Guidance: Coming to an app store near you
Well this is it, development for Guidance on the iPhone is now complete. I have submitted the application to Apple for review and inshAllah it should be on the app store in a few days (I’m really really hoping they approve it in time for Ramadan, but might be one or two days late).
There are definitely some features that will be included in an update soon. Specifically a calendar feature that will allow you to see the Hijri date of any date on the calendar as well as the prayer times for that date.
Guidance will sell in the app store for only 99 cents. Thats right, only 99 cents for the fully featured prayer times program you already know and love for Mac OS X.
Well now that that is done, time to hurry up and get Guidance 1.1 for Mac OS X done in the next 3 days and have it out in time for Ramadan as well. It has an awesome Suhoor feature where you can set it to wake you up a certain number of minutes before Fajr. I’m sure that will be extremely useful in the coming days and inshallah I am going to work as much as I can to get that to you in time. No rest for the weary, but inshAllah all of you will make duaa for me during Ramadan.
There are definitely some features that will be included in an update soon. Specifically a calendar feature that will allow you to see the Hijri date of any date on the calendar as well as the prayer times for that date.
Guidance will sell in the app store for only 99 cents. Thats right, only 99 cents for the fully featured prayer times program you already know and love for Mac OS X.
Well now that that is done, time to hurry up and get Guidance 1.1 for Mac OS X done in the next 3 days and have it out in time for Ramadan as well. It has an awesome Suhoor feature where you can set it to wake you up a certain number of minutes before Fajr. I’m sure that will be extremely useful in the coming days and inshallah I am going to work as much as I can to get that to you in time. No rest for the weary, but inshAllah all of you will make duaa for me during Ramadan.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Talk about perfect timing — this is my most-anticipated iPhone App! The 1.1 update sounds really useful too. Jazakallahu khairun!
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Thank you. Question- Will it retain times on iPod Touch when you are not near a Wi-Fi signal; of course assuming it is for the iPod Touch?
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Adisa, definitely. The only thing you will need the internet for is setting a new location. In fact, the qibla direction screen saves the last image it downloaded so you should also be able to see the last qibla direction you looked up without any wifi signal at all.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
salaam ameir… has apple given you any work on when to expect the app to be published on the store??
September 6th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Ameir, Salaams… Ever since seeing your blog entry, I’ve checked App Store daily. You’re probably checked more often. While I’ve heard from other Devs that it’s taken upto two weeks for publishing, I would check with Apple anyways. Other thought is that they probably have a longer review process now with the embarrassing insertions of “I Am Rich” etc. But I’ll agree that this is my most awaited iPhone App (other than the one I will wait for once I finish and submit mine - just getting started) I wonder if you could probably charge a premium for Ad Hoc distribution to the eager beavers…!!!
September 6th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Naseer, you have gotten me curious as to what you are working on. Care to share?
September 6th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Well Apple did contact me last night, but it was to tell me there was a problem with searching for a location (if any of you tried to set your location in Guidance you would have noticed this too). So I use the Google Maps API Geocoding service to turn a location into a set of coordinates. Google limits your geocode lookups to 15,000 per day per IP. Now since I’m pretty sure Guidance users didn’t try to do more than 15,000 lookups in a single day I can only blame this on my shared hosting and someone else on the same IP was abusing the system. To fix this I went ahead and got a dedicated virtual server from Media Temple and I will be slowly moving all of Guidance’s sites and web services to that. I’ve already moved the Google geocoding to the new server and set up some aggressive caching just in case. So thats working again and I’ve informed Apple of the fix, so inshAllah I should hear back from them very soon.
September 12th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Sorry, didn’t have a chance to check back in this blog till now… Ameir, sounds like Apple is really thorough about checking out the app’s functionality and/or they just checked right when you had that geocode overage on your last IP. Either way, hope they see your fix and let the app through soon. They are taking their sweet time though…
The funny thing is, in Ramadaan, we’re so much more aware of timings that Guidance is only good as a muezzin (not as a reference to know salaat timings if you know what I mean). That’s not good commentary on our Taqwa for the rest of the year, is it? Insha’Allah, I’ll strive to not need your app to know when Asr is for the remainder of the year…!!! (Azaan just went off while I was typing this
Nabeel, I was inspired by Ameir’s efforts to consider what else we might need on the iPhone related to being muslim. I’ve been selling software/hardware for quite some time and am very much against vaporware. So without sounding cagey and not wanting to keep you in suspense, I’ll just say it’s related to a handy reference of nearby masajid, combining something like Yelp! with IslamicFinder.org. I’ll warn you that I’m just at the very beginnings of the app design (I started dusting off my programming skills and getting ramped up on Cocoa/iPhone SDK about six months ago). Acquiring a good database and setting up proper hosting etc. are some challenges, and then dealing with issues like geocode limits and things I probably haven’t thought off. Ameir, I hope you have your helping hat on…!!!
September 12th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Since I didn’t check for Guidance on App Store for a few days, I’m making up for it by checking twice today
Got back from taraweeh and did my iPhone OS 2.1 upgrade and did a check for what’s new. Guess what? I see Salah Times (in market sense, a competitor!). So we know Apple’s not being bigoted in holding back a prayer timings app. This one’s from a Turkish source, I think. Don’t worry, Ameir, I’m still holding out for yours…
September 12th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Well Naseer I have some good news, I just got an email from Apple saying my application has passed review, now the only thing stopping it from showing up in the app store is for Apple to approve my contract (they have to review all the tax and bank info I had to give them) so Inshallah it should be in the app store very very soon. I really wish Apple didn’t take forever to approve these things.
So one thing I was hoping is that Apple would include push notification in iPhone OS 2.1 which is why I refrained from putting any Adhan notification in the first version of Guidance. However Apple has officially decided to delay push notification. So instead of waiting for that again, as soon as Guidance goes out in the app store I will send them an update that will play the adhan while the app is running at least, as a temporary solution to a more complicated problem.
Naseer, feel free to contact me with any Cocoa questions you may have. I’m always happy to help fellow Muslim developers, especially Mac developers.
September 13th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Ameir,
Mabrook, just bought Guidance off the App Store!!!
BTW, I replied to you via direct email since I didn’t realize you’d posted that reply here as well.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Salam,
I just checked the App Store and Guidance is nowhere to be found. I’m using the Australian iTunes store, and I’m guessing that Guidance is only available in the US store.
Can you fix this?
JAK.
September 13th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Mohammed, Guidance is available in all iTunes store, including international ones, however it will take up to a day to show up for everyone. I can’t even get it to show up for me yet. I think it takes up to a day for the application to show up on all their servers.