We had a busy week! For starters, we released the fourth edition of Take Control of Your Paperless Office, a mere six and a half years after the third edition. That was one of those books that was so embarrassingly out of date that I was ashamed to keep selling it, and I’m very glad that’s off my plate. Now I only have (checks list) four of my own books left in the “hopelessly outdated” category. Progress!
Also this week, I finished writing Take Control of Sonoma, which took far longer than expected because I kept finding new features and changes, and some of this stuff was tricky to document. That manuscript is now in my editor’s hands, and as soon as she’s finished with it, we’ll wrap it up and get it out the door. I have some doubts as to whether we’ll make it before the end of August, but if not, it’ll be very early in September. At the same time we’ll release Take Control of iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, which Josh Centers has written and which I’m now editing. Both books will get version 1.1 updates when their respective operating systems are officially released.
Even before that, though, we’re going to publish the next big edition of Jeff Carlson’s book Take Control of Your Digital Photos, which Glenn Fleishman edited. I need to do a few last minute publisher-y things with it before putting it through our production process, but it should be published early next week.
Other manuscripts by other authors are starting to fill my editing queue, and I continue to work on MailMaven (about which you’ll be hearing plenty in the coming months). The next big update of my own that I’ll be tackling is Take Control of Your Online Privacy; I’ll also be doing very minor updates to several books for compatibility with Sonoma and iOS 17/iPadOS 17.
And after that, there are many many other projects waiting for their turn.
A couple of days ago, right after sending out the announcements about the Paperless Office book, I started getting complaints from people who said that when they tried to use Apple Pay, the final payment screen showed them the wrong amount—it basically removed any applicable discounts and showed full price for their purchase. This is clearly a bug on FastSpring’s end, and there’s nothing we can do about it from here. I have had several email exchanges with their tech support and have impressed upon them the urgency of solving this problem.
For anyone who might encounter this, be aware of the following:
Switching to a different payment method, such as credit/debit card or Amazon Pay, shows the correct amount.
Even if the Apple Pay screen displays an incorrect amount, what you’re actually charged is the correct amount, including any applicable discounts. In other words, the bug has to do with the number displayed, not the payment itself.
Still, it’s unpleasant for all of us and I hope FastSpring is able to sort it out quickly.
School starts for the kids in a week and a half. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster be merciful upon me until then.