Today, version 2.6.4 of EasyRoute was released to the App Store. The fixes are relatively minor, but I’m happy to be fixing minor issues versus having to sweat out potentially large issues.
Last time, I wrote that the big new iCloud feature in 2.6 may have blown up in my face. After hearing from more users and seeing some more data, I think it largely went OK. There ended up being just two reported iCloud problems and a few crashes. The crashes were easy to pinpoint and I got fixes submitted to Apple quickly.
The reported iCloud issues did scare me into adding some safeguards though.
When EasyRoute requests files be put into iCloud, iOS moves these files into the iCloud container, meaning the originals are gone. If iCloud is misbehaving for some reason, your routes will be unavailable. After the initial 2.6 release, I added a fail-safe so if the iCloud sync doesn’t work as expected, you can turn iCloud off and be offered the option to restore your routes from the fail-safe.
This means you can safely attempt to turn iCloud on. If syncing goes bad and the routes are not available, you can turn iCloud off and restore from your fail-safe.
Yes, it’s a workaround, but no routes will get lost in iCloud this way. At this point, I think its an uncommon problem, but I feel better knowing the fail-safe is there.
The most frustrating part of the whole thing was having users with problems I couldn’t reproduce. iCloud syncing works beautifully with my devices (the “works for me” problem) and, if anything, I thought the routes would be safer in mirrored into iCloud than just stored on the device.
As I said, there were only two reported problems, if you turn iCloud on and have problems, let me know.
