Cogitu

The 1.0.2 update for Budgee is now complete and submitted to Apple for approval.  I'll post a quick note here once the update has been approved (that should take 24-72 hours based on the previous update approval time).  This update is recommended for all Budgee users since it addresses a couple of important issues:

Auto-correct & the magnifying glass ("loupe") are fixed
If you've ever typed a category name or transaction note that the iPhone wanted to correct, you've noticed that you can't prevent the iPhone from using its suggeste version.  This is a bug with the way the iPhone handles the particular setup Budgee uses.  Version 1.0.2 has a new fix that should allow you to use the auto-correct the way you expect.  The "loupe" also had issues working in previous versions (due to the same bug) - you should be able to use it to correct a word as well with version 1.0.2.

Updated international text handling (specifically support for umlauts)
There have been several users reporting issues with various non-ASCII characters, specifically characters with an umlaut.  Any of these characters were being shown correctly in Budgee until you re-opened the application.  There was an issue with the way text was being reloaded from the Budgee database.  Version 1.0.2 fixes this so that any valid text should now work properly.  I specifically tested with umlauts, but it should take care of any other similar issues you are experiencing.  If not, please e-mail support@cogitu.com.

Entering/editing a transaction or category now automatically brings up the keyboard and selects the "Name" or "Note" field
This was requested by several users as a way to streamline Budgee even more.  It seems to work well, so it is included in this version.  The one catch is that you'll now need to dismiss the keyboard (the return/done button in the bottom right) in order to click the "Delete Transaction" or "Delete Category" button.  I'll see about tweaking that a bit more in a future version.

A few weeks ago, I posted about the progress on version 1.0.2 of Budgee - at the time, it looked like the update would be ready by the end of November.  One of the bad things about being a tiny software company - really only one developer plus the occasional help of a UI designer - is that sometimes things just don't work out like you plan.  That is the case with Budgee at the moment.

The update is still in progress, but I had a death in the family 2 weeks ago and we're finishing up all of the related business over the Thanksgiving holday - so Budgee development had to go on hold during that time and then it took a bit of extra time to get caught up on my day job.  At this point, the updates should be ready early in December - probably around the second week.  Certainly later than I'd like, but I'm hoping to get an extra feature or two in there if I can to make up for the delay.

On that note, thank you very much for the great feedback so far - Steve L. and Sofia F. in particular - I haven't been able to get caught up on responding to e-mails just yet, but your bug reports and feature requests are much appriciated.  If you're reading this and have an idea or bug you'd like to make sure gets looked at, feel free to shoot an e-mail to support@cogitu.com.  I'm going to try to get caught up on responding to e-mails over the next couple of days, so if you don't hear back from me immedately, know that I've read your e-mail and will get back to you soon.

Well, Budgee has been out for a little less than 3 weeks at this point and things are going quite well.  We've had one minor update which addressed an internationalization issue.  Now, work is beginning on version 1.0.2 which will focus mostly on optimizing the application and fixing a couple of bugs.  Specifically, there is some type of issue with the built-in autocorrect feature doesn't work quite right for category names and transaction notes.  There are also some memory issues that will be addressed to help the application run more smoothly.  This update should take 1-2 weeks of development time and then a week or less to go live on the App Store - so expect it somewhere close to the end of November.

Once 1.0.2 is done, work will begin on version 1.1.0 - the first update to include new functionality.  There are seveal possibilities for features that will go into this release, but expect to see some way to associate a budgeting period with a budget and a way to review all transactions (without having to review them one category at a time).  Look for another post as we get closer to 1.1.0 that will detail the specific changes and provide a more concrete feature list.

If you have any comments or suggestions for items that we should consider for future updates, shoot us an e-mail here: support@cogitu.com.

NOTE: This has been confirmed by Apple as a bug in Xcode - the bug ID is #6399667.  I haven't heard an ETA on when it may be resolved.

This tip is for any fellow iPhone developers getting the 0xE8000058 error when you try to install your app in debug mode on your physical device.  I just spent the last several hours trying to figure out what had happened when I tried to branch my code from a production (App Store) release back to a new dev build to start working on some new improvements.  As soon as I did that and changed my build configuration back to Debug, I started getting the 0xE8000058 error.  Turns out, there are all kinds of causes for it that you'll find online if you search google, but in my particular case, the cause is particularly redicious (and insane to track down).

I had recently found that you can give your application an icon in iTunes when distributed as Ad Hoc.  You do this by taking a 512x512 icon, renaming it to iTunesArtwork (no extention), and putting it in the root of your application bundle.  Works great.  BUT, apparently, you can't install a device debug build with that in your bundle.  It has no use in such a build of course, but I didnt expect it to break the install process...but it sure did.  So, if you're seeing this particular error and you've tried the other tips on google and nothing works AND you did put an iTuneArtwork file in your bundle - try this:

• Remove the iTunesArtwork from the bundle (you just need to remove the reference, you can leave the physical file there since you'll need to re-add it when you get ready to distribute the app)
• Run Build -> Clean
• Then run Build and Go (Debug)

That should do it (or did it for me at least...hopefully this will same someone else the hours of frustration I just went through to figure this out.  It'd be awesome if these Xcode error messages were just a tiny bit more helpful.

Budgee Version 1.0.1 has now been submitted to the App Store.  It looks like the App Store review process takes around 4-7 days at the moment, so expect the update to be live sometime near the end of the week.  The official release notes for Budgee can always be found here:

http://www.cogitu.com/Products/Budgee/releaseNotes.html

In general, the main users that will see a benefit from this update are those users in a region where the currency format uses a decimal separator other than a "." OR the currency does not use decimal values (e.g. yen).  Two minor tweaks also added in a delete confirmation screen when deleting a category or transaction - this was added because it was a little too easy to accidentally delete these on the detail page.