By the time you read this, PocketBible 2 for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch should be available in the App Store. It introduces several new features and a new pricing scheme.

Quick Summary for the Horribly Impatient

PocketBible 2 is called “PocketBible” in the App Store. It is a free download. PocketBible 1 (“PocketBible FREE” in the App Store) is no longer available in the App Store. YOU MUST DOWNLOAD THE NEW POCKETBIBLE FROM THE APP STORE IN ORDER TO GET THE ADVANCED FEATURES MENTIONED BELOW. Some of you are trying use the feature set upgrade on the old PocketBible FREE 1.4.7. That won’t work. You must download the new PocketBible from the App store in order to get the advanced features mentioned below. There’s a link to PocketBible 2 in the next paragraph.

Click here to download the new version of PocketBible. (NOTE: Do not skip this step!)

The free version of PocketBible 2 has pretty much the same features as PocketBible 1.4.7 (one exception is described below). To get the new features, you need to purchase the “Advanced Feature Set” either at our website ($4.99) or through In-App Purchase inside the app ($5.99).

After you purchase the upgrade at our website, go to “Buy/Apply Upgrade” inside the app to apply the upgrade and enable the advanced features. You must provide your Laridian login credentials during this step so the program can find your purchase on our website.

If you have notes, highlights, bookmarks, or devotional reading progress you want to preserve, you need to move that data to your new copy of PocketBible using the process described below (and also in the built-in help). To get your Bibles and books into the new version, you need to simply download them using Menu > Add/Remove Books.

All PocketBible users should switch to the new version even if you don’t upgrade to the Advanced Feature Set. The old version of PocketBible will not be updated and has been removed from the App Store.

New Features in Free Version

The free version of PocketBible 2 has essentially the same features as PocketBible 1.4.7. The only significant new feature in the free version is related to expanding the Toolbox. In version 1, the expanded toolbox covered the Bible text. When we first implemented the expanding Toolbox, we figured it would be a temporary action. However, we’ve found that we prefer to have the Toolbox expanded while entering notes, and it’s inconvenient to have to collapse it to view the BIble text. So now PocketBible moves the active pane to the empty space above/below/next to the expanded Toolbox. And if the keyboard obscures part of the pane, the pane is shrunk again to fit in the available space.

All PocketBible users should switch to PocketBible 2. Version 1 has been removed from the App Store and won’t be updated. To make sure you get the latest bug fixes and updates, you should make the switch now to version 2 even if you’re not planning to purchase the Advanced Feature Set. This unfortunate circumstance is the result of the way Apple has us sign and identify applications.

Advanced Features

To access the advanced features in PocketBible 2, you need to purchase the “Advanced Feature Set” — either inside the app for $5.99 or directly on our website for $4.99. Advanced features include:

• Automatic verse studies. Select a verse and PocketBible prepares an HTML or plain-text document chock full of information about that verse from your Library. This file can be viewed from within PocketBible, transferred to your Windows or Mac computer through iTunes, printed using AirPrint, or copied and pasted to an email. Each Verse Autostudy report includes:
  • The text of the selected verse from all your Bibles (you choose which ones)
  • The text of the selected verse with Strong’s numbers (if you own one of our Bibles with Strong’s numbers)
  • The definition of each English word in the verse from all of your dictionaries (you choose which ones)
  • The definition of each Strong’s word number from your Strong’s dictionaries (you choose which ones)
  • Commentary on the verse from all your commentaries (you choose which ones)
  • Cross references from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (if you have it installed)
• Automatic word studies. Select a word and PocketBible prepares a similar HTML document, this time with information about the selected word. Each Word Autostudy report includes:
  • Definition of the selected word from all of your dictionaries (you choose which ones)
  • A summary of search results from selected Bibles (you choose which ones)
  • A list of related Strong’s numbers (original language words translated to the selected word)
  • Definitions of the related Strong’s word numbers (you select which Strong’s dictionaries)
• Synthesized voices read any Bible or book to you. Purchase a voice from a selection of six English and three Spanish voices, and PocketBible will read to you! Works with any of your Bibles or other books, does not require an internet connection once the voice is installed, and takes only about 50MB-75MB (compared to
  4000MB for a pre-recorded audio Bible). Start a playlist of hymns and have PocketBible read to you from the Psalms for an inspiring time of daily devotions. Or have PocketBible read while you do other tasks on your iPad. No other mobile Bible program can do all that.
• New tabbed view. Both iPhone and iPad now support up to five panes (iPhone was previously only two panes) and you can choose to view five full-screen tabs instead of splitting the screen into panes. Just select a tab to view the books open in that tab.
• Automatically open all your books into tabs. PocketBible will open Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, and “other” books each into their own tabs for easy access to your entire library.
• AirPrint support (iOS 4.2 or later). Print Autostudy reports, passages, or selected text to your AirPrint-capable printer.
• Improved text selection. Drag through any text to select it. Copy, print, speak, or perform other operations on the selected text. Uses familiar iOS interface components (such as the magnifying glass and lollipop-shaped “drag handles”). (This seems obvious but we had to implement them from scratch as Apple doesn’t expose those components to developers, so it seems worth mentioning.)
• Highlight selected verses. Highlight more than one verse at a time by dragging through any portion of the verses, then select “Highlight selected verses”. You can’t highlight portions of a verse, but you can highlight more than one verse at a time.

Apple Changed the Rules

As many of you know, Apple now requires that ebook apps like ours must not link to a website for add-on book sales, but must use Apple’s In-App Purchasing (IAP) capability and pay Apple 30% of each sale for doing little more than processing a credit card (which costs them about 3%). Amazon responded to this by entirely removing all links to their website from their Kindle app. We opted to implement Apple’s IAP but at a slightly higher price to offset Apple’s fee. (You’ll pay on average about 17.6% more for a book you buy using IAP vs. purchasing direct on our site, which results in us splitting the 30% fee 50/50. The proof is left for the reader.)

This would have very little consequence except that PocketBible 1.4.7 was created in a way that prevented it from ever using IAP. As a result, version 2 could not simply be a new version of the existing “PocketBible FREE” application. Instead it had to be a separate product. This is confusing for those of you upgrading from version 1, but should not be a problem in the future.

Moving Your Notes, Highlights, Bookmarks and Daily Reading Progress to the New Program

Since PocketBible 2 is a different program than PocketBIble 1, you will need to move any notes, highlights, bookmarks, and daily reading progress that you want to keep from PocketBible 1. Again, this is only necessary if you have data you want to preserve. To do that:

• Launch the old version of PocketBible. Verify it’s the old one by looking at the version number at the bottom of the menu. Next to “About PocketBible” it should say “1.x.x” (the latest version is 1.4.7).
• Choose Menu > Manage My Data.
• Enter your Laridian login credentials and select either “Sync My Data With Server” (if you’ve been sync’ing your data with the server in the past) or “Back Up My Data To Server”. Note that if you have been keeping your data in sync with the server and you know it is up to date, you can skip this step.
• When that is complete, exit PocketBible and launch the new PocketBible program.
• Verify you are in the new PocketBible program by going to the bottom of the menu. Next to “About PocketBible” it should say “2.0.0″ (or later).
• If you have not yet registered, do so now. (You’ll see “Register PocketBible” near the top of the menu if you haven’t registered.)
• Choose Menu > Manage My Data.
• Enter your Laridian login credentials and select either “Sync My Data With Server” (if that’s what you did in version 1) or Restore From a Backup (if you used “Back Up My Data To Server” above). If you are restoring from a back up, you’ll be presented with a list of backup sets. Find the section labelled with the name of your device followed by “com.laridian.PocketBible” and choose the top item from that list (the most recent backup).
• When that is complete, you have transferred your personal notes, highlights, etc. to PocketBible 2. You can remove the old PocketBible program from your device and download Bibles and reference books into PocketBIble 2.

Some Screen Shots

Here are some quick screen shots to give you an idea of some of the new and improved features.