on iOS, downloaded (for offline consumption) content always starts playing from the first song. I have to say that this is extremely annoying.

In the previous version whatever was "listened" was gone - radio style listening experience (the same as in online mode).

on iOS, downloaded (for offline consumption) content always starts playing from the first song. I have to say that this is extremely annoying.

In the previous version whatever was "listened" was gone - radio style listening experience (the same as in online mode).

Hopefully one of the teething issues with this new app. Overall it looks much better than old one but pitty that so many bugs and issues. Maybe you should consider using iOS "TestFlight" (https://developer.apple.com/te...) channel to allow willing people to test pre-release version. Would safe you tones of unhappy users.

Merry Christmas everyone. And thank you for the best radio on the planet.

Looked up “Now Playing” in the App Store again yesterday & it wasn’t listed at all. Did it again just now & it’s there listed as a “Utility” instead of a developer app.

Whatever, CarPlay is working again so Merry Christmas & peace on Earth to you all .  ðŸ˜‚ 🎄🎅🙏

Good to know. When I looked it up in the App Store it said "developer app" so maybe I got that wrong.  

Got it. The “Now Playing” app isn’t new and it isn’t a developer app. It’s OOTB CarPlay. It shows a consistent view (Apple likes that) for whatever media is currently playing, regardless of what app is playing it behind the scenes. The “old” RP app invoked it too. 

Apologies, I'm on the latest version that dropped a couple of days ago which is indeed 9.0.1.  Another correction to my post....

I said:  Instead, it's the iOS "Now Playing" developer app that appears (red circle with white icon for "playing").

The Now Playing app is actually a white circle with red "playing" lines. When I connected to RP via a USB cable to my phone, CarPlay was invoked RP started playing. I couldn't find the RP app logo, but I noticed this new one & it turned out to be the icon for RP.  I have NO inside information, but my guess is that 9.0.1 is an interim release, so perhaps the RP app will appear on CarPlay & the "developer app" will run in the background in a future release.

I find patience to be a virtue in these situations.  

Are you running 9.1 or 9.0.1? I'm only seeing 9.0.1 in the App Store and it looks like it was released yesterday. I updated to 9.0.1 this morning and I haven't been able to play with it in my Jeep yet.

I had time to play with the RP 9.1 app in my car (2020 Subaru Forester w/CarPlay) & was able to get it working on both Bluetooth & via USB connection...

OK. I can see that it's time for me to clarify some stuff. Lots of assumptions are being made here and most of them are wrong. 

Here are the current facts:

4. We've heard from enough of you that would really be impacted by the loss of CarPlay to make it clear we need to figure out a way to make it happen. 

We did NOT anticipate what a disruption this issue would be. The biggest reason is that nobody here uses CarPlay.

mae croeso i chi!

mae'n gweithio!

mae croeso i chi!  

OK. I can see that it's time for me to clarify some stuff. Lots of assumptions are being made here and most of them are wrong. 

We could definitely have been better at communication, including during this "limbo" period. But we are few, we are stretched very thin, and our #1 priority is on the problem itself rather than in discussing it. 

Here are the current facts:

1. The update was pushed out to 2% of our users and then paused. We are NOT currently updating anyone. 
2. Our developer is not lazy, ignorant, iOS-avoidant or anything vaguely like that. You can shut right up with insults like that 
3. The cost estimate I threw out earlier did NOT come from our developer. It's a poorly researched estimate I spent about 30 sec on.
4. We've heard from enough of you that would really be impacted by the loss of CarPlay to make it clear we need to figure out a way to make it happen. 

We did NOT anticipate what a disruption this issue would be. The biggest reason is that nobody here uses CarPlay. Alanna thought she was using it, but really she was using CarPlay emulation mode on both our old app & the new one. The developer and I (both non-CarPlay users) decided that, given Alanna's feedback on the layout ("looks just like CarPlay") we could get away with doing emulation only. 

In another post, someone questioned why we even needed a new app. Here's why: all of the development we've done the past 2 years has been aimed at building a platform that can support the radio renaissance we hope to inspire. We aim to give DJs who love making radio, and people who think they might like making radio, a place where they can do that. We're building tools to distribute our programming to community stations on the FM band and online that are struggling to find an audience. And we're planning a whole range of features to connect our listeners with us, with each other, and with artists  — both online and IRL.

This requires a solid technical foundation. Our backend servers for content creation, streaming, and management are almost all the way there. We have a beautiful new website design, built on a lot of underlying improvements, that we'll be unveiling very soon. The weak links are the apps. Our iOS app is fairly recent, and worked reasonably well, but under the hood was a maddeningly convoluted code maze - and we'd parted ways with the developer. That was a challenge. Our Android app is at least 2 years into badly needing an update. 

Our new developer proposed a unified app, using React, and we went with that. I'm not personally a big fan of the big frameworks, but it's a reasonable fit for our scenario, and our developer has done a great job.  However, some pieces of the app can't be done within the shared React code. They need to be done in "native" code for iOS and Android separately. And, as it turns out, for technical reasons we didn't anticipate, CarPlay is one of those things that would need to be coded entirely separately. 

I need to shift my focus here. But I hope that clarifies things at least a little. Notice I'm not throwing out a timeline. We're still figuring that out. 

I had time to play with the RP 9.1 app in my car (2020 Subaru Forester w/CarPlay) & was able to get it working on both Bluetooth & via USB connection. I stand corrected on a couple of significant things above:

1) USB connection:  When selecting the APPS function in my Subaru, apparently the RP 9.1 app is invoking CarPlay via the iOS "Now Playing" developer app. The only difference is that the RP App is not appearing on the App screen. Instead, it's the iOS "Now Playing" developer app that appears (red circle with white icon for "playing").  When selecting that, I appear to be getting the full CarPlay experience as presented with the RP 8 app. Yay!

2) Bluetooth: To enable the RP 9.1 app via Bluetooth, I have to select my Subaru's MEDIA option. Functionally the RP 9.1 app is behaving the same as CarPlay - song skipping, etc . Visually however, it appears on screen as plain vanilla presentation, sans album art,  just the song title, artist etc. Disappointing, but I should be keeping my eyes on the road & not on the screen, so I can live with it (literally).

3) Recommendation: I'm a retired 40+ year IT guy, the last 10 years in an advanced tech R&D shop that developed bleeding edge iOS apps for a major financial services firm. So I could hack out what to do pretty quickly. I would assume most users may have a harder time sorting this all out without some step-by-step documentation. I assume you're getting to that, so the sooner the better to get your listeners up & running on RP 9.1.
 
In summary, it's great to have CarPlay functionality back. In my experience (with any of the versions of iOS apps we developed in the R&D lab), we could seldom (never?) get away with taking away existing functionality regardless of how "cool" we thought the new version would be received.  We'd be buried in flame-throwing feedback the next day, and that was with a limited-user beta release to test functionality, usability etc.  Lessons learned, as they say. I would also say I'm quite impressed with how quickly you resolved the high priority issues with RP 9.0, so you don't have any talent issues. Kudos, etc!

Lastly - I said out here a week or so back that I always trust you, William, and once again you didn't disappoint. With 20+ years as a dedicated RP contributing listener, I learned early on that you have the hearts & minds of your audience out front of anything else. Thanks to you & your crew, brother! 

I upgraded to 9.1 & found RP via the “Now Playing” app on my Subaru’s app screen (not CarPlay). From a usability standpoint (first time in my car) it seems to be the same look & feel as the CarPlay version. 👍

However that was with my iPhone plugged in via a USB cable. Unplugged it didn’t seem to work. Assuming I need to download the Now Playing app, I searched for it in the App Store & if I found the right one (there a few with the same name) it’s a native iOS â€œdeveloper app” that’s not downloadable. 

So I’m a little stumped on how to get 9.1 working via Bluetooth but I haven’t had the time to try to make it work. Any info on this would be greatly appreciated. 
Meanwhile, via being plugged in my first impression is that the app’s working pretty much as it did via CarPlay, so I’m cautiously optimistic. 🙏
 

What a joke is ios app is now , even with the latest update. Takes FOREVER to download anything. 

Nice way to ruin your radio service.