The major change for this release is the implementation of a new method of playing a class.  This will result in the disappearance of the rare – but embarrassing – situation where tracks would be skipped through without playing.

Previously the method of playing classes was to use a timer to check the current playing position and use that to determine when pausing and moving to the next track was required.  On infrequent and random times the internal processing caused the timer and the playhead to become out of sync just by enough for the app to get mixed up by which track it was on and then jump to the next one.  Until it hit the end.  Which wasn’t great as the fifty-five minute class suddenly became a lot shorter than expected.

The new method utilises an AVMutableComposition entity to create a single timeline of audio which incorporates scheduled pauses between the songs.  This allows it to play as effectively a single track needing no further processing which neatly excises any of the possible issues afflicting the previous version.  A beneficial side-effect of this is that a class will continue to play even if you switch to another app or lock the device (as you may wish to turn off the screen completely).

The audible countdown is now only spoken at the start then with 10, 3, 2, and 1 seconds remaining.  It now uses the same voice as Siri since the speech synthesizer is used instead of pre-recorded files.

The action buttons during a class now consist only of pause / play, next track, and a 30 second rewind.  There are no longer any confirmation screens when electing to skip to the next song.  This is done for speed of use.  The buttons have been separated far enough to ensure that there is a minuscule chance of accidentally tapping the wrong one.

This release requires iOS 8.0 as the minimum version.

Available in App Store: 5th June 2015 06:41 (Eastern Australia Time)