I've had a few people asking why there's no been an update to the lite version for a long time and if it's still being developed.
The answer is yes it's still planned for updates but this last year has been very difficult as I've wanted to try and improve things for full version users.
Version 3.50 (where the interface totally changed) came out in the earlier half of last year and rolled out to paid users first. With it being such a major release there were a number of bugs that cropped up so I didn't push it out to the lite version while trying to get those fixed as quickly as possible.
The main reason for holding back is due to the huge influx in support requests once the lite version hits an update.
Just as this was starting to settle down and I was getting ready for a lite version update, along came Google IO 2014. This brought with it Android-L - the preview release to Lollipop. This caused some pretty serious issues for the app (causing the phone to get stuck in a boot-loop), so the focus was then diverted to getting that working for paid users. The boot loop was actually and Android bug, but given the number of people using it I had to find a temporary workaround.
Ok so that was the main issue with L, but there were others, the new sound modes, the changes in the way repeating alarms (not the wake you up in the morning type, but the programming ones) meant there was a lot to work through.
Focus went onto resolving those. Shortly after this Lollipop started to roll out. Quite a few things had changed from L (luckily including the boot-loop bug) but led cycling was still really inaccurate.
I've since had a couple of attempt at rewriting things to get this to run better without causing too much battery drain, but things still weren't great. So for the last couple of months the focus has been on totally rewriting this area - which has been pushed out in the 3.54 release just rolling out.
Now the focus moves onto getting the lite version up to date. It's nearly there but I'm wanting to get in-app purchasing added so people can move from the lite to the full version without needing to uninstall and download a new app - I'm in a race against time on this as we are now coming up to Google IO 2015 which I'm hoping doesn't hit quite as badly as last year!
The answer is yes it's still planned for updates but this last year has been very difficult as I've wanted to try and improve things for full version users.
Version 3.50 (where the interface totally changed) came out in the earlier half of last year and rolled out to paid users first. With it being such a major release there were a number of bugs that cropped up so I didn't push it out to the lite version while trying to get those fixed as quickly as possible.
The main reason for holding back is due to the huge influx in support requests once the lite version hits an update.
Just as this was starting to settle down and I was getting ready for a lite version update, along came Google IO 2014. This brought with it Android-L - the preview release to Lollipop. This caused some pretty serious issues for the app (causing the phone to get stuck in a boot-loop), so the focus was then diverted to getting that working for paid users. The boot loop was actually and Android bug, but given the number of people using it I had to find a temporary workaround.
Ok so that was the main issue with L, but there were others, the new sound modes, the changes in the way repeating alarms (not the wake you up in the morning type, but the programming ones) meant there was a lot to work through.
Focus went onto resolving those. Shortly after this Lollipop started to roll out. Quite a few things had changed from L (luckily including the boot-loop bug) but led cycling was still really inaccurate.
I've since had a couple of attempt at rewriting things to get this to run better without causing too much battery drain, but things still weren't great. So for the last couple of months the focus has been on totally rewriting this area - which has been pushed out in the 3.54 release just rolling out.
Now the focus moves onto getting the lite version up to date. It's nearly there but I'm wanting to get in-app purchasing added so people can move from the lite to the full version without needing to uninstall and download a new app - I'm in a race against time on this as we are now coming up to Google IO 2015 which I'm hoping doesn't hit quite as badly as last year!