IGG Developers’ Blog

As you can probably tell from our lack of celebration, iBank Mobile is still in review by Apple. Last Wednesday, July 1, we finally got some indication that it was being looked at. Apple asked us some questions about how we used MobileMe within the product. We responded very quickly (in less than an hour), thinking that it would be released soon…

But Wednesday passed into Thursday (the one-month anniversary of our submission) and no word. Then Friday was a holiday for Apple, which brings us to today. I am not hopeful that it will get approved too soon; apparently a lot of folks at Apple are on vacation this week, including our direct contact.

I will keep you updated via the blog if we hear anything new. For instant notification on this (or any urgent news from IGG), note that we can now be followed via Twitter: www.twitter.com/iggsoftware

Thanks,
James

Here’s a quick update: iBank Mobile is still “in review” at the App Store.

iBank Mobile Status

In preparation for the iPhone OS 3.0 launch, we have had to update some things outside of the mobile app: iBank needed an age rating, we needed to accept a new App Store Licensing Agreement, etc. So far, we have had no requests to change the application itself.

When we submitted the application, Apple warned us that it might take longer than usual for approval. They didn’t say it was because of the iPhone OS 3.0 launch, but that’s what we guessed. Meanwhile, we are working with people inside Apple to help us better understand the application status. Please do not send hate mail to Apple. Please don’t hate on us either, even though our timing could have been better.

One final note: we have had people asking if iBank Mobile is U.S. only. We worked hard to make sure that iBank Mobile would be available internationally. This required us to be very careful about how and where we use encryption. So yes, it will be available worldwide at launch, although the only localization is English. We do have plans to add other localizations in the future, but the priority was to make it work, get it out, and get your feedback.

Hang in there – it’s coming.

I am very happy to announce that this morning we submitted iBank Mobile to the App Store. I want to thank all of the people that helped make this possible, and especially to everyone who volunteered to be a beta tester. Your input made this a solid product.

We have also been testing iBank 3.5 in the private beta and today we are making it a public beta.  You can check it out from the iBank website http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank.  Remeber this is a beta version and it is not backward compatible with iBank 3.4.2 so please BACKUP your data file BEFORE checking it out.

There have been some questions that have come up since the last post that I will try to answer.

What will it cost?
We have set the price at $4.99. We think this is a good price for a high quality productivity app.

What iPhone/iPod Touch OS version do I need?
iBank Mobile should run on any iPhone or iPod Touch running OS 2.2.1. iBank Mobile will run on the upcoming iPhone 3.0 OS but is not required.

Will iBank Mobile use any iPhone OS 3.0 features?
iBank Mobile will not take advantage of any iPhone OS 3.0 features for this release. iPhone OS 3.0 was announced by Apple well into the development of iBank Mobile. We did want to make sure that we were compatible with it, but we did not want to adjust our schedule to add more features. We wanted to get it in your hands so that you can tell us what you want next.

How long will it take to get approved by the App Store?
We don’t know. But we hope to have iBank Mobile available to everyone before the end of the month, and we’ll be sure to have iBank 3.5 readied for release by the time iBank Mobile is out.

Again I want to say thank you to everyone who asked questions, gave comments, and helped in the beta. It has been a longer journey then I would have liked but I am really happy with the results.

Thanks,
James

I want to give everyone a quick update on how things are going. iBank 3.5 and iBank Mobile have been in beta now for about two-and-a-half weeks. Here’s a little insight on how the beta progressed:

We started with a pool of people selected at random (more or less) from all of the people who wanted to help out. To this group we sent a questionnaire to be sure that we had a diverse group of testers. Based on the responses, we chose a very small subset to start the beta. Then the bugs started coming in…

These ranged widely: a particular operation was “slow”… some wording was “misleading”… it “crashes.” The first few days were spent triaging the issues – several were bad, so we worked on fixing those first. Most of them were fairly easy to find and fix, and the beta stabilized quickly.

At that point, we started adding more users. We have now tripled the number of original testers and are continuing to add more. So far things are looking good; there are just two outstanding issues that we have to fix before submitting it to the App Store. There are also a few teaks that would be nice to get done. All in all, it should be about another week and we’ll be ready to go. I do want to give special thanks to everyone in the beta. You have been giving great feedback and really helping us make the product better.

Otherwise it has been really busy here at IGG. With the iBank Mobile beta and the launch of iBiz 4, everyone has been working very hard. Kudos to everyone who worked on iBiz 4 – it looks great!  For myself I took Memorial Day off with my family to go to my dad’s house for a BBQ, and a few hours off to see Star Trek (I liked it a lot). Other than that it has been work, sleep and eat since the beta started. So I hope you believe me when I say that we all want to get iBank Mobile out the door.

Hopefully, the next time you hear from me will be when we have submitted to the App Store.

Thanks,
James

iBank 3.5 is going to be the next big release of iBank and it will coincide with the iBank Mobile release.

Building seamless integration between iBank and iBank Mobile has been no small undertaking. For true syncing to work well and easily, we need to track every change of every syncable entity — in this case, accounts, categories, transactions and currencies. That way when it comes time to sync, we know exactly what has changed since the last sync and only need to deal with processing those records. (Imagine how inefficient it would be if we had to compare the complete database on the desktop with the database on the phone.)

While these changes to the underlying structure of iBank aren’t of too much interest to most people, there are several new things that we’ve added to iBank 3.5 to make it an even better program.

One of the biggest changes is how v3.5 handles multiple currencies. In past versions, if you made a transfer from an account in one currency to another, it applied an exchange rate. And in order to adjust the amount of the receiving account you had to adjust the exchange rate for it to work out properly. For people dealing with multiple currencies this quickly became cumbersome, to say the least. Now, you can just enter the amount, and voilá, you’re done — iBank automatically adjusts the underlying exchange rate so that the transaction remains balanced and you can adjust each “side” independetly.

Another great improvement for iBank 3.5, my favorite actually, is that we now cache all account balances and running balances for transactions, which means iBank launches a LOT faster. I have over a dozen accounts in my personal iBank file (many are closed) and launching is no longer a chore. Just a quick press of the iBank icon in my Dock and my large iBank document is open within a few seconds.

There has been a steady march on improving reconciliation with iBank.  In version 3.4 we greatly improved the process and we haven’t stopped with version 3.5.  New, is the ability to reconcile and mark as “cleared” two different sides of a transfer independently.  This has been one of the most requested improvements to reconciliation so we are happy to be able to add it.

There are many other minor bug fixes and changes, like improved handling of multi-currencies when making charts. But I’m not going to dive into those now; I’m going to get back to testing iBank and iBank Mobile.

Thanks for all of the great comments, please keep them coming.

~Ian

We have been getting so much great feedback that I wanted to take time to answer some common questions. 

When will the beta start and who will be in it?
We plan on starting the beta the week of May 11th. Because of the complexity of distributing iPhone/iPod software outside of the App Store, we will be keeping the beta group small. Our testers will be chosen so as to cover diverse set of functionality; if you are not among them, it’s only because we can’t manage everyone who wants to participate. (Of course, we are gratified by your enthusiasm.) We expect the beta to last two to three weeks before we submit to the App Store for approval.

How will syncing work?
I tried to answer this question before, but I must have not done a very good job because a lot of people have been asking for details.

We will support three types of syncing, covering most of the features that people have requested:

1) Local Area Network Sync: This means syncing with your Mac over a local area wireless network (AirPort). You simply launch iBank on the Mac, and iBank Mobile on the iPhone/iPod Touch, then ask iBank Mobile to sync. In practice, this means you just have to be at home, or your office, or wherever your desktop Mac running iBank is set up. It doesn’t require MobileMe or any other web access and/or web service. The data is encrypted for transmission.

2) MobileMe Sync: This requires a MobileMe account and Internet access. iBank Mobile can sync with the MobileMe server even when iBank on your Mac is not running. The data is encrypted for transmission, and because it is sent to the MobileMe servers, you just launch iBank Mobile and sync; your desktop will update whenever it next syncs to the MobileMe cloud.

3) WebDAV Sync: This works the same way as MobileMe syncing, but it can use any WebDAV-enabled server.

Some of you have asked that we support syncing through the dock connector on the iPhone. Unfortunately, it’s not our call. Apple does not currently allow this, but if it does become available then we can consider it. 

Will iBank Mobile support budgeting?
In this first release iBank Mobile will not support budgeting. You can see how much money you spend in different categories, but it will not let you set or view budget targets.

How much will iBank Mobile cost?
An obvious and entirely reasonable question… for which we don’t yet have an answer. Given the way the App Store works, we can’t offer one price to existing iBank users and a different price to people who only want iBank Mobile. That’s too bad in a way — what seems to offer the fairest price structure isn’t an option. But after months of development and testing, we know we won’t give it away free. And $9.99 just seems too high. So be reasonable, be honest, and tell us: what do you think is the right price point for a time-saving, money-monitoring mobile app like this?

As always, we love hearing from you.

Thanks,
James

Yesterday was a big day. After about six weeks of private beta testing involving our crew and numerous loyal users, we’ve finally released iBiz 4 to the public — as a beta. Its amazing how much time and effort goes into a major release. The documentation has to be updated (although not done yet for the beta), a new web page needs to be created, new disk image backgrounds need to designed for the .dmg downloads, and so on. It is a great feeling to have made it this far! All major components are in place and iBiz 4 has no known “show stoppers” bugs or large outstanding features.

There are a few areas that still need some work and polish, though. For example, we wrote a new html invoicing engine that allows for invoices to have running headers, footers and page number and all of the good things you would expect in a multi-page invoice. We’ve shipped a couple of professionally designed templates with iBiz 4 to illustrate the power of these new invoices, but these don’t have matching statement templates yet. So before the final release, or perhaps another public beta, we want to add more invoice templates and create matching statement templates. And there are a few minor UI glitches we have noticed that we need to address.

Along with the invoicing engine, one of the nicest changes in iBiz 4 from iBiz 3 has been a switch from the antiquated “drawer inspector” to our new pop-up inspector à la iCal. This took a while for me to appreciate and get used to, but now I see its advantage — you only need to take up screen space when you need to see specific info, otherwise it is hidden. The existing tables still let you see lots of info at a glance, but if you need to dig deeper, or do some editing, a double-click quickly brings up the contextual inspector.

Another change you’ll notice is that throughout the UI we replaced big icon-driven buttons by more streamlined + and – buttons. This allows fore more window real estate to be devoted to data instead of buttons.  Not to mention it makes the UI look more sleek and professional.

There are a LOT more features that we’ve added to iBiz 4. Please see our newly posted webpage for details.

Enjoy Spring!

~Ian

For our third installment of screen shots I want to share what I consider the most requested feature of iBank Mobile, the screens to create a transaction.

When we thought about the types of situations in which people would be entering transactions, we knew it would be on the go and in the middle of doing something else. People deal with money in a wide variety of situations, checking out at the grocery store, getting money at the ATM, filling up at the pump, or getting out of a cab. We wanted our transaction entry to be quick, easy and be usable in a wide range of settings. After many attempts, we seem to have something that works very well.

Let’s start at the home screen (although you can enter transactions from other parts of the app):

Home Screen

When you click the plus button, the new transaction editor slides up. The first thing you do is select an account for the transaction. This is done from a simple pick list.

Account Selection

Once you tap on an account the amount editor sides into view. On this screen you enter the amount of the transaction and select the transaction type.

Amount Entry Screen

When you are finished entering the amount, you tap “done.” This takes you to the transaction overview screen. The payee field is preselected and the keyboard comes up. As you type the payee a pick list appears showing a filtered list of payees, at any point you can select a payee from the list and it will auto-complete the payee field. This works similarly to Safari’s address field on the iPhone if you want to try it out.

Payee Selection List

From the entered payee we default the category for the transaction and in most cases you are done. You can enter other information, such as a memo, or splits, if you need to.

Transaction Screen

In a normal situation I can enter a transaction in about 8 seconds – usually less time than it takes for me to get the receipt after swiping my credit card. It’s smooth, fast and easy to use.

Thanks,
James

This screen is one of my favorites in iBank: not because it does a million things, or provides a lot of data, but because it does a thankless task without being burdensome. It’s the passcode access screen.

iBank Passcode Entry Screen

Many iBank users feel that password protection of their data is vital, and I agree. The problem is that we also want to get to our data as quickly and conveniently as possible. So I looked at a lot of other password screens on the phone, and it may come as no surprise to hear that I liked the passcode access for the iPhone itself. It is simple and requires just four key presses to dismiss it. So I wanted the same feel, but without the limit on the password’s length. This is how it works:

iBank Passcode Setup Screen

iBank Passcode Verify Screen

You can set up your password with any number of digits, and touch “set” when you are done. Then you confirm your passcode by entering the same digits; there is no “done” or “enter” button.

Afterward, password entry works the same way. When you launch iBank Mobile, you get the access screen. It will just sit there until you enter the correct code, and then away it goes. Of course passcode protection is optional, but for those of us who use it, it should be really easy.

Thanks,
James

At the risk of repeating myself: we are still hard at work finishing iBank Mobile. We’ve been polishing the interface and fixing a few last showstopper bugs before we go beta. Good thing we still have a sense of humor.

Last time I promised pictures, so without further ado, the Home Screen:

iBank Mobile Home Screen

The concept is to provide a quick overview of your finances so you can make impromptu spending decisions (like, can I afford that TV… or in this economy, those Girl Scout cookies), and to give you a quick way to enter transactions on the go.

The screen is divided into two sections: the top provides information, and the bottom controls what information is shown. For example, you might display only the accounts you use for day-to-day decisions (so you don’t have to have your mortgage or 401K on this screen if you don’t want to). This example shows your current account balances and a graph of those balances over the last 12 months.

You’d return to this display from the highlighted “home” icon in the bottom area. If you tap on the “graph” button, you’d see a similar overview of the user’s spending. The big “plus” button is used to create a new transaction. The “wrench” button is used to access settings, and the “chasing arrows” button is used to initiate a sync. By touching areas in the display part of the screen you can drill down to get details.

Stay tuned… more screenshots coming soon.