Word of warning: iRover and pignology apps

[N7SMI]

After a full day of logging ARRL VHF contest QSOs on my cross-country trip, the iRover iPad app I was using for logging crashed and all of my log data is gone. What a waste! And apologies to those I worked that will not be getting a contest log confirmation or QSL. Beware of Pignology products that are programmed so poorly that they continually crash and lose all stored data.
</rant>

[N3WG]

Hi Everyone,
I’m the author of iRover, N3WG.  

To Jared and any others this occurred to, I sincerely apologize.  If this were to occur to me I would be very upset and being on the other side of the table makes me feel ashamed it occurred.

iRover was written as a minimal version of HamLog back in 2010, when iOS version 3 was the norm, even before the original iPad.  When iOS version 4 came out Apple changed the way app data memory was retained and stored. Meaning, when an iOS app was closed by the operating system because it needed the space to run something else, the messages sent to an app were changed.  I never updated iRover to address this change so over the years as iOS version 3 disappeared in the wild and iOS versions 4 and later became more prevalent; this bug was sitting there waiting to occur.  It is entirely my fault that it was there because I didn’t update the code to reflect the changes made by Apple while I did make those changes in HamLog.  I was informed of it happening on two occasions, but I have no idea how many other people were affected.  I withdrew the app from the app store following the email I received from N7SMI during the contest and it won’t be going back.

I have posted this to the Pignology Blog to get the word out as well that others should not use it.

73,
Nick
N3WG

[NK7Z]

After a full day of logging ARRL VHF contest QSOs on my cross-country trip, the iRover iPad app I was using for logging crashed and all of my log data is gone. What a waste! And apologies to those I worked that will not be getting a contest log confirmation or QSL. Beware of Pignology products that are programmed so poorly that they continually crash and lose all stored data.
</rant>

I have found that Hamlog does not fail, and seems to work just fine for portable operations.  Took it on a trip to Arizona, and it worked find for three weeks...  I also have a review of it at:
http://nk7z.net/review-of-hamlog-by-pignology/