I downloaded it on my iPad mini. This is yet another new version and not a re-release of the old one. Anyways, I and gave it a very quick test with the ambient temperature probe and one food probe hanging in free air just to get values of some kind to be read in I made a couple of observations:
When you toggle the probe type to ambient, you can't set a range for it anymore. This means you can't set ranges and alarms for pit temperature - only food temperature. This is somewhat of an improvement but it's of limited value since you're still hobbled in not being able to set warning thresholds for your pit temperature. This is essential for keeping an eye on long running cooks.
The graphs now function on the iPad mini, and aren't obscured by a huge label that you can't close. This is an improvement.
You still can't name probes, check the battery level of the iGrill, and landscape still doesn't function. You still can't view graphs of more than one probe at a time.
So, from what I've been able to see so far, this is a very incremental update.
In fairness to Weber, I do blame Apple for some of this in that they've made it so you can't (easily) download old versions from the App Store and they've made version management very difficult at the iTunes end. In my case, iTunes hasn't been syncing some things properly and the iGrill app is one of the ones that hasn't backed up properly on my computer along with a lot of football team pictures that I had to get replacement copies of. I'm going to ransack it again and see if I can unearth the .ipa file.
I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Weber contracted app development out and changed software houses, or had some serious programmer turnover if it was done in house. The new version of the iGrill app is very clearly being built from scratch. It's also clear that whoever's doing it now doesn't really have much experience with barbecue and electronic instrumentation since the way things were done with the new version don't reflect an understanding of the needed requirements of people who are serious about barbecuing or cooking in general. Whoever made the previous app had a good understanding about what was needed/wanted and the app was quite good. The only major change I'd have asked for was being able to export chart data. This is why I'm wondering if maybe the developers have changed; that theory would go a long way to explaining why the app's so incomplete, why code from the older version couldn't be reused and would have to be rebuilt from scratch, and answering the question
what on earth are they doing?I reviewed version 4.0.1. It's the first time I've ever written a review on the apps store but I felt it had to be done. If the customer dissatisfaction over this isn't expressed, they won't feel any pressure to fix it up.
Well said @Lightning but remember we've been in a paradigm shift in IT with trying to be more agile and process driven. I think a lot gets lost or missed along the way. My last job I ran and maintained infrastructure which hosted hundred of in house written apps and you'd be shocked how much is missed in testing. I don't try to stereotype but a lot of developers out there are trying to cut corners and circumvent processes in place just to deploy junk ass code to production then deal with the aftermath later. I think Apple should absolutely be adding a feature to roll back an app to the previous version if you aren't happy with the update. I'd sacrifice a small portion of my local or iCloud storage for that feature.
I fully agree about Apple's iOS version management for customers. It's completely absent. Not being able to roll back app versions when situations like this happen or entire iOS versions if an upgrade cripples your device (I remember the last version of iOS for the iPhone 3G turned it into an almost unusable piece of junk). I've made a couple of observations about the IT industry. Outside of desktops and servers running Windows which is where the bulk of the expertise is by necessity, a lot of IT people become very dicey very quickly. Non-Windows platforms and hardware, especially outboard hardware interfacing with outboard equipment that deals with real world stuff - temperature data gathering like the iGrills would be a good example - seems to give a lot of career IT people a hard time. A lot of people I've worked with over the years have made the observation that it's been much easier to get engineering/technologists to do IT and software engineering work and obtain good results than to go the other way, and that's been my experience too.