Category: Editorial

My news and opinion articles.

Categories
Apple Editorial

Why I won’t buy a TapTapTap app ever again

You may have heard that an App Store developer called TapBots recently did something inexcusably disgusting and utterly outrageous: after 30 months of free support and a free upgrade to Version 2, they dared to charge for Version 3.

Yes, I know. I know! What a cheek, eh? I mean seriously: developers shouldn’t be in the business of selling apps if they’re only in it to make money. They should be on the App Store purely for our benefit and for their own love of making apps and giving them away for free, not because they’re trying to run a business.

If selling the apps you poured the last few months of your life into is your plan, better find another way to make a living. Nobody pays for hard work these days AND NEITHER SHOULD THEY. Deal with it, idiots.

Just kidding!

If you found yourself nodding along in agreement with me there, here comes the twist: I disagree with all of that. I have no problem with a developer whose business model is to put a fair price on their work and ask me to pay for it if I like it. Obviously some users of the app disagree with that policy, even though it may be one of their most-used apps. That’s fine – Tapbots doesn’t need them because plenty of their customers are only too happy to put the same value on the work as Tapbots do. In fact, many of us would pay more.

Turns out that some dicks over at a developer called TapTapTap completely disagree. While disagreement is all good and well, in this case it’s surprising because they’re not in competition with Tapbots. Regardless, a simple disagreement is not enough for the dicks at TapTapTap. No, they decided it would be really cool to slag off Tapbots (well, okay, they don’t name them, but it doesn’t take Benedict Cumberbatch in a warm coat to work out who they’re referring to given previous jabs over Twitter) not only in a blog post, but in the update notes for their own app. Reeeaaal professional.

The dicks at TapTapTap

The dicks at TapTapTap make an app called Camera+. It’s not bad, a decent alternative to the stock camera app on the iPhone although most of what it does is baked into the iPhone anyway now, but for a long time their app had better features and it’s become a stalwart of the Photography section.

So their business model is this: they sell the app to a mass market for $2, update it forever for free, and offer IAPs in the form of filter packs. Yes, sodding filter packs. Well hey, a developer’s gotta eat, right? Well, no, not according to the dicks at TapTapTap, but I’ll get to that.

Tapbots on the other hand employ a marginally different business model: they sell their app to a niche market for $3 (currently on sale) and don’t sell IAPs. Bugfix-type updates are free, the huge update to Version 2.0 was free, but after 30 months of entirely free support (and no IAPs!) they charged $3 for Version 3.0.

Both these models are completely fair enough. I have no problem with either as both demonstrate a sustainable business model. And to be clear, ‘sustainability’ means making sure the revenue your business brings in will keep you in business. That’s pretty much the first rule of running a business, folks.

TapTapTap’s ‘arguments’

I’ve always suspected the guys at TapTapTap might not be the sort of people I’d go for a drink with, based on the update notes for their app. They’re definitely a bit more amusing than the average update notes, but they’re also a bit “hey we’re KRAZY”, with a K. A bit attention seeking. And I find attention seekers kinda dickish. So I’ve always had my suspicions.

This week John Casanta at TapTapTap was happy to confirm my suspicions by posting an app update followed by a blog post which pushed way past “Krazy with a K”, way past “I’m an attention whore!”. It basically says: “Developers that charge for updates are pathetic and hate their customers. Go us! And fuck Tapbots!”

I’m paraphrasing, of course. Here’s what it actually says, make your own mind up:

I’ve experienced both ends of the spectrum as a developer… I recall the early days where I’d earn less than $1,000 per month and essentially lived in a shack to make ends meet. And at the other end, I’ve made far more money than anybody needs to live. The bottom line is that absolutely none of this has any bearing on our customers.

If we, or any other developers aren’t able to make ends meet through selling our apps, the solution is neither to blame nor to screw over your customers. It’s more along the lines of: get better at what you do… or find some other work that better suits you.

Being able to get out of bed at noontime and work out of your home in your fluffy bunny slippers is a privilege, not a right. And you need to earn that privilege. A lot of developers seem to have lost that perspective these days and sound far more entitled than the people who support them by buying their apps that they accuse of being entitled.

If you’re a developer, it’d be nice if you actually thought all of this through in an objective way before just firing off the typical defensive, knee-jerk reaction.

Like I said: dicks.

This isn’t about developers with a lousy business plan not being able to make ends meet and screwing over their customers. This is about developers using a considerably underpriced version of the business plan serious developers making serious software tools have used since, like, forever: bugfixes are free; significant new releases have a fee. And if Apple actually offered upgrade discount pricing on the App Store perhaps we wouldn’t have the problem that’s emerged: that App Store customers unrealistically expect all app updates for free.

I’ve got to address some of the points in the blog post:

  • “If…developers aren’t able to make ends meet through selling [their] apps, the solution is neither to blame nor to screw over your customers.” – where to start? Firstly, where’s this “blame” coming from? Methinks this is just a little strawman that TapTapTap pulled out of their arselocker to make their flimsy point sound waaay better, as I don’t see any developers ‘blaming’ anyone except Apple for unhelpful pricing tiers.
  • Secondly, call me crazy, but I don’t think releasing an optional new version of your app at a reasonable price that reflects the work that went into it and the work that will continue to be put into it is screwing over your customers. I’m pretty sure Tweetbot 2 still works, because I’m still using it (I actually don’t like the design of Tweetbot 3, ironically).
  • Thirdly, because there’s just so much wrong in that one sentence, it’s pretty obvious that Tapbots are perfectly capable of making ends meet through selling their apps, because that’s what they continue to do: sell their app.
  • “Get better at what you do” – what does the quality of their coding have to do with anything? They’re already remarkable at what they do, which is why thousands of iPhone users bought their app in the first place.
  • “Find some other work that suits you” – presumably work that doesn’t involve being paid a fair and sustainable wage, because as we all know: charging fairly for your work = failing.
  • “Being able to get out of bed at noontime and work out of your home in your fluffy bunny slippers is a privilege, not a right.” – Jeez, what is it with TapTapTap and strawman arguments? Remember, we’re talking about the right to charge a fee for your work. Where you do that work is completely irrelevant. If anything, working from home in awesome fluffy bunny slippers is a more responsible and cost-effective move than working from an office, isn’t it? Try telling that to the dicks at TapTapTap, who perhaps wouldn’t need IAPs or to even charge for their app at all if they worked from home.
  • “A lot of developers seem to have lost that perspective these days and sound far more entitled than the people who support them by buying their apps that they accuse of being entitled.” – there’s nothing ‘entitled’ about saying “We’ve spent months working on a major update, we’re really proud of it, and it’s just $3.” Entitlement is this: “Waaaah! $3 for something I’ll use every single day for months if not years?! SO UNFAIR! I’m going to buy a different app instead.”. That’s entitlement.

The last word

What TapTapTap achieved with this post and app update was to reinforce the entirely misguided and unrealistic expectations of App Store users that developers should sell their work at rock bottom prices and then spend the rest of their lives working on the app for free, and hope for a sales spike.

Worse, they combined their airing of this rather silly position with a pretty nasty dig at non-competing fellow developers, using it as an opportunity to curry favour amongst the greedier and more selfish of their users who might find that sort of shit-stirring funny.

On TapTapTap’s About page is a list of their ‘important principles’. It includes the line:

  • High quality software doesn’t have to cost you a lot.

Come on, folks. $3 is not a lot of money. No, don’t give me “it’s a lot of money on the App Store” because for an app you’ll use hourly, daily, for months if not years, $3 is not a lot of money.

Similarly, a total of $6 over thirty months to support ongoing work on said app is also not a lot of money, and anyone who argues that it is while waving their $600+ iPhone around is as much of a dick as the guy that writes TapTapTap’s blog.

Perhaps TapTapTap should teach us by example and make a Twitter app without IAPs that’s anywhere near as good as Tweetbot, then demonstrate how the resulting revenue from that one app alone is enough to keep their company afloat forever. While they’re at it, I’d love to see them make their Camera+ IAPs free because as we all know, selling your work is such an insulting rip-off of your customers. Then they might have an angle on App Store business models that’s worth posting.

However, it probably won’t be worth actually reading if the maturity and professionalism in evidence on their blog is anything to go by. I’m happy to join the throng of folk on Twitter deleting Camera+ in disgust.

P.S.

Just before anyone points this out themselves with passive-aggressive glee: I’m fully aware that TapTapTap couldn’t give a toss who uninstalls Camera+. After all, they’ve already got our money, and their business model evidently works for them, just as Tapbots’ model is working for them. I also don’t expect them to give a toss about my opinion on their policies and business model. This post isn’t about making a stand against them or trying to bring them down a peg. It’s just about airing my opinion on my blog, for others to either agree or disagree.

Also, I’m sorry to anyone at TapTapTap whose opinions are not represented by the blog post in question. I’m sure you’re not all dicks, and I support your right to be paid for your work.

Categories
Apple Editorial

Why the hell do I have to pay again for Tweetbot 3?

pay again for tweetbot 3

pay again for tweetbot 3Tweetbot 3 is out, the latest version of what is definitely my favourite Twitter client, and certainly one of the very best available for iOS and OSX, but rather than it being a free update in the App Store for existing customers it’s been released as an entirely new app that you have to purchase. Yes, even if you already bought Tweetbot 1, or Tweetbot 2. And yes, even if you bought it the day before Tweetbot 3 came out.

(Okay that last one is a bit unfortunate if that happened to you, but sometimes shit happens. Like the time I bought Borderlands 2 on Steam the week before it was 70% off in a sale. Dammit.)

OMG WTF? i hav 2 like PAY AGAIN?

Yes, you do. And before we go any further let me just say, if you came here with your Whiners Are Winners hat on looking for some moral support you won’t find it here. That post title above lured you here so I can say:

If you like Tweetbot and want Tapbots to be able to keep developing it, support them by paying the tiny price they’re asking for this major new update.

(N.B.: in the originally-published version of this post the above sentence read: BUY IT, YOU CHEAP F*&£$ but I thought that might be a bit argumentative…)

I have no problem with this business model. It’s fair for Tapbots to ask a very small fee to cover months if not years of work not just ‘reskinning for iOS 7’ as many on Twitter inaccurately describe the update, but rebuilding the app from the ground up to take advantage of the oodles of new code going on under the hood of iOS 7. Not to mention that Tweetbot 1 to Tweetbot 2 was a free update as I recall, so the longer you’ve been enjoying Tweetbot the better the deal gets.

If you still don’t think it’s reasonable please make sure you stick around to the end of this post where there’s a short exercise in calculating exactly how much Tweetbot has cost you thus far. It’s an eye-opener.

Here’s what Tapbots had to say on their blog:

Seven months ago, we started working on a big update for Calcbot. We were hoping to release it sometime in the summer. Two months in, Apple announced iOS7 at WWDC. We knew this was a huge change. It would make every single one of our apps look dated so we had to make sure our flagship app was ready for it. All of the design work that went into the Calcbot update was rendered obsolete in one keynote and so we focused our energy on updating Tweetbot for iPhone. Playing with the beta of iOS7 over the next few weeks brought us to the realization that this would not just be a “re-skin”. We really had to just start over with the new foundation and concepts of iOS7.

Major updates like this one take time and effort. Months of hard work rebuilding it with new iOS 7 frameworks, redesigning the interface (there is no convenient ‘Reskin Now!’ button in X-Code that redesigns interfaces by magic, you know), and all the testing and refining that goes with that. Months of work. If they were to give that away for free they’d need to find a way of making the money you spent on the first version cover not just all the work that went into that version you originally bought, but this version too.

But those are the unrealistic customer expectations set up by the App Store practices that have emerged, and it’s not sustainable for many – this is how IAPs gained dominance, screwing up the balance and gameplay of so many otherwise fantastic games.

Meanwhile, on Twitter some Tweetbot fans feel ripped off:

  • “It’s just a reskin” or “It’s not a major new version” (it’s a complete rebuild and redesign within the new iOS 7 frameworks and design guidelines)
  • “All other apps are updating to iOS 7 for free” (actually, not all)
  • “I’m an acid (sic) supporter since day one but I’m not buying it again” (speaks for itself really)
  • “They should adapt to the App Store business model of making updates free” (Apple’s suggestion to those wishing to charge for major updates is to release it as a new app – but they don’t allow them to offer upgrade discounting)
  • “This is a SCAM and Apple should stop it” (urgh, always with the SCAM)
  • “Apple don’t charge for updates to iOS 7, why should I pay to update Tweetbot?” (Apple sells iPhones for hundreds of dollars and can afford to keep you sweet with free iOS updates. Tapbots’s business is selling Tweetbot)

And so on. I replied to a few of these sorts of tweets this morning and asked: do you work for free? At what point do developers start working for free? How much value have you had from the app?

Out of a couple of dozen who replied, some did laugh it off and agree that yes, put like that it was fair enough. The rest argued with me. Whether they worked for free was irrelevant, and Tapbots needed to find a better way to make money. One said that even though he “loves” Tweetbot he’s stopped using Tweetbot 2 simply because Tapbots dared to charge for Tweetbot 3, and is considering buying Twitteriffic or Echofon instead.

Mind = blown.

Apple is the problem; could IAPs be the solution?

The frustrating reality is that App Store customers are now used to ‘pay once, get free updates forever’ but this model came about not because it’s good business sense (because on the face of it it’s not) but because Apple decided not to allow traditional upgrade pricing in the App Stores, presumably in keeping with it’s policy of making things as simple as possible for the average user. In Apple’s opinion too many price-points = confusion. Just look at Microsoft’s Windows pricing levels.

I am not the average user. I’m used to a world where ‘point release’ software updates (mostly bug fixes) tend to be free but major release updates are paid. That is: version 2.3.2 to version 2.4 I would expect for free. But version 2.4 to version 3.0 I would expect to pay for. So while I certainly don’t complain about this ‘free updates’ thing that’s happened to the App Store, I’ve always wondered how sustainable that is.

Just guessing, but I reckon most serious App Store developers, especially those with a ‘utility’ app as opposed to a game, would prefer to adopt upgrade discounting, would Apple let them. I base that guess on articles around the web about how developers have struggled with Apple’s update pricing policy. Recently a major developer called Omnigroup tried to overcome Apple’s limitations with inventive and seemingly fair workarounds, only to have Apple shut their attempt down.

For an app that offers all updates for free, major or minor, IAPs offer the only real alternative revenue stream to fund ongoing development in the absence of a sales spike: either with expendable ‘currency’, most often used in casual games to speed up hatefully slow timers that restrict progress; or with extra content packs such as the extra filters in Hipstamatic, or extra gameplay chapters in The Walking Dead. Unfortunately the former is far more frequently used (and abused) than the latter, and the satisfaction of paying a fair price (i.e. over £4.99 at least) for a good game and not being nickel-and-dimed to play without interruptions is rare these days – although XCOM may have turned that tide.

Somewhere in the IAP system there lies the germ of a solution to upgrade pricing, whereby an app costs full price the first time you buy it but major upgrades are made available as IAPs at a cheaper rate, thereby offering existing users an upgrade discount. It seems like that could work but presumably there is some kind of issue with completely overwriting an app with an entirely recoded version as an IAP or it would already be happening.

How to rationalise it

If you still have a problem with developers maintaining a sustainable business by charging for the considerable efforts involved in major updates to their apps, and still believe that all updates should be free and that developers should find some magical beans or something to finance their work, here is an exercise that may help you at least rationalise the expense:

Q: When did you first buy Tweetbot?
A: (I bought Tweetbot 1 the week it launched in April 2011 – Tweetbot 2 was a free update, ironically)

Q: How many weeks is that?
A: (I’ve owned it 130 weeks)

Q: What price did you pay?
A: (I paid £2 I believe)

Q: Therefore, how much have you paid per week to own and use Tweetbot?
A: (£2 divided by 130 = £0.0153 = 1.5 UK pennies per week)

One and a half UK pennies per week. That’s what I paid to have both version 1 and version 2 of Tweetbot on my phone. And in fact after Apple’s cut I’ve only paid Tapbots £0.0107, barely a hair over one penny per week, to sustain their efforts not just maintaining the app with bug fixes but also rolling out an entirely new version 2.0 of the app.

So a whole new third version, entirely rewritten and redesigned for the new iOS 7 UI and frameworks, for just £2*?! I feel bad for them that it’s so cheap, frankly, and as I fully intend to continue using their app, I have no issue paying them for the hard work they put into it.

The last word

I was told on Twitter that Tapbots are lucky to have customers like me. What, I replied, you mean customers that understand why they’re asked to pay for their products? Fortunately, I think there’s more than enough people perfectly happy to pay way below the deserving rate for an awesome app for Tapbots to do just fine, but the miserliness of strangers continues to drive me up the wall.

app-store-download

* The price I’m quoting for Tapbots 3 is their discounted Launch Pricing.

Categories
Editorial

Photography in Grand Theft Auto V

GTA V photography
A death on the steps of a Rockford Hills church.
GTA V photos
Death in the leafy suburb of Rockford Hills

I absolutely love GTA V. After what I felt was an increasingly tedious, humourless attempt to draw some ‘maturity’ into the series in GTA IV (which I eventually got bored with and never finished, nor did I bother with any of the DLC), GTA V has captured my imagination entirely and I’ve spent about 60 hours to date in the game having an absolute blast both playing the story and just ‘living a life’ in the state of San Andreas, albeit a legally questionable one.

Something I’ve started messing around with recently, now all the Rockstar Social Club servers are finally working, is the Snapmatic photo app on the in-game mobile phone. Not only is there more than enough craziness in the scripted action to snap, the world Rockstar has created is so realistic that it’s perfectly possible to spend your entire time photographing the game’s inhabitants and their autonomic adventures – and misadventures.

What you snap comes down to what you feel like. Earlier this week I decided to take advantage of the fact it’s not real by creating works of ‘art’ from the act of ‘murder’ – I’d find a nicely framed, artistic-looking shot, populated by some non-playable city dwellers just going about their day (walking by, snapping their own phone photos, reading a paper, window-shopping, chatting on a corner, whatever), then I’d brutally slay them in the messiest way (usually a sawn-off shotgun) and snap the otherwise aesthetically appealing photo.

GTA V photography
A death on the steps of a Rockford Hills church.
gta v snapmatic
Dead busker outside the Oriental Movie Theatre

After a few shots this got a bit too easy so I started focussing on just the blood splatter, framing otherwise arty shots that were unmistakable adorned with the lifeless corpse and/or arterial spray of some poor unfortunate passerby. Dexter would love it.

But it’s not just me. Check out the Snapmatic photo-sharing page on Rockstar Social Club and you’ll see tens of thousands of gamers taking photos ranging from obvious selfies to more artistic and amusing moments frozen forever in between committing multi-million dollar heists. Here’s a few of my own less gruesome snaps around the city:

GTA V snapmatic photos
An abandoned mine entrance in the side of a mountain – you’ll find a Letter Scrap here by the way.
snapmatic photos gta V
Michael snaps a selfie downtown. Kifflam!
gta V monkey mask
GTA meets Planet Of The Apes
gta V photography
Emergency indeed – a little too late for these unfortunate victims.

Whoops, how’d that last one get in there?

In short, having fun with the phone-camera in GTA V is most definitely A Thing That People Are Doing. Which brings me to…

Petapixel’s humourless commenters

Mashable highlighted Fernando Pereira Gomes, just one of the many hundreds of players who are really making the most of the Snapmatic app, a real-life street photographer who has turned his own visual style to the streets of Los Santos to very pleasing effect. I love the shots he’s found in the city, they’re great. They go a long way to demonstrating that this city has a life outside of the scripted events of the storyline. Like I say, this chap is far from the only one doing this, but he’s a good example.

Petapixel picked up the link from Mashable and ran their own story on it, which is where I came across it this morning. And then I got into the comments.

As a rule internet comments are a worthless cesspit of self-entitlement, arrogance and bigotry, with a good dash of deliberate trolling thrown in to stir it all up. True, there are those who may just want to add their opinion to a balanced discussion taking place, and that’s great. But I’d say the majority of internet commenters simply want to unleash double-barrels of snark, correcting opinions they consider wrong, and do so with the fervent belief that only their opinion matters and That’s The End Of That.

As it was with the comments under the Petapixel story which are loaded with “this isn’t photography!” and “there’s a name for this: copyright theft” (eh?), and “um, this is called making a screenshot and requires no skill” and “so can I take photos of other people’s creations in a museum and call it art?” and “he didn’t use a camera, therefore it’s not photography” and “photography is defined by exposing chemical film to light actually” and “so if I screenshot Zelda: A Link To The Past, does that make me an aerial photographer?” and so on, and so on.

Enough, you tiresome bores!

I’d like to say this to everyone posting guff like that:

Get over yourselves, and do something about your shoulder-mounted chip against anyone who dares to question your personal definition of what photography is. Seriously, what does it matter? Why not put all that energy into creating something of your own that meets your terribly narrow definitions rather than attempting to piss all over someone else’s fun?

Rockstar put a camera in the phone that the player uses in the game. Switching into the camera roots you to the spot and gives you a zoomable, panable, tiltable viewpoint with which to frame and take a photo, in-game, which is then shared on their real-life photo sharing website at the Rockstar Social Club.

Correct: no chemical film is exposed to light.

Correct: no physical device that looks like or could be described as an actual real-life camera is ever in the user’s real-life hands.

Correct: the world that is being ‘photographed’ is entirely artificial and coded from the ground up by Rockstar.

But so what? The world they constructed is so beautifully made that emergent activity outside the realms of the scripted action happens all the time, all over the map. Cops chase villains, crash their cars, and engage in gunfights with them. Thieves hold up ATM users. Tourists stop in the street to snap photos. Hawkers try to sell you stuff. Pedestrians compliment and abuse each other – and depending on what you’re wearing, driving or doing, you too. Bums stagger down alleys and collapse. Birds fly into helicopter rotors and emerge as a burst of blood, feathers and fleshy bits. Reckless drivers mow down careless jay-walkers, then are wrenched out of their car by outraged witnesses and beaten to death. And yes, the framework that governs these actions is programmed, but how and when they occur in my player’s field of view is not, or at least it feels that way.

And then there’s the moments that really can’t have been programmed. They can’t program the sun to rise just as a storm passes at the exact moment I’m reaching the top of a mountain just in time to witness the most beautiful flare of sunlight through a heavy cloud, silhouetting a lone tourist already at the peak, snapping their own photo. That’s the laws of the game as programmed by Rockstar serendipitously producing a unique moment – it hasn’t happened every other time I climbed a mountain.

It’s photography in every way that matters to me

So my verdict is this: sure, it’s not ‘real’ photography. Sure, I’m not taking any ‘real’ risks to get the photo, nor am I capturing any ‘real’ emotions in the in-game inhabitants I snap as they go about their day.

But serendipity is in full effect. I still have to find the shots, frame them up the way my eye likes them, pick the moment to press the shutter button. The ambient light is so well done that picking the right time of day to get the photo you want is just as important.

GTA V photos
An expensive shopping trip for sure
photography GTA V
A bloody protest outside Ponsonby’s. Just out of frame: the corpse

I have to make that photo somehow or other, even if it’s as grotesque and/or ridiculously unrealistic as blasting a pedestrian from just the right angle with just the right weapon so as to get their blood to spatter across the Ponsonby’s window in just the right way to send the message I want to send about that chain of stores and the patronising and supercilious staff they employ within.

In short

Photography within the world Rockstar created for GTA V is perfectly creative, limited only by your imagination, and all in all, it’s just meant to be fun.

But apparently that’s a very foreign concept to many in the photography world, and particularly amongst those that comment on Petapixel. Photography is ONLY done with REAL cameras. Photography is ONLY done with REAL film. Photography MUST meet their dictionary-rigid definitions and TO HELL with anyone who DARES to contradict them.

Well I’m proud to not be that boring, or limited by such narrow and humourless opinions about what ‘photography’ really is. I’m a hard-working professional real-life photographer, and I love messing about with the photography in GTA V. Bring it on.

Categories
Photographic

my glass eye won a joint 3rd on Photoblogchallenges.com!

tristan versluis creep
A still from C.R.E.E.P. (2013) directed by Tristan Versluis, photographed by me
tristan versluis creep
A still from C.R.E.E.P. (2013) directed by Tristan Versluis, photographed by me

Just a quick post to blow my own trumpet about placing joint 3rd in one of the weekly competitions over at Photoblog Challenges, which is nice! I started posting entries from my photoblog a few weeks ago when I ‘rebooted’ it after transferring over to WordPress from Pixelpost and it’s nice to feel part of a wee community again. If you’ve got a photoblog you should head over and check it out, take part in a couple of challenges and vote on a couple of others. Fun!

The photo itself is a still from Tristan Versluis’s scifi short C.R.E.E.P. which you can watch below:

C.R.E.E.P from Ascension Productions on Vimeo.

Categories
Apple

You Need A Budget for iPhone updated for iOS 7

you need a budget iPhone
The redesign of You Need A Budget for iPhone is clearer and easier to use

you need a budget iPhoneThe excellent You Need A Budget for iPhone (free) (or YNAB to its friends!) just got a hefty redesign for iOS 7, and it’s rather lovely.

The new look is a bit of a departure from the look of the main desktop app (for Mac and PC) but it fits in a lot better with the simpler, almost minimalist look of iOS 7 and actually makes several elements much clearer and easier to manage, especially when entering ‘splits’ or when picking a Payee based on your location. A particularly nice new touch is a pop-up update of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ totals of a budget category when you add a transaction, making it even easier to keep up-to-date with the month’s spending.

As the App Store description page points out, YNAB for iPhone is a companion app for entering transactions on the go and keeping an eye on your running budget totals but it requires the full Mac/PC app to be of any use. It doesn’t have any budget-managing options – though I hear they’re working on a standalone iPad app that will meet that need – but your budget is available to view, however. It syncs over from the desktop via Dropbox and you tap your on-the-go transactions into the app as they occur. Of course, you don’t necessarily need the iPhone app, you could just import a downloaded statement to the desktop app periodically, but I find that makes it harder to keep on top of your budgeting day-to-day.

you need a budget iPhone
The redesign of You Need A Budget for iPhone is clearer and easier to use

So overall a great-looking update with some welcome new features. However, a couple of old features seem to have been lost including the ‘Favourites’ tab for quickly selecting regularly-used Categories and Payees.

According to the developer the autocomplete for Category and location-based Payee ultimately do the same job and for the most part I expect that’s probably the case but for me the Favourites filter was quicker and easier than relying on Autocomplete, narrowing dozens of budget categories down to the four or five I only ever needed on my phone whenever I had to manually enter a category or change the one Autocomplete entered.

They’ve also made a Search function more accessible but I found that tapping to activate it, then typing, then tapping the results was all more faff than using the old Favourites tabBut hey, not the end of the world! 😉

So in summary – a largely welcome update, with a couple of niggles I’ll just have to get used to.

Save 10% on You Need A Budget

You Need A Budget is a fantastic Mac/PC personal budgeting app and I highly recommend you check it out if you’re looking for an intuitive, effective way to manage your household income or even a small business.

If for some reason you’re reading this but you don’t actually have your own copy of YNAB yet, click here to find out how to save 10% on your purchase over at youneedabudget.com!