iPhone Siddur 4.1 Approved - Available Soon

Great news, just in time for the holidays (not that you should use the iPhone Siddur on the holidays), Apple has approved version 4.1 of the Siddur. The new features include:

• Upgrade Available for Official Chabad Siddur from Kehot Publishing
• Added Today Button to Luach
• Added Favorite Tefilot Feature
• Overall Speed Improvements & Downsized Application
• Misc Changes to Edut Mizrach & Sefard
• Bug Fix for Luach & Mizrach Orientation Alert
• Updated Minyan Database

What took approximately 50 days for Apple to approve it? Well, as I explained in my post named Apple's problem with iCal subscriptions, Apple didn't like the new iCal subscribe feature we added in version 4.0. Yes, they approved this feature in version 4.0 and then disapproved the feature (without any change to the feature) in version 4.1.

How did we fix the issue? We basically moved the subscription feature outside of the application and onto a web page. So instead of actually subscribing to your luach events in the application itself, you do it in mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Let me explain.

Go to the "More" section and then click on "Luach Events." After you set up your custom events, click on the "Subscription Settings & Subscribe" button on the bottom. Here is a picture:

When you click on that, it takes you out of the application and into mobile Safari. I am sorry, this is the only way Apple would have approved it. The features remain the same, but you must do this outside of the application. You can then configure your iCal subscription settings here. Select if you want it to be on or off, do you want alerts, if so how many days prior and what time during the day? Do you want to subscribe to holidays and parshas as well? Here is a screen capture:

Then you click on the "Click here to subscribe via iCal" and it should open up a menu to ask you if you want to do this. Then it will show all this data in your iPhone Calendar. You can always remove it under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts.

The updated version should show up in the App Store or iTunes Application screen updates section within the next twenty-four hours.

Have a happy and healthy New Yaaars!