|
Here's the skinny on the changes.
iOS5 has iCloud, which will backup data from an app to your iCloud account, everyone gets 5GB for free, you want more, you can pay for it.
Typically apps store data in the Documents folder within the application, and yes, books were being stored there.
Apple had new data storage guidelines for iOS 5 which state that only user generated data can remain in the Documents folder, and downloaded books are not seen as user generated data and so have to be relocated elsewhere, usually the Caches folder within the Library folder of the app.
The problem with the caches folder is, and this is another iOS5 new feature, if you are running low on "disk" space (note this is storage space, not the memory capacity) on your device then the OS will decided to delete data from an application. What this means is your books would be deleted, and you would need to download them again, obviously not a good user experience.
Many developers were in this position and somewhat annoyed that user's data would be deleted.
The Kobo app had to be modified to meet these new Guidelines, and version 5.0 did do so.
In iOS 5.0.1 Apple introduced a "do not back up" flag, which allowed developers to store content in the Caches folder, and set this flag on a file / folder and therefore when disk space was low, the OS would not remove those items. Therefore users books would not be deleted.
The blog post is there to explain to users what is going on and what the changes are, and, if they are on iOS 5.0, they should upgrade to iOS 5.0.1 for the best user experience.
|