Welcome to iOS 7, goodbye to some old friends

As you surely know by now, Apple recently updated it’s operating system to iOS 7. While the update has been controversial, it’s certainly been incredibly successful in terms of numbers of users that have updated… In fact, it’s probably fair to say that if you’re reading this you’ve already updated…

While some users have complained that it’s just a cosmetic change, there’s actually quite a lot of things that have changed underneath as well – things that have broken many of the apps we all use everyday, including some of our own.

Whenever Apple updates iOS it invariably causes problems with older apps and as a developer, you’re faced with the task of tracking down what’s gone wrong and fixing it. This isn’t always an easy task (especially if the original programmer has moved on) and as iOS has become increasingly complex, we now find some users reporting bugs that we can’t even reproduce, let alone fix.

So this time, we made the difficult decision to remove any apps that didn’t seem to be working properly rather than update them. The time and expense involved just couldn’t be justified, especially since Apple changed the rules regarding App updates. It used to be that an updated app would jump back to the top of the new releases list (which meant a little spike in sales for your efforts) but too many developers were abusing that by releasing ‘fake’ updates… So now, updating our apps has no impact on sales whatsoever – which would be OK if current sales were high enough to cover the cost, but in reality they aren’t.

Apps that have been put out of their misery are: Playlist Alarm Clock, RandomPlay, MyCal, NightTime Plus, PlaySafe and Juiced. We’re sad to see them go, but it’s also nice to know that we don’t have to worry about them anymore…

RandomPlay. Live at last!

With all the excitement of the iPad launch last night we nearly didn’t notice that RandomPlay has finally gone live!

RandomPlay - interactive visual playlists on your iPhone

RandomPlay creates unique interactive visual playlists on your iPhone or iPod touch. It looks deceptively simple but has some hidden depths (much like the members of Chilli X).

Upon launch you’ll see a random selection of 12 tracks from your music library laid out in a grid and the first song will start to play. When it finishes it will be replaced by another so you won’t have to keep refreshing your visual playlist.

RandomPlay is ideal for those times when you’re not sure what you want to listen to but want to have more control than just telling your iPod to shuffle all songs. It looks great and works well with speaker docks and hi-fi systems. The screen stays on so it’s easy to see not just what’s playing but also what’s coming up. Plus, it’s just great fun to play with!

Play/Pause – just tap the cover of the song that’s playing to pause it or tap another cover to play that track instead.

Delete tracks – double tap any song you don’t want to hear and it will be replaced by another.

Song info – the artist and song title of the currently playing track are displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you’re not sure exactly what songs are queued up to be played, you can tap and hold any cover to pop up a window displaying the info for that track.

Shake to Shuffle – if you don’t like the look of any of the tracks RandomPlay has chosen, just shake the device to replace all 12 with another random selection.

RandomPlay tries to look good, so will only choose tracks with cover artwork, and because we think it works best with music, RandomPlay will also try to filter out your podcasts and audiobooks.

Grab a copy now and let is know what you think!

RandomPlay – update

A lot of you have been waiting patiently for RandomPlay so we thought we’d better give you an update.

 

RandomPlay - interactive visual playlists

Apple rejected the current build – but for once they were really helpful. They told us exactly what the problem was. The only trouble is we can’t reproduce it… Their feedback was specifically that it crashes on an iPhone 3G running the latest operating system. If it it been the original iPhone running OS 2.0 that would have been more difficult to test but the 3G is what most of us at Chilli X have and RandomPlay seems to work perfectly well – we use it for hours on end here in the office.

So, we’re a bit stumped – we’re doing more testing and looking really carefully at the code to try and find a problem. It’s not like we don’t know what we’re doing – we’ve already got two apps that play music (PlaySafe & Playlist Alarm Clock) and RandomPlay is, if anything, simpler than those.

In case any new readers are wondering what the hell RandomPlay is:

RandomPlay is a great visual way of creating a playlist from the music on your iPhone or iPod touch. When you launch the app you’ll see a grid of 12 album covers like the one above (we filter out the tracks that doesn’t have cover artwork). Then just tap any one to play it, double tap to delete it or shake to get a whole new selection. It’s a great way to see what’s coming up and to discover tracks you’d forgotten about.

We’ll keep you updated here and on our Twitter feed…

 

RandomPlay is coming soon

Chilli X love Kraftwerk

Somebody at Chilli X has just got the remastered Kraftwerk catalogue – and look how good they look in our new iPhone app, RandomPlay.

If you don’t know much Kraftwerk then you really should – sure some of their tracks go on a bit but when they’re good they’re brilliant. Their greatest hits album, The Mix, would be an excellent place to start and the newly remastered versions sound fantastic. Even the covers have been re-imagined for the new releases.

RandomPlay is a great visual way of creating a playlist from the music on your iPhone or iPod touch. When you launch the app you’ll see a grid of 12 album covers like the one above (we filter out the tracks that doesn’t have cover artwork). Then just tap any one to play it, double tap to delete it or shake to get a whole new selection. It’s a great way to see what’s coming up and to discover tracks you’d forgotten about.

RandomPlay should be out any day now – we’ll let you know as soon as it appears.

RandomPlay

RandomPlay is the latest app we’ve submitted to the App Store (so not part of this weekend’s free giveaway, we’re afraid). Look out for it in the App Store next weekend (hopefully…)

RandomPlay creates unique interactive visual playlists

RandomPlay creates unique interactive visual playlists on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Upon launch you’ll see a random selection of 12 tracks from your music library laid out in a grid and the first song will start to play. When it finishes it will be replaced by another so you won’t have to keep refreshing your visual playlist.

RandomPlay is ideal for those times when you’re not sure what you want to listen to but want to have more control than just telling your iPod to shuffle all songs. It looks great and works well with speaker docks and hi-fi systems. The screen stays on so it’s easy to see not just what’s playing but also what’s coming up. Plus, it’s just great fun to play with!

Play/Pause

Just tap the cover of the song that’s playing to pause it or tap another cover to play that track instead.

Delete tracks

Double tap any song you don’t want to hear and it will be replaced by another.

Song info

The artist and song title of the currently playing track are displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you’re not sure exactly what songs are queued up to be played, you can tap and hold any cover to pop up a window displaying the info for that track.

Shake to Shuffle

If you don’t like the look of any of the tracks RandomPlay has chosen, just shake the device to replace all 12 with another random selection.

RandomPlay likes to look good, so will only choose tracks with cover artwork, and because we think it works best with music, RandomPlay will also try to filter out your podcasts and audiobooks.

RandomPlay creates unique interactive visual playlists on your iPhone or iPod touch. It looks deceptively simple but has some hidden depths (much like the members of Chilli X).

Upon launch you’ll see a random selection of 12 tracks from your music library laid out in a grid and the first song will start to play. When it finishes it will be replaced by another so you won’t have to keep refreshing your visual playlist.

RandomPlay is ideal for those times when you’re not sure what you want to listen to but want to have more control than just telling your iPod to shuffle all songs. It looks great and works well with speaker docks and hi-fi systems. The screen stays on so it’s easy to see not just what’s playing but also what’s coming up. Plus, it’s just great fun to play with!

Play/Pause – just tap the cover of the song that’s playing to pause it or tap another cover to play that track instead.

Delete tracks – double tap any song you don’t want to hear and it will be replaced by another.

Song info – the artist and song title of the currently playing track are displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you’re not sure exactly what songs are queued up to be played, you can tap and hold any cover to pop up a window displaying the info for that track.

Shake to Shuffle – if you don’t like the look of any of the tracks RandomPlay has chosen, just shake the device to replace all 12 with another random selection.

RandomPlay tries to look good, so will only choose tracks with cover artwork, and because we think it works best with music, RandomPlay will also try to filter out your podcasts and audiobooks.

We’ll let you know as soon as it’s available…