Categories
news trivia

New look blog

Unless you read this blog using an RSS feed you will probably have already noticed the new theme. I think it’s a bit prettier than the old one. The side bar is a bit wider and the main body a little narrower. Hopefully all the posts will still fit in the new format…


There are still a few design elements that don’t quite match, the obvious being the header. I will update this shortly but — teaser alert — it will have a new, updated Yummy logo/icon. More about this later.
Categories
news support

Multitasking on iOS 4

If you’ve just downloaded the new iOS (the new name for the iPhone operating system) you might be eagerly anticipating how some of the new features affect your favourite applications, such as Yummy.


One of the headline features is multitasking. This encompasses a number of different but connected features.


The most obvious aspect is “fast task switching.” This is where you can double-tap the the home button and return to exactly the same place in the application as when you left it. Since version 2.0, launched at the beginning of last year, Yummy has had the ability to remember where you were the last time you ran it. This isn’t going away in the new version of the OS! 


People who are used to multitasking on desktop computers such as Windows and Macs might be expecting a little more than this, though. For instance, you might be expecting Yummy to be able to refresh your bookmarks in the background so that whenever you launch it they’re fully up to date.


Unfortunately that is not possible.


When we talk about multi-tasking on iOS4 Apple limits exactly what kinds of features applications can have. Apple allows VoIP apps (like Skype), GPS loggers, and music apps. What they don’t allow is periodic Internet access. I’m sure that this restriction is in place for the best of reasons — to maximise battery life — but it does mean that I cannot implement this useful feature.


I will update Yummy to take advantage of some of the features of iOS4 at some point but, unfortunately, multi-tasking is not really one of them. I hope this explains why.

Categories
support

iOS 4

Today I’ve been trying out Yummy (and www.cut) on iOS 4. iOS, in case you haven’t been following the news this week, is the new name for the iPhone operating system.

The good news is that I have not found any problem yet so on the 21st when it becomes available in iTunes you should not experience any problems.

Categories
support

Error 414

I tried Yummy on a new iPhone today, a new 3GS. Unfortunately I immediately found that when I tried to sync I got “Error 414.” The quick solution to this is to switch to a different network. In my case, while on Vodafone UK I got this message every time but when I switched to my local WiFi connection the sync went smoothly.

So, what’s going on?

Well, 414 means “request too long” and comes from a small change that I made in the last version of Yummy. Most users of Yummy have a 3GS yet I have been optimising for my other iPhone, an original, first generation handset. This despite the fact that newer phones have both more memory and a faster network connection.

Since version 2.0, Yummy has batched requests for URLs into groups of fifty. This was always a compromise between CPU, memory and network latency. For version 2.4.1 I decided to increase that number to 150 for those with the faster and more roomy devices. In my testing it resulted in significantly faster downloads.

I have not completely got to the bottom of this and do not know how common it is. Can you please let me know if you have seen this before? And if so, what network do you use? I don’t want any users to see this error but I’d like to find out how common it is before rushing out a fix because, basically, the solution is to make it slower for everyone.