Lacking major Saudi cities, iPray for the iPhone and iPod Touch is released

GuidedWays released version 2.0 of their Islamic Prayer calendering software iPray. iPray 1 was available for the version 1.0.x of jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch devices. One thing to note about that program is that only a handful of Saudi Arabia cities were included in the program, ignoring major cities such as the capital ( Riyadh ) and Jeddah and other cities.

Only eight cities in Saudi Arabia are included in the basic (free version) of the iPray application. What’s odd is that other countries have more cities listed than Saudi Arabia. Bahrain lists 11, Kuwait lists 18 and UAE lists 14! All those countries are geographically smaller than Saudi Arabia and have a better list that covers all the major cities/time zones.

GuidedWays did disclaim that “Note that iPray Basic has less number of cities.”, but looking at the city list. I noticed that most countries’ major cities and capitals were listed. The only exception was Saudi Arabia!

This is a bad attempt to force users in Saudi Arabia to buy the application without giving them the ability to use the free version just like users in other countries. I will not buy the $10 version just to get the city of Riyadh. I will continue to use the free program that was provided by Nokia on my Nokia N95.

Please also note that this program is not compatible with iPhoneIslam’s Arabtaller Pro 2 Arabic localization software for the iPhone/iPod Touch and will cause crashes.