I need to re-purchase or update them?” If you’re upgrading from PocketBible 3, there’s no need to update your books. If you’re upgrading from PocketBible 2 you don’t need to re-purchase your books but you do need to update them. In both cases there are articles in our Knowledgebase to help you upgrade.

We’re hoping to post some videos of PocketBible 4 both as marketing and tutorial tools. I think if you can see features like the customizable toolbar and maximized windows in action it will give you a better idea of how these can improve your Bible study experience.

Finally, a few of you have written to say you didn’t get our upgrade offer. We’ve identified a few thousand customers that did not get our initial email and we’ll be re-sending to those customers on Tuesday. In the meantime, if you want to upgrade just contact tech support to get the appropriate priority code. You can reach tech support through our Web site.

With the recent release of PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, we have also released the PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider. This synchronization provider allows data synchronization between PocketBible for Windows and PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, including Windows Mobile Classic (Pocket PC), Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) and Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC Phone).

(This synchronization provider also supports PocketBible 3 for Pocket PC.)

Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) owners not already using PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile will need to upgrade to PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile in order to take advantage of these synchronization features.

The PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider is free. Visit the Synchronization Providers product information page for additional details.

Note to users of the PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider

The PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider is an update and replacement to the now obsolete PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider. If you have previously installed the PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider, you can continue to use this synchronization provider. In fact, the PocketBible for Pocket PC synchronization provider will synchronize data with a Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) device; it will just refer to that device as a Pocket PC.

If and when you choose to update to the newer PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider, then you should first remove / uninstall the PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider before you install the PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider.

Our PocketBible for Windows program has been updated to version 1.009. This update, which coincides with the release of our PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, provides two bug fixes:

1. After synchronizing personal data, if a highlighted verse was displayed and that highlight was removed due to synchronization, then the verse still showed highlighted until it was returned to at a later time. The highlight is now immediately removed.
2. A bug related to restoring history from a previous session was corrected. This bug affected few people, but those that it did effect had to delete the history and start over. This has been corrected.

This release also contains many “under the hood” changes related to the release of PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile. You shouldn’t notice any of these changes.

This is a free update. Registered owners of PocketBible for Windows can download the updated version from their Laridian download accounts.

Customers using PocketBible on a USB key can install this update to their hard drive, then copy PocketBible.exe and PocketBible.chm to the USB key.