Nach langer Pause bei den Updates von FahrInfo Berlin gibt es nun endlich wieder etwas Neues: FahrInfo Berlin 2.4 (App Store-Link) ist verfügbar! Die zwei wesentlichen Neuerungen sind Push-Benachrichtigungen zur konfigurierbaren Erinnerung an Ankunft und Abfahrt und eine virtuelle Umgebungsansicht, welche nahegelegene Haltestellen anzeigt und per Tipp natürlich auch die aktuellen Abfahrtszeiten in bekannter Form bereit hält (die Umgebungsansicht ist nur auf dem iPhone 3GS verfügbar).

Um eine Push-Benachrichtigung hinzuzufügen, muss lediglich das entsprechende Glocken-Symbol in der Verbindungs-Detailansicht oder in der Abfahrtstafel angetippt werden. Standardmäßig wird 5 Minuten vor einer Abfahrt bzw. 1 Minute vor einer Ankunft benachrichtigt – die Abstände sind in den Einstellungen konfigurierbar. Benachrichtigungen werden selbstverständlich auch zugestellt, wenn FahrInfo Berlin nicht aktiv ist.

Push-Benachrichtigungen und die Umgebungsansicht sind für Berlin kostenpflichtige Features, und müssen per In-App-Kauf aktiviert werden. FahrInfo Berlin Pro ist bis zum 31.12.2009 zum Einführungspreis von 0,79 EUR erhältlich.

Weitere Verbesserungen betreffen die Kartenansicht, welche jetzt drehbar ist und somit auch im Querformat benutzt werden kann, und die nun auch auf den BVG-Tramplan und das 24h-Netz verlinkt (nicht in der Anwendung enthalten). Außerdem wurde die Abfahrtstafel überarbeitet und zeigt bei aktuellen Abfahrtszeiten nun die verbleibenden Minuten an statt der absoluten Uhrzeit.

english:

After a long period of no updates, FahrInfo Berlin 2.4 (App Store link) has been released! The most important new features are push notifications for departures and arrivals and a virtual monocle mode which displays nearby stations (monocle only available on iPhone 3GS).

To add a push notification, simply tap the bell icon next to the arrival or departure time. By default, you will be notified 5 minutes before a departure or 1 minute before an arrival – you can set up the time in settings. Notifications will be delivered even when FahrInfo Berlin is not running, of course.

Push notifications and the monocle mode are features that must be purchased via an In-App purchase, and are available for an introductory price of $0.99 until the 31st of December.

Other improvements include the new maps view, which is rotatable and can be used in landscape mode and links to BVG’s Tram and 24h maps (not included in the app). Furthermore, the departure monitor has been updated and now displays the remaining minutes for current departures instead of the absolute time.

Aurora 4 comes with all features you know and love from Aurora 3, and has greatly improved usability and reliability. The alarm properties are much more accessible. Alarms, playback/snooze and fall asleep modes have their dedicated panels. Aurora still builds on iTunes playlists, but doesn’t use iTunes itself for playback, greatly enhancing reliability. Aurora 4 takes full advantage of Mac OS X Leopard technologies, and does not run on Mac OS X Tiger or earlier. Check out the product page for more feature details.

The decision to make Aurora 4 payware (Aurora 4 retails at the price of 15.00 EUR per license) hasn’t been easy, but it has finally been taken in order to allow metaquark to spend more time on development of Aurora, AppFresh and Home Zone. We’re grateful to the time when Aurora survived on donations, and all donors receive up to 5 free licenses and Aurora 4 Beta testers receive a 50% discount when purchasing Aurora 4.

We’d love to hear about your thoughts and feedback. Leave a comment on this post, or contact our support team. You can follow further development on this blog or via Twitter. Also, show your support for Aurora on osx.iusethis.com, the awesome community-based Mac software site.

With the release of Aurora 3.3.5 I fixed the last Leopard-related issue in Aurora 3 (Apple Remote support) so you should be up and running on your new cat just fine.

This is not all that has kept me busy since I returned from WWDC07 in June, of course. A lot of work has gone into Aurora 4, which will improve Aurora’s ease of use, reliability and performance. The main focus really is simplicity and usability – here’s a screenshot of the current build (click to see more):

Aurora 4 Preview

Aurora 4 is not quite ready yet, but there will be a beta ready for you to test shortly. Aurora 4 will be Leopard-only (to take advantage of the many, many improvements in Apple’s new OS) and it will stop being freeware and come with a reasonable price tag instead. I stopped taking donations for that reason – a big thanks to everyone who donated something! You kept the project going, and as a reward for that, every one of the 176 individuals who donated will receive a free Aurora 4 license for themselves plus five licenses to give away as soon as Aurora 4 is ready. Thanks again!

The regular Aurora 3.3.3 probably won’t work for anyone using Leopard, so I prepared this Leopard build just a few minutes ago. One thing that probably won’t work is switching to Front Row’s “Now Playing” (it’s disabled for that reason) but everything else seems to be working. I say seems because I did like 10 minutes of testing right at the WWDC buffet here – let me know if it works for you or if it doesn’t. This build uses GC and won’t run on Tiger.

→ Aurora 3.3 beta (1.3 MB, Mac OS X 10.4 only)

All improvements:

• Added iPod support (requires: disk usage enabled, manual mode)
• Added notes window with wake from sleep hints
• Added swedish localization (courtesy of Robert Ilijason)
• Improved “Tomorrow” button, it’s “Today” between midnight and 4am
• Improved Applescript support (not complete yet)
• Improved fallback player reliability
• Improved toolbar icon (the sheep’s now officially cuter than Knut, thanks to Louis)
• Fixed time zone problems (alarms are always in local time now)
• Fixed fallback player volume bug
• Fixed iTunes library file name bug

• A brand-new chinese localization (thanks to Jack M. H. Lin)
• If your Mac falls asleep while you’re snoozing, it will now wake up properly and continue playing music

Also, I’m planning for a new major release, Aurora 4, so if there’s something that you’d really like to see in that release, please let me know (RadioShark users, I already heard you).

→ Download & Feedback | Donate

Two months ago I released Aurora 3, which has been the most successful major release of Aurora ever. Front page coverage by digg and TUAW, among others, led to an amazing 10,000 new users in just a few days. The release of Aurora 3.1 and 3.2 shortly thereafter brought an overall improved and stabilized application and two new localizations, again leading to another 20,000 new users. Thanks to everyone who is using Aurora and helped improving it! I’m happy that most of you use Aurora on a daily basis, rapidly making it one of the most used Mac alarm clocks. If you own an iusethis account, feel free to click Aurora’s iusethis button.

The pace of Aurora’s development has slowed in the last few weeks, though. This is because I am working with two other guys on a completely new and exciting Mac application, which is gonna be at least as helpful and good as Aurora and which we hope to release in a few months. I will work on this new project most of the time now, but I’ll make sure that Aurora is ready for Leopard (bringing you higher resolution, a smaller memory footprint and improved reliability). In addition to that, there are a few other nice things in the back of my mind for future releases of Aurora, so stay tuned.

Lastly, I’d like to thank all the fine Mac folks who donated to the project. I’ve so far received a total of 500 EUR in donations, with individual contributions ranging from 50 cent (thanks, dude) to 20 EUR (big thanks!). It’s great to see this kind of support for a free application in the Mac community. 500 EUR is still some way to go towards a new development machine, though, so everyone who thinks Aurora is worth more than nothing, this is your way to show it. Thanks!

On a side note, I released a tool that switches to Front Row’s “Now Playing” section (just as Aurora does) on my code page. Some people requested it, and I thought it might be useful to some more of you. For more instructions, follow the link.

Thanks to the help of Yukirou Murai, Aurora 3.2.1 is now available in japanese. This is particularly cool, because

• The Japanese are Aurora’s second largest user nationality (second only to the US)
• Japan is the Land of the Rising Sun, right?

I fixed a bug where the menu bar icon would be invisible when no alarms were active when you started it. In order to reduce download times for everyone, I also removed all help files from the application bundle (bringing the download size back to 1.1 MB from 3.3 MB) and made them available online (English, German, French, Japanese). The help menu item will also get you there, of course. If you need it offline, you can use the Save feature of Safari, since it’s only one page.

→ Download & Feedback | Donate

• A new feature that reduces display brightness on snooze/fall asleep
• A new feature to attach apps, files or URLs to alarms that will launch when the alarm goes off
• An option to sleep/shutdown/logout after stopping alarm playback
• Fixed fade out from “full volume” and other fixes
• A brand-new Italian localisation (courtesy of Francesco De Francesco)
• A fully translated german help file

Merry Christmas, everyone!

→ Download & Feedback | Donate