Getting worse instead of better

Ive been using BookCrawler for nearly two years. I depend on it in used book stores and book sales in particular. However, it is not as useful to me as it was even a few months ago. It seems like the programmer has the attitude "Youre doing it wrong! Ill MAKE you use it my way!"

You can no longer view books by genre, collection, etc. Those options have been replaced with a rather awkward sort box that actually doesnt work very well. Youd think that with such a box there would be an option to sort backwards - that is, from Z to A or, what I need most, from newest to oldest so I can add things to the books I just entered. There isnt. If I sort by date I can only view from oldest to newest. Being able to list the newest first world make date actually useful.

Today it insisted that I had exceeded the trial version and I should buy it. I bought it almost two years ago (and on my Mac as well). Signing into the App Store fixed that, but now Im worried about what will happen if Im in a place where I cant get connectivity. Its giving me grief about not being able to fetch data via cell ... on a WiFi-only device talking happily to the network (note that Im writing this review). Every update seems to add bugs and remove features.

Tech support is non-existent. Im having a critical problem - search is not working. (probably a database issue) The programmer has not deigned to reply to me. Im patient, but its been over a month.

That said, I dont know of any app that does the job as well or better. BookCrawler isnt as good as it was when I bought it, but it hasnt sunk below the capability of any other yet. I miss the features it used to have, but its still the best option out there.

Update: as many other reviewers have said, every update seems to remove features and make formerly useful features awkward or impossible to use. If I hadnt bought it two years ago, I certainly wouldnt get it now.

The iOS 9.2 update fixed my search problem (no thanks to this dev) but for some bizarre reason you have to tap on the result list to actually get your search results instead of them just displaying like they used to. Whats up with that, yall?

And since the last BookCrawler update, when you do an ISBN scan, it puts the number of pages in the "format" field. What the...? This is something they should have fixed THE NEXT DAY. It still hasnt been, though.

One suggestion, which Im putting here so maybe the developers see it, since they ignore email: Make it possible to disable auto-fill for any given field. For instance, publishers put all sorts of random things in genre - not even the same things for books in the same series sometimes! Id like to be able to ignore whats in the publishers field and fill in my own later.

But, honestly, Id be satisfied if they just rolled it back to the way it was a year ago, when it all worked.

UnrepentantHarlequin about Book Crawler, v6.7.5