Weather Gods 1.0.3

Hi All,

Just stopping by to say our 1.0.3 update is out.

1. Accessibility improvements:

- localised for French, including all voiceover accessibility text
- voiceover speaks how long the data was last updated when in the 'NOW' screen
- we increased the loudness of the weather sounds, but I think this has had a mixed reaction. It seems that volume levels are different for the various devices?
- moon god now speaks the moon phase
- three finger swipe to move between favourite locations
- sticker pack is now accessible - sorry for the descriptions, I need more imagination (grin)
- mute bright colors for people with color inversion switched on
- accessibility improvements for iPad when using settings
- fixed the 'replace a favourite' alert not being very accessible
- fixed an accessibility crash when the high and low temperatures were the same, apologies to the couple of people who kept hitting this problem
- small accessibility improvements to notifications
- we moved the weather sounds closer to the top to keep with the audio toggle
- voiceover will let you know if data is missing for a particular hour when accessing fire, air, water and ice god hourly data
- for first time voiceover users, we will auto focus on the 'Begin' button
- the hourly god summaries now let you know the time of the day for which the summary is applicable
- some small accessibility bug fixes - we've still got a few more todo

2. Other improvements:

- meters per second for wind speed added to settings
- switch off the rain sound when changing from day to now if it is NOT actually raining
- the widget now handles offline mode much better, before it would just say 'offline', now it will show you the last data it had - just like the app

3. Some notes on the last update time:

The app loads the weather data when the app is launched, resumed from background, location is changed, or a background refresh is triggered.

Our weather service provider generates the weather data on an hourly basis. Weather Gods checks to see if the data it has is older than an hour and will go and fetch the new data.

When new data is returned voiceover will announce 'last update a moment ago' when focussed on the location label

If you background the app and relaunch before the hour is up, then we use the same data, but let you know how old it is e.g. last update 20 minutes. We don't have any auto refresh and we wont update data less than an hour old.

However, if you find the data is older than an hour, then it indicates we've got some network issues or the weather data service is not responding. You can try swiping through favourites to trigger a refresh or background and relaunch the app (not force close).

As ever, if you have any problems or are unsure, then please email using the feedback email and we'll try and help as soon as we can.

4. Location Tracking & Notifications

Some of you probably spotted that we ask for always on location tracking! This is the start of a journey for us where we hope to eventually implement a 'follow me' weather notification service. It will take a while to build and test though.

However, it also has another practical use. As you (hopefully) know, Weather Gods needs to be in the background to receive the heartbeat which triggers the app to check the weather and generate any notifications that have been triggered.

We've said that if you force close Weather Gods then the little heartbeat no longer runs (sad face) and you wont get notifications until you next relaunch,

The always on location tracking is a kind of safety net that will rekindle the heartbeat and restart the notifications if you've force closed.

It only works if you move around from place to place - using what Apple call a significant location change. If you force close and then stay in for the rest of the day, then, sadly, the heartbeat is still stopped.

Our recommendation is still to leave Weather Gods in the background doing its thing - this is also Apples recommendation - I emailed then specifically about this situation and they said it's what they prefer as well - continued clean app launching uses more battery.

We do try to reduce battery (and we made improvements in this update), so hopefully leaving it in the background wont be an impact.

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully useful (smile).

Finally, please can I ask everybody who loves the app to leave us a review. These help us tremendously as it improves our position in the search rankings, which in turn helps sales, leading to us investing more back into the app.

Weather Gods on the App Store: http://meyu.me/2hr0E7y

And, if you are having any problems, unsure about anything at all, have some suggestions for improvements or great ideas! Then please email us and we will do our best to respond. We are based in the UK so may not be as responsive as we would like due to sleeping or travelling.

Thank you.
Scott