1. When we created the latest update to the Universalis app, we tested it on an iOS 12 device, and it worked.
2. We sent the update to the App Store.
3. Apple accepted it.
4. The App Store will install it on your iOS 12 device.
5. When you try to open the new version, it does not open.

We don’t know what new feature in the App Store is making Apple distribute unusable apps. Even if we did, we would have no way of changing it.

Before it is too late, set your device not to update apps automatically. The App Store will still tell you when app updates are available, and you can update whatever apps you want to update. Just don’t update Universalis!

How to disable automatic updates on iOS 12

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Open “iTunes & App Store”.
3. In the “Automatic Downloads” section, turn off “Updates” and “Apps”.

Some parts of the world celebrate the Epiphany on 6 January. Others celebrate it on a Sunday. This causes a lot of confusion where the readings after the Epiphany are concerned, because which reading you get depends on where you are.

This Universalis page gives a table of the readings for each day in this season, according to both the “6 January” and the “Sunday” calendar. This should help you to un-confuse yourself.

The Universalis apps and programs can all be set to your local calendar, so that you can choose which of the two patterns of readings you want to see.

Some of you who use BT Internet as their email service provider and use our service to send you daily emails have started to report a problem. You receive a message from us saying that you replied to one of those daily emails and that the service has therefore been stopped. You are puzzled because you did not, sitting in front of your screen, send such a message.

In years B and C of the three-year cycle, the characteristic Gospels of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Sundays of Lent are not read: the Samaritan Woman, the Man Born Blind, and Lazarus.

These Gospels are important, and can and should be read on some other day of those weeks.

The versions of Universalis which have been in the App Store since last week have not been working on the following old Apple devices:

• iPad Air (1st edition)
• iPad Mini 2
• iPad Mini 3
• iPhone 5S
• iPhone 6
• iPod Touch (6th edition).

The affected version of iOS is version 12 (the latest release was 12.5.7). You can check your operating system version by opening the Settings app, selecting ‘General’ and then ‘About’.

This bug was Apple’s fault but we have found a way to avoid it. We created a new update which we sent to Apple and within an hour they had accepted it into the App Store. We are grateful for their promptness.

Catholic Calendar has the same problem: please wait 24 hours, and the update to that should be available as well.

How to get the corrected version

If you sit and do nothing, the App Store will probably update you to the latest, corrected version, but it could take a day or two.

To get the corrected version at once:

1. Open the App Store app.
2. Search for “Universalis”.
3. Tap on the heading of the entry for the Universalis app. A full-page description of the app will appear.
4. At the top of the description is the version number. This should be 3.115.
5. Press the button to download and install the new version.

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new e-book, “Resurrection Is Now”, by Dom Aelred Watkin OSB. This book has long been out of print in physical form and we have had many requests for it as an e-book.

This book, rigorously reasoned but with a keen poetic sensibility, shows how death is not only an end but a beginning, and how to live life as a preparation for death and resurrection.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new e-book, “Reading and Reflection”.

This book contains the readings at Mass according to the official lectionary of the Catholic Church, for every day of every year. Each and every reading is accompanied by an accessible and scholarly commentary by Dom Henry Wansbrough OSB.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like the previous post, this one describes bugs in the Kindle Paperwhite e-book reader. Amazon do not provide any way of reporting bugs, so these bugs are likely to be permanent.

Footnotes

Amazon describe a way for publishers to include a footnote in text and indicate that it is a footnote.

However, they have also decided to program the Kindle to decide that certain links within a text are to be counted as footnotes whether or not they are footnotes. A publisher is therefore likely to find that any link to a page in the book may fail to take the reader to that page, and instead present a pop-up window showing a version of the page mangled into “footnote shape”.

There is nothing whatever that a publisher can do about this. Amazon’s programming is completely secret and undocumented and there is no way of knowing what is making the Kindle decide that a page is a footnote; nor of telling it that a page is not a footnote. Or perhaps there is a way but Amazon are keeping it a secret.

To make things even more entertaining, Amazon provide no way for a publisher to try out any conceivable method of “footnote avoidance”. The only way to see what an e-book will look like when published is to publish it and then buy a copy.

So we are stuck, and you have the inconvenience of guerrilla footnotes.

• The problem affects links which point to a page later in the book.
• …but not all of them.
• Pages (and links) which look identical on the screen can suffer opposite fates. Tapping one of the links will pop up a footnote, while tapping a link on another page that looks just like it will jump, correctly, to the page it is pointing to.

The cure is this. If you tap on a link, and the page you asked for pops up as a footnote instead of a page, the Kindle will also show a button marked “Open footnote”. Press that button.