I’m really confusing. Why we just need so many different companion app to take you time? Without mini or recorder, will Arc app still work well? I just use the Arc app from the beginning and it all goes well. Can we just updaing the main app with development? There are too many topics here about the features, too many features request on the specific feature request website. And as I can see as a lifetime subscriber, the app almost got no features in past two/three years. (Yes, there are some small features, but none of the main requests are doing…)
Unfortunately that’s not everyone’s experience. There are a lot of long standing bugs, app freezes, data gaps, weird timeline things, that need to be fixed.
The main Arc Timeline app is now almost 10 years old. The internals of it have become more and more complex, layering different generations of technology over the years, some of which is now outdated. That makes my job harder, trying to find and fix bugs. And it makes it easier for new bugs to accumulate and hang around, sometimes for a long time.
The path out of that is to start rebuilding various subsystems from the ground up, which is what I’ve been working on with LocoKit2, and successfully so, so far!
LocoKit2 (and Arc Recorder) took less than 2 months to build to the level they’re at now. That quick turnaround has allowed me to get back to adding new features to Arc Timeline without much delay (the next one is probably flight data importing).
Arc Mini hasn’t been worked on for … well, several years now. It doesn’t take up any of my time. I’m also likely to remove it from the App Store soon, as the job it does for most people can be done better by Arc Recorder now.
I disagree! I typically aim to ship one major or minor new feature every month.
GPX Importing; rebuilt activity type classifiers to massively improved accuracy; Extract Brief Visits; “Clean up” buttons; Place merging; weather importing. That’s the past year’s main new features (amongst a bunch of smaller ones).
There’s also been unavoidable, time consuming tasks like migrating away from Foursquare, and dealing with various iOS changes that caused data gaps or degraded energy efficiency.
I’m not building new Arc apps just for fun. I’m doing it because it’s the best way to solve problems as well as add new features, in the least amount of time.
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I should also add: The new Arc Timeline Editor app I’m working on is intended to be a replacement for Arc Timeline. There’s no intention for there to be more than two Arc family apps. Arc Recorder replaces Arc Mini, and Arc Timeline Editor will eventually replace Arc Timeline.
The clean start for each of them means I can fix all the accumulated problems in one go, and get rid of a decade of accumulated cruft, outdated code and technologies, etc.
I’m also balancing the development so that not all my time is spent on building the new apps. For example right now I’m back to working on Arc Timeline (the flight importing feature probably).
I understand what you said above. The problem is, as a user, if I didn’t see the blog, forum, just using the app, I will feel totally disappointed to the feature and updates in past several years.
If I didn’t see the blog, I will never know what companion app I can use. And the only thing I will notice is the MAIN APP is still have lots of stuff to be improve and the new feature requests in the list is waiting for long long time.
I do not want to judge what you did or how you did. I just need to clarify as a simple user what I feel. I do not want to intrupte what you want to made, but like I said, I have to say the word I feel.
Fair points!
Although, in the past year or two development on the main Arc Timeline app has sped up compared to the previous 2-3 years. Covid lockdowns, and no possibility of travel, slowed everything down. And also ChatGPT etc have made it possible to get development done almost twice as fast as before. So that’s super helpful.
Yeah this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Should I add something to Arc Timeline that informs users about the companion app. I think it would make sense to add that if there’s a data gap in the timeline. Some extra button for “Install Arc Recorder, to reduce risk of future data gaps”, followed by some explanation of what that all means.
No worries! All taken in good spirit. I would love things to move faster too. And yeah, communication outside of this support forum isn’t as good as it could be. I add some things to the release notes sometimes, but chances are most people don’t read those. And there’s usually more to say that I don’t add in.
My hope is that the rebuild of the main Arc Timeline app (ie Arc Timeline Recorder) will make it easier for me to add new features much faster. Because Arc Timeline is so old, it’s often more fiddly and difficult to add new things, because it has to work around a decade of mess, or old systems that don’t fit well with the new features.
There’s a lot of long standing feature requests that I never get started on, because “that’s going to be a nightmare to work in with [some old system]”.
So part of the Arc Timeline Editor rebuild is to lay the groundwork for faster and easier new feature building. At least, that’s the hope! Get rid of years of old mystery bugs, and also smooth the path for new features.
I would like to have a place to see these in the main app. Along with what you are doing to replace the Arc main app too. So that user will have a idea of what to expect in the future.
Definity great if we can have the totally new app so that in the future all stuff can move more fast etc. Do you have a timeline for the editor app to be beta test/public test?
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Not sure yet. I’ve started on the basics of Arc Editor, but I’m not deep into it yet. I think I’ve got to spend some time on adding a new feature to Arc Timeline first, because it’s been a couple of months since the last.
I think I’ll focus a month on getting something new added to Arc Timeline, then get back to Arc Editor after that.
Hopefully Arc Editor development will go fast. But I’m not sure what will be the “ship it” line, in terms of what basic features it should have before it goes live on the App Store. I’m thinking it should have at least the basic timeline editing functions (confirms/corrects, segment editing, splitting, etc). And perhaps once it’s doing all those things better than Arc Timeline it’ll be ready for a basic v1.0 release.