iGigBook

iGigBook
Available on the iTunes App Store

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Stars in my eye...

This is a recent 1 star review in the iTunes App Store for iGigBook Mobile.

This app is overpriced and underperforms. No PDF music can be found on iTunes. Very unfriendly.

First off, I'm not sure if this user is a member of the audience that iGigBook Mobile is targeted towards. This app runs on a iPhone or an iPod, there's going to be a limit to what you're going to able to do with it, compared to say, an iPad. I've spoken to a number of pro sax players and in their opinion all they would need is their iPhone and an app like iGigBook Mobile. They would use the app as a quick reference/refresher for tunes they somewhat know but need to brush up on the melody a bit before hitting the band stand. There are of course countless scenarios where you wish you had access to all of your musical material in a small compact package. "underperforms" [sic], compared to what? Consulting the index of various books by hand?

"No PDF music can be found on iTunes" - Both iGigBook Mobile and iGigBook are for musicians that have resources that they want to have quick access to. They're looking for a solution to the problem of it not being practical to carry around a suitcase full of books and binders. It's not our fault when a customer doesn't have material or does not know where to acquire it. The assumption is that you already have material that you want to get quicker and fuller access to. This is why you buy an app like iGigBook or iGigBook Mobile.

A Ferrari is a bad ass ride, and it doesn't stop being a bad ass ride because local road rules and/or your driver skill doesn't allow you to realize its full potential.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Building a set list with iGigBook

Here's a short 6 minute video illustrating how easy and quick it is to build a set list of 10 songs from multiple books. Looks simple enough, right? Try this excercise using any similar app currently available to get a real appreciation of what's happening here. There are apps out there that claim that they have the best/newest/revolutionary organizational system. Are they able to allow you to perform this essential gig prep task in less than 6 minutes? The true test of any organization system is how quickly it allows you to find what you're looking for.

Monday, January 10, 2011

iTunes App Store Review Process...FAIL!

Thank you for submitting iGBMobile to the App Store.

We’ve completed the review of your app, however, we cannot post this version to the App Store because it is using a private API, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines :

2.5 Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected

We have included additional details below to help explain the issue and hope you'll consider revising and resubmitting your application.

The non-public API that is included in your application is unable to parse xml text. If you have defined a method in your source code with the same name as this API, we suggest altering your method name so that it no longer collides with Apple's private API to avoid your application being flagged in future submissions.

This is an excerpt of a app store rejection email I received from Apple in reference to my submission of version 1.33 of iGigBook Mobile(iGBMobile). I have bolded the non-public API that I'm alleged to be using, which is:

unable to parse xml text

The API is so private, they can't even included its name in the email.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Version 1.33 - Time to zoom

Version 1.33 of iGigBook and iGigBook Mobile will enable pinch zoom in the PDF view. This is particularly useful for users of iGigBook Mobile which runs on the iPhone/iPod Touch. Also in this version is a fix for scores not being recognized in the "** My Scores **" section when added via iTunes with the app running or in a suspened state. The point size of all of the items in the list of all of the views has been increased in iGigBook.