Friday, July 16, 2010

Version 1.6.2 of Versus TV's...

..."Official Tour de France iPhone Application" was released overnight before Stage 12.

All it's done is to reformat Tracking -> Breakaways from a map to a list.

None of the other bugs and deficiences I've discussed, below, have been touched.

And -- wait for it! -- the Breakaways "upgrade" is seriously b0rked.

(Is that the sound of me *not* being surprised?)

Basically, as the Peleton advances through the Stage, the Breakaways list never updates -- which is pretty much the only reason you'd have to ever look at such a thing.

Here's some iPhone screenshots (hold down Home and Lock simultaneously) of the last minutes of Stage 12:



Note that I'm not saying that *this* screenshot is correct: in fact it's not correct: it's just the first screenshot I saved when I thought I wanted to start documenting what was going on.

What is *relatively* correct (like being kinda pregnant?) here is that we're on Stage 12, we're probably 200 of 209 kilometers into the stage, and the total elapsed on-course time is probably 4:46:49 - four hours, forty-six minutes, forty-nine seconds into the Stage.

(The official time for the entire Stage 12 was 4:58:46 - so here we're about 12 minutes from the end).

Note the gaps (which are not, at this point, accurate): the Peleton is +02:39 back of the lead breakaway, Breakaway 3 is +01:29 back, Breakaway 2 is +00:35 back of the leading pack of four riders.



Now we're at 4:57:53 -- less than one minute to go!

What's wrong with this picture is that Break 2 is still +00:35 back, and the front breakaway still contains the same four riders.

None of that is true in the least.



Now we're at 5:00:36 into Stage 12 -- the Stage is over, and we've clearly got a winner, second, and third places.

What's wrong with this picture is that Break 3 is still +0:45 back even though there was no such thing at this point.

And even more wrong than that is poor Alberto Contador: here he's shown being back in the Peleton -- which is still mysteriously +02:39 back -- alongside Andy Schleck, except that Alberto Contador finished second overall for Stage 12 at +00:00 -- tied with Oliver Rodriquez, the Stage winner.

Andy Schleck? He actually finished the stage +00:10 back, in fourth.

Even more bizarre is that Mark Cavendish is shown *ahead* of both Contador and Schleck in Breakway 3 -- even though the Stage 12 results show him 159th at +12:39 behind for the Stage.

Finally, just for some sort of good measure, here's the top of the Breakaways screen at 5:01:05:



So the "Official Tour de France iPhone Application" shows we're at almost three minutes after the end of Stage 12 and the Breakaways screen is for all practical purposes showing exactly what it did almost 15 minutes earlier.

What's the point of my bothering about this?

The point is that Versus TV (have I said this before?) and Participant Sports rushed out an iPhone app for the 2010 Tour de France that was defective to begin with, wildly overpriced, and essentially without any user support whatsoever, this despite its Facebook page, which even at this very moment the Apple App Store is identifying as "Official Tour de France LIVE Support"!

Thanks to Apple's No Refund policy on App Store purchases, all the buyers are essentially screwed.

And despite the fact that I have repeatedly posted Problem reports out of my iPhone:

The version 1.6.2 "upgrade" is broken.

The only thing this "upgrade" does is reformat Tracking -> Breakaways into a list -- that never updates.

I took extensive screenshots at the Stage 12 end to permanently document this continuing fraud.

See my latest post in Discussion forum on app's "Official" Facebook page.

Since Apple makes money on every sale of this fraudulent app it's very clear why you folks are doing nothing about this ongoing travesty.

Fair notice: screenshots and an entire archive of the Facebook pages are being kept for future reference.

not only have I heard nothing from Apple, but I'm sure I never will.

Remember: Apple's No Refund policy means it gets to keep every penny *it* rips-off from the chumps who bought this POS, as does Versus TV and Participant Sports.

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