Account Tracker for Mac update #3

On By GrahamIn Announcements

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As previously indicated, this project had to be put on hold for 6 months, however I am now back on it “full time” … well, apart from a wasted 3 days dealing with the fallout from Apple’s buggy iCloud implementation!!

As you know iCloud syncing is now implemented in iOS, and the same mechanism will be used by the Mac version. This was a major piece of design work and it is now done. 🙂

I am pushing ahead with a lot of Mac UI work. Compared to the simplicity of iOS it is a bit of a nightmare! The account and transaction screens should be done in the next week or so, and I would then like to concentrate on getting something in place for the budgets and reports. The UI is about 80% of the work (does that surprise you?).

As a heads up, there is a LONG way to go before this is released. Most likely 3-6 months.

More updates will be posted as and when I make progress.

2012 highlights

On By GrahamIn Announcements

As another year draws to a close, there have been fewer awards than in 2011 but just as much work!

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and a healthy and prosperous 2013!

Here are some statistics for the year …

133,417 views of my website
994 views on the most popular day (16th December)
280 images uploaded (mainly screenshots)
196 tweets
157 countries viewed my website
78 new posts
26 new Munros climbed (Scottish hills over 3000ft, I have 74 to go out of 282!)
25 app updates in total (1 every 2 weeks!)
11 updates to Account Tracker (3.5.1 through 3.9)
6 updates to Meter Readings (2.9.5 through 3.2.1)
6 updates to Hill Lists (3.2 through 3.4.1)
2 new apps released (Account Tracker and Meter Readings for Windows Phone)
1 new app platform (Windows Phone)

Some highlights by date …

December 26th, launched Meter Readings for Windows Phone

December 16th, finally added my most popular feature request – iCloud syncing in Account Tracker

October 17th, added printing support to Account Tracker

October 8th, launched Account Tracker for Windows Phone

September, added support for iOS 6 and the new retina display on the iPhone 5

August, added support for the new Dropbox APIs

July 16th, added limited support for Stocks and Shares in Account Tracker

March, added support for iCloud and the new retina display on the new (now old!!) iPad

Meter Readings 1.0 for Windows Phone is now available

On By GrahamIn Announcements

mrwpicon57 While Apple are having some time off (21st-28th), apparently Microsoft are working away! I am therefore really pleased to announce that the first public release (v1.0) of Meter Readings for Windows Phone is now available!

It builds on the design of Account Tracker to take advantage of the Windows Phone metro interface, and it looks fantastic! Many thanks to András (Velvárt) and the Response team for their development, especially for turning this around so quickly!

As it can take a day or so for new apps to appear on Marketplace, here is a direct link.

Backups (again)

On By GrahamIn Uncategorized

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As its the apocalypse tomorrow, its probably appropriate that I remind you all about backups. 🙂

Your iOS devices are backed up regularly by Apple, either by connecting them to your computer (iTunes) or over iCloud (if enabled). This is always your first line of protection, however you shouldn’t rely on it alone. Apple only store a single backup per device, and there is no way to go back to a known point in time should the worst happen.

All of my apps have a built in backup solution. If you would be horrified at the thought of starting again from scratch, you should think about backups and how frequently to do them. For something like Account Tracker where you are potentially making multiple changes per day, you might want to backup every day or so, or certainly weekly (I do the latter). For other apps it might be less frequently.

Account Tracker has a backup reminder feature (turn it on and its then only 2 taps to backup). Meter Readings and Hill Lists can be configured to automatically backup to iCloud when you make changes.

Backups are a simple snapshot of your data, and initially they are stored on your device with the app. If you or someone else (e.g. a child or grandchild) deletes your app by accident, your backups are deleted too! To protect against this, you also need to think about exporting backups off your device.

Exporting can be done the old fashioned way (by email), or you could use a cloud based storage mechanism. The two I support are Dropbox and iCloud. If these are enabled, all new backups are automatically copied off your device for safekeeping.

I highly recommend thinking about backups, not just for my apps but for any piece of software you use regularly where you value your data (documents, photos … etc). Losing it all can be a disaster, and it really is simple and inexpensive to protect against it.

Even if the apocalypse happens …

Account Tracker 3.9 with iCloud Syncing is now available

On By GrahamIn Announcements

Added support for iCloud Syncing as an in-app purchase. Since all iTunes/AppStore purchases are per-user and not per-device, you only need to buy this once for all of your devices. When enabled, changes to your accounts, your main budgets and your transactions are synced between devices, with minimal user intervention (basically 2 taps on the receiving device).

I highly recommend making a new backup and exporting this off your device before enabling syncing!

Note that iCloud is really only suitable for individual users sharing data between their own devices. I will be adding support for Dropbox Syncing in a future release.

Minor improvements to the Accounts screen, to make showing/hiding hidden accounts more explicit. Instead of using the left arrow, I have added a Show/Hide button at the top right of the screen (but only if you actually have hidden accounts). The + button to add a new account is always available while editing.

The left and right arrows now scroll to the start and end of the accounts list respectively. This is possibly redundant if you only have a couple of accounts, but it keeps all the screens and behaviour consistent.

Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

Syncing update

On By GrahamIn Features

Well, after about 4 months of thought and a few prototype implementations, I have FINALLY finished adding support for syncing. I want to spend the next week testing it to make sure it works as expected, but I have to say I am quite pleased with its simplicity. Turn it on, use the app as normal and you are notified if other devices have changed things. Two taps and these changes are merged.

This initial implementation only works with iCloud as the means for passing data between devices (Dropbox will come later). This means you can’t use it to share data between multiple people unless they all use the same iCloud account. Changes to accounts, budgets and transactions are tracked and shared between devices. It supports one primary device and multiple secondary devices.

The only two things it won’t sync are your settings and anything to do with account groups or account order. However these are not things that change often.

It will be available in around 2 weeks as an in-app purchase.

UPDATE (2nd December) – testing has gone well and all is working as expected. Should be submitted to Apple in a few more days.

Top search terms

On By GrahamIn Uncategorized

My website can track the top search terms that are used to reach it (271,432 hits and counting!!).

Other than the obvious top searches such as “account tracker”, “graham haley”, “account tracker app”, “graham haley account tracker” and “account tracker ipad/iphone”, here are the top five questions I can respond to (all related to Account Tracker) …

1. account tracker for mac – I have not managed to do anything on this since the summer, however I hope to get back to it soon.

2. account tracker for pc – now that I have a Windows Phone version, it is possible that I might fund a Windows 8 version that will ultimately sync with the phone version. We’ll see …

3. account tracker sync – this is my top feature request (by far), and while you can currently copy data between devices with the backups feature (see https://grahamhaley.co.uk/accounts/backups/), an auto-sync solution is coming very soon!!

4. account tracker android – despite being regularly contacted by Samsung and more recently Amazon about porting my apps to Android, it would need a huge investment of time and money, and without help I simply can’t do it – sorry!

5. account tracker import csv – this is relatively easy to do as long as you get your data into the right format. Again see https://grahamhaley.co.uk/accounts/backups/ for full details.

iCloud tips

On By GrahamIn Announcements

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Most of my apps support iCloud for sharing backup files between devices (and Account Tracker supports syncing too). Here are some tips for setting it up, and making sure it is working.

1. On each device, go to the main Settings app and select the iCloud row. Make sure you are using the same iCloud account, and that you have space available (under Storage).

2a. If you are NOT using iCloud Drive … make sure Documents & Data is ON, and that my app is listed and enabled. If you want iCloud to work over your cellular data network, make sure Use Cellular Data is ON.

2b. If you ARE using iCloud Drive … make sure this is enabled on ALL devices, and that my app is also listed and enabled. Note that iCloud Drive is incompatible with previous implementations.

3. On your first device (e.g. your iPad), go to the Settings screen in my app and enable iCloud (you only have to do this once). Now go to the Backups screen, and make sure the title at the top says iCloud. Make a backup (Backup Now).

If you get an error saying access to iCloud failed, simply go back to the Settings screen, and then back to the Backups screen.

4. On your second device (e.g. your iPhone), go to the settings screen in my app and enable iCloud (you only have to do this once). Now go to the Backups screen, and make sure the title at the top says iCloud. The list of files shown should include the backup you made in step 3, but the file will be shown in grey (meaning it is available in iCloud but not copied to the app yet).

5. If the file is not listed, periodically tap the refresh button at the top left (it might look like nothing is happening, but the refresh is VERY quick). iCloud can be slow, so it can take a while (sometimes a few minutes).

6. Select the greyed out backup file and choose Restore Backup. The file will be copied, verified and restored.

If this isn’t working as expected, there are a few steps you can take to see what is happening.

7. On the sending device, go to the main Settings app, select iCloud, then Storage (& Backup), then Manage Storage. Make sure my app is listed. Select it and make sure the newly created backup file is listed.

8. On the receiving device, do the same.

9. Finally on the receiving device in my app, check the Backups screen to make sure the file is listed there.

If it is still not working, try rebooting your device. This has helped a couple of people, and clearly points to an iOS issue. 😦

You might now be asking why I use iCloud! Well, it usually works very well (albeit slowly) and I like the way files are copied between devices automatically. Far better than fiddling around with bluetooth, WiFi or iTunes file sharing!

My app update process

On By GrahamIn Uncategorized

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You might think doing an app update is primarily about the coding and testing. This post summarises the many steps I have to take between being “finished” and you getting an “update available” message from iTunes.

1. Documentation. Primarily this involves editing the built in User Guide, which is an HTML document. I also need to write the What’s New section for iTunes, which I also include in the User Guide (since many people miss this when updating).

2. Each update requires a new version number, so this needs to be updated in the app itself. Also if it is the first update of the year, I update the copyright notice.

3. Since the version number is shown on the application launch images (the brief image that is displayed when you launch the app), these need to be re-generated. Each app now has 7 launch images: portrait mode on the iPad (retina and non-retina); landscape mode on the iPad (retina and non-retina); the old iPhone/iPod Touch (retina and non-retina); finally the new iPhone/iPod Touch (retina only). I tend to use OmniGraffle to produce these.

4. Build the app for submission to Apple. This takes perhaps 30-60 seconds! 🙂

5. If I have changed something visual, I need to take new screenshots for iTunes. Since you can include up to 5 images, this involves taking 15 screenshots in total: 5 for the iPad (retina only), 5 for the old iPhone/iPod Touch (retina only) and 5 for the new iPhone/iPod Touch (retina only). Screenshots are taken by pressing the Home and Power buttons at the same time, and the resulting images are then trimmed to remove the status bar at the top of the screen.

6. I also take new screenshots for my website, typically in the order of 15-30 of them per app. I tend to use an “old” iPhone 4 for this, however I then have to resize each image down to 50% as the retina images are too big for the web.

7. Apple has a website called iTunes Connect where developers can manage their apps. I add the new app version, paste in the What’s New text and upload the 15 iTunes images (which can take ages). I can then submit the app for approval.

8. Despite some early horror stories, the approval process has always been very fair (IMHO). Typically apps are approved in around 5-10 days.

9. Finally once I get notified it has been approved, I upload all the screenshots to my website, update the text on my website and then officially release the new version. Phew!

10. For apps like Account Tracker, all of the above is repeated for the Free version. I also use separate screenshots for the US ($) vs the rest of the world (where I use £). As you can imagine, there are a LOT of images to upload (60 to iTunes in total, uploaded one at a time).

So next time you update one of my apps, now you know what I went through!