Honestly my main draw to your app is the background updating because its by far way better then non jailbreak apps. I think your just reinventing the wheel adding friend support when the official latitude app does just fine.

My main use of google latitude is to log my location every 15 min. I have 2 years of location history and it’s so cool to see a map of my travels. I hate it when I travel outside of service or go to another country and my location history stops. It would be awesome if longitude uploaded all those failed attempts when a connection is restablished. That would be a huge deal for me.

Currently I have been using Device Locator from the App Store. The main thing I like is that it has the option of a recurring update as well as it updates on cell tower switch. My setting is every 30 minutes + Tower Switch.

From what I understand, updating via tower switch is part of Apple’s location API or something so I would like to see that in Longitude 2.

Thanks!

We carefully consider our application base, and it’s users, and determine how we can best deliver fantastic technology to most of our users. Our goal is to develop wonderful software for you, the end user. If we focus our efforts on software that shares functionality with the official release by Google, then we are taking away developer and quality control time away from our other applications.

As Sean hinted at, our developers are working on some amazing new applications that really are fantastic. I assure you that we are here for our users. We care about the sustainability and quality of what we develop. I can first hand assure you that no one I’ve ever met before in this industry is as meticulous about fine details (when it comes to development) as Sean is.

The problem is, if we’re not profiting off an app, and Apple releases a new OS that breaks it again… it could be a quick fix, or it could require days of research and testing to repair it. Same with Google: Latitude existed long before Google released any sort of public Latitude API. We reversed engineered the process the Latitude iGoogle widget used the first time around, and then later adopted the update method that the Latitude web app used.

Google finally released an API for Latitude, and there’s a good chance we’ll switch Longitude to using that API in order to eliminate any of the strange, random issues a very small subset of users experience using the “hack” methods. And truthfully, if Apple releases a new OS that breaks Longitude, we’ll probably fix it.

What we don’t want to do is repair and release 2.0 with friend view support, because then we’re introducing an entirely new feature: yet another hacked one that could break without warning at any time. Our customers will expect us to support it, and that is not something we’re in a position to do right now, when there’s no way we’d break even, let alone make a profit off of it. Things were different before Google provided their own free option, and even before Apple introduced iOS with background location support… but now that both of those are in play, we’re looking at a much much smaller customer base.

No one would buy an app from Cydia or the app store if it would be obsolete with the next iOS update! That view point is just absurd.

Everyone might as well download a cracked/hacked version of the app. Why waste money on the app if it’s going to break.

I do see that Sean Ferguson says they will ‘probably’ keep Longitude alive so that it will at least ‘work’. So, thank you if you do continue to support Longitude.

I think the excuse that developers don’t need to update and support their app just because these apps are cheap is a joke.

The $0.99 per app ‘business model’ that made the App Store and iDevices so popular rely on volume sold.

So, if Technivations can’t sell a high enough volume to make a profit, then fine.

I just think there were other routes to go besides just killing off Longitude.

I would purchase Longitude 2.0 or be happy with ad support or both! Do what you must to continue to support a good app.

I use Longitude to update my location and Latitude app/website to view friends. It works great for what I want.

Now if you insist on using this silly food argument, if I purchased said waffle and halfway in to eating it, it turned into stone, I wouldn’t be very happy. I don’t purchase an app, hoping it will work within the next half hour [a typical meal time]. However, an app is not food, and when I purchase it, I assume it won’t stop working. If it is a free trial, I can assume that it could stop working at any time.

It doesn’t matter if the app is $2, $10, or $20. The price should reflect the feature set, and Longitude does not have a very large feature set. The point is I purchased the software, whatever the price is, and assume it should work for at least a year. For example, Microsoft provides extended support many years beyond when it stops selling the product.

Now with that said, I am very happy that Technivations has provided support for the product and it continues to work. I will be happy if they continue to provide support, and look forward to future apps they develop, as I have been satisfied with their apps so far. Let’s hope it stays that way.

I know it is only $1.99 but if one has a choice when they are about to purchase an application (in the future) and they are aware of the fact that one vendor kept releasing new applications and rarely supported/updated their previous project, this fact is usually reflected in user reviews/forums and influence the purchasing decision.

Longitude 1.x works great on my 4.1 3GS and still provides much better background control compared to the Google app.
Will cross my fingers with 4.3 and above…

Thanks.

I bought this app recently myself, and unlike you, I realize that the developers have lives and have to make a living. When I buy an app, for a whopping $1, $2, or even $4 (less than any meal of the day) I’m paying for what these guys already worked on. Not for future work.

Just think, you walk into Waffle House, and say “I want a coffee and scrambled eggs” and they give you a bill afterward. You say “Wait, I paid for this meal last time I was here.” Yup, sounds crazy right?

Well, apps are the same way. I just recently bought the CNN iPhone app for $1.99. It even has ads. Then yesterday they made it free, and made an iPad version for free. Should I be mad that my whole 2 bucks is gone? No. Someone worked on an app, they are owed money.

All that being said, if these guys had charged $10 for an app (that btw, they didn’t force anyone to buy, we all purchased out of our own will) then two days later made it free, or discontinued it and turned off something in the server and it stopped working, then yea, I’d probably be upset.

In this case, good on you technivations (sp?) for a good app. I rather enjoy it. Please forgive those that obviously came from the Android or windows app worlds.

The biggest point of the 2.0 release was for the ability to view your friends’ locations. This is a feature that Google’s Latitude has implemented quite well, and you can use Latitude for this purpose, without using it for background updating. We made friend view work, but we did it through a series of hacks, as Google does not provide an API for retrieving friend’s locations. Hacks are always trouble, as any change on Google’s end could break the entire application, and then we would have to reverse engineer the process all over again.

People need to understand that this is a business. Businesses exist to make money. If the cost of development outweighs the return, then a poor business decision has been made. As it stands, we have already sunk more time into Longitude than we have made back from it. To spend additional time on getting it App Store-ready (fixing the 3GS crash issue), and then to develop the jailbroken version, when the only real difference between the current version and the new version is a feature Google has already implemented for free… would be a poor business decision – especially now, when we’re trying to beat everyone else to market on a new product.

Also… Longitude is a $1.99 app. Less than two dollars. Less than the cost of a coke and a candybar. Even if it did stop working one day many months into the future, you have certainly gotten your $1.99 worth of use out of it. For $1.99, how can you possibly expect someone to continue fixing something forever? The food you buy today isn’t going to fill you tomorrow.

When and if a new iOS breaks the existing release of Longitude, we will more than likely fix it, provided it doesn’t require a major rewrite (one can never be too sure when it comes to jailbroken apps)… but it will be another 1.x compatibility fix. In the mean time, the chances of fixing 2.0 for the App Store, let alone developing the 2.0 jailbroken edition, are slim to none.

Why throw away the work you’ve already done? Keep the old version available for 3GS and older devices, but release the work you’ve done for us iPhone 4 users. Especially as more people upgrade to iPhone 4.

What if iOS 4.3 or 5.0 breaks Longitude? Will the money my friends and family paid on the app be for nothing? Some of them just purchased the app.

I personally think you all should continue to release to the App Store and Cydia. You could advertise it as the “Latitude” app that doesn’t constantly update and drain the battery. There will be people that will pay $0.99 for that. Or you could also introduce a light version that has ads. There are many other devs out there that have done that, just look how many Emoji enabler apps out there, even tho there is a free one, people still spend money to get Emoji.

Plus you all could introduce features that Google doesn’t provide. Such as more frequent updating with KML export.

Please don’t abandon your 2.0 plans completely. We need Longitude 2.0.