Cogitu

There's good news and bad news on the Budgee front - the bad news first...  I just got word from Apple that the 1.0.4 update I recently posted about has been rejected from the app store.  The issue is that in order to make the category and transaction lists scroll more smoothly, I changed the way they were building themselves.  As a side product of this, the table row highlighting was changed slightly...so if you were to select a category, view your list of transactions for that category, and then return to the category list, the category you originally selected would not be highlighted.  In versions prior to 1.0.4, the selected category would still be selected for a moment and then the selection would fade away.  I made this change because of another issue with highlighting and didn't think it would be an issue.  The catch is that the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines say that I MUST make the highlight work the way prior versions of Budgee worked - and thus, the app was rejected until I correct the highlight.  It's really quite impressive that Apple pays so much attention to every last detail in the HIG - it's a lot to keep in one's head, but they certainly do a good job of keeping us all straight about how things are supposed to work.

So what's the good news?  Well, in order to fix this issue (and really finish polishing things up), I've decided to hold off on minor updates for now and focus on doing a major upgrade to the internals of Budgee which will result in version 1.5.  In doing so, Budgee will become faster, more streamlined, more stable (particularly if you keep a large number of transactions in it), and most importantly to you guys, it'll have some new features that have been requested for a while now.  The reality is that Budgee was the first iPhone app I created (yep, there are more, but they aren't public just yet...) and it has some things under the hood that need to be improved based on things I've learned since it's release.  I originally planned to hold off on a re-write for a bit, but to really do things right, I need to just bite the bullet and revamp things.  In the end, it'll work out better for everyone - it's easier for me to maintain (and hopefully do more frequent release cycles) and Budgee's users will get the new features they want more quickly and the app itself will be more fun to use.

So how long until this update is out?  Well, it's going to be a little while...it'll be Q1 2009 for sure, but whether it's a couple of weeks or 2 months, I just don't know.  What I can say is that it'll take as long as it needs to get it done right so things are as polished and rock solid as they can be.  Tomorrow, I'll be posting what to expect from Budgee in 2009 - I'm excited about it and hope you guys are too.

In the meantime, if you have any major issues that need to be corrected before 1.5 is released, please e-mail support@cogitu.com and be as specific as possible about the issue.  If no major issues come up, 1.5 will be the next official release, but if there are any large issues that need to be addressed before that time, an interim version will be created.  Stay tuned to this blog for details on Budgee 1.5, Budgee's future in 2009, and the next major product from Cogitu...