Today we made the difficult decision to temporarily remove Better Gift List from sale. We’ve discovered what appears to be a very nasty bug in iOS 4.0 that can lead to frequent crashes. Note: this is a bug in the OS itself, not a bug in Better Gift list.

In short, the crash occurs when:

1. You have a table with a header that contains editable text field.
2. You edit that text
3. You then insert/remove rows in the table.

Unfortunately this is exactly how the Event and Person views in Better Gift List work.

In this screenshot the name and date (green) are in the header, and the details & list of gifts (yellow) are rows in the table. Changing “Amy to Vietnam” and then adding/removing a gift, or even collapsing the detail list, will result in a crash under iOS4.

We’ve been in contact with Apple regarding this and are waiting to hear if there is a way to work around the issue. We’ve already tried several things without luck. One solution we think could work would be to move everything in the header into the first row of the table, but that requires significant changes. We’re going to get started on that today, just in case, but with the app store approval times it would be at least two weeks until the new version appeared in the store.

Until there is a version in the app store that does not have this bug, we feel the right thing to do is remove it from sale. That really sucks, but we feel it’s the best thing to do for existing and new customers.

For people still using 3.0, 3.1, 3.1.2 & 3.1.3 this bug will not affect you.

For people using 4.0, you can avoid the bug by always going back to the previous screen when you have edited the name of an Event/Person/Gift. It’s not ideal I’m afraid, but it’s something.

Again, we’re sorry to anyone who’s encountering this issue.

Hurrah! We’ve just submitted version 1.6 of Better Christmas List to Apple for approval.

Changes in this version include:

• By common request, Notes is now a full-page screen.
• Improved layout of gift recipient page.
• Recipient now includes photo (if present in Address Book)
• Can link recipient to your address book and view details.
• When creating a new profile, selecting from the address book will auto-fill fields.
• Improves performance of pass-code screen – no longer any need to pause between buttons.
• Pass-code a little more festive

Our past experience has been that it takes around two weeks for updates to make their way through the mountain of apps that Apple have to deal with. Look for it soon!