turn by turn
The 7.3 release of the In Arrivo HD app
03/28/2014 10:46 AM Archiviato in:New releases
I would like to inform the users of the main In Arrivo HD app that the long coveted 7.3 version of the app has been released and it’s now available for the free update by its user and for the direct purchase by new appreciators. As long said, the new version eschew the Google support for the calculation of paths, by taking advantage of the new turn-by-turn Apple library and uses the new support for providing two new interesting features:
All of this leads to a much relaxed experience and we are happy to have attained this result.
- The walking path to the closest stop for a searched bus
- The taxi route that should be threaded by the taxi to reach the intended destination
- The app no longer freezes while loading a high number of waiting times
- The stops in the cache no longer stack in the center of the screen when starting the app
All of this leads to a much relaxed experience and we are happy to have attained this result.
Comments
The 3.4.1 release of in Arrivo Express
03/28/2014 07:14 AM Archiviato in:New releases
I would like to inform the users of the In Arrivo Express app that the new 3.4.1 version has been approved and is ready for the upgrade. That is the first release taking advantage of the new turn by turn support for a faster loading of the paths and informing the taxi drivers about the expected destination.
Why In Arrivo will be faster
03/25/2014 07:53 PM Archiviato in:Information
Waiting for the release by Apple of the new version, I would like to talk a bit about the technologies that allows it to be much faster than the previous versions.
The first one, already introduced in the 7.0 version, takes advantage of the new apis provided by Agenzia Roma Servizi per la Mobilità to offer waiting time and transit routes without the need to download and scrape complex html pages as done previously both by In Arrivo and the competing apps. In order to do it a set of Python scripts have been developed according to the suggestions by the provider to offer services to the legacy PHP scripts exporting the information to the apps.
The latter breakthrough was due to the introduction on the part of Apple of a new MKDirection library. This allows to find path directly from inside the app without the need of contacting the Google services by means of remote scripts. This allows a much quicker feedback and freedom for possible limitations on the part of Google.
Finally this result was attained by means of a twist. Basically Apple has silently introduced CALayers in its views and executes a callback to layoutSublayersOfLayer on specific views like the stops. Strangely this call happens even when executing the code on a iOS 6.1 device while the function in the MKAnnotationView is missing with the result the app crashes. The solution was to conditionally provide that in the case of iOS 6.1 does nothing but at least does not crash the app.
Unfortunately the previous technology is not available for iOS 6.1 and no backward compatibility is foreseen. Consequently paths no longer appear on older devices without anyway impairing in any way the correct working of the app.
New Apis
The first one, already introduced in the 7.0 version, takes advantage of the new apis provided by Agenzia Roma Servizi per la Mobilità to offer waiting time and transit routes without the need to download and scrape complex html pages as done previously both by In Arrivo and the competing apps. In order to do it a set of Python scripts have been developed according to the suggestions by the provider to offer services to the legacy PHP scripts exporting the information to the apps.
Apple turn-by-turn
The latter breakthrough was due to the introduction on the part of Apple of a new MKDirection library. This allows to find path directly from inside the app without the need of contacting the Google services by means of remote scripts. This allows a much quicker feedback and freedom for possible limitations on the part of Google.
IOS 6.1 support
Finally this result was attained by means of a twist. Basically Apple has silently introduced CALayers in its views and executes a callback to layoutSublayersOfLayer on specific views like the stops. Strangely this call happens even when executing the code on a iOS 6.1 device while the function in the MKAnnotationView is missing with the result the app crashes. The solution was to conditionally provide that in the case of iOS 6.1 does nothing but at least does not crash the app.
Unfortunately the previous technology is not available for iOS 6.1 and no backward compatibility is foreseen. Consequently paths no longer appear on older devices without anyway impairing in any way the correct working of the app.
New 7.3 update
03/25/2014 08:10 AM Archiviato in:New releases
I have the pleasure of informing the users and appreciators of the in Arrivo HD app that the new 7.3 version has been submitted to Apple for approval with a particularly wide number of improvements: this is the official change log:
- The app is more responsive even in areas with many stops on older devices.
- The metro stations with more lines correctly show the different timetables by swiping.
- Upon booking a taxi, is now possible to inform the driver beforehand about the expected destination and to share the path with other users to look for company.
- The route to the destination of a taxi ride is now drawn on the user's map upon boarding the taxi to keep her posted on possible departures from the planned route and be thereafter able to ask the driver for clarifications.
- The app does not crash any longer by rating it from the waiting times table.
- The paths are now calculated by means of the new Apple turn-by-turn library instead of the google ones for a better resilience and efficiency.
- By selecting a stop from the nearest stops table, the path to reach it is shown on the map.
- Fixed a bug that locked the app when starting it from afresh with a busy cache.
- The app does not crash any longer on system 6.1.
Path calculation performed from inside the app
03/17/2014 10:44 PM Archiviato in:Announces
The new important 7.3 version of In Arrivo HD shall calculate route directly from inside the app thanks to the new Apple library so eschewing the need to resort to their party entities for the benefit of resilience and efficiency. This together with a host of improvements and new feature packet in a soon to be released version.
