GrumpyGirlLabs

Convertinator iOS 1.0.1 submitted

2012-09-04T13:27:00.001-07:00

Hello and welcome back to the home of the Convertinator - your last converter app! I'm happy to report that after just three weeks, we have submitted our first planned update. The following post will give a detailed run-down of the changes we made to the app, as well as adress an issue we have been made aware of recently.

So, why the update? Well, to be honest, there's been some quirky errors which we ultimately traced down to be precision issues with the decimal numbers that had been used internally. Maybe, if you are an iOS developer, you may have come across the NSDecimalNumber class which represents decimals with the maximum precision possible on the iOS platform. Well, thing is, for some conversion factors we haven't been capitalizing on the maximum precision as we should have. So we put a lot of time and energy in the review and research of all conversion factors and beefed up the precision to its maximum. For instance, a factor that previously was represented as 0.00001157407 (the number of days in a second) is now 0.0000115740740740740740740740740740740740740740740740.

The previous value led to some rare rounding issues where e.g. 24 hours would equal 0.999... days, which is pretty shameful for a Conversion app! Well, it's fixed now for all units, whether it made a difference (as in hours to days) or not (as in most other units that were rounded correctly). We've been thorough this time.

In light of some discussion about color schemes in iOS apps as well as feedback we got from users of the MacRumors forum (view the thread here), we also changed the column background color slightly. We turned to specialist Ian Taylor who argues to "never use black" in digital designs. We decided to follow his advice and mix in a little of the Convertinator blue to give a more eye-friendly backdrop for the three input columns. And even though the change is very subtle, you'll instantly notice the more pleasant column backgrounds, even more so on the new iPad retina screen.

For the last section of today's post, I need to talk about something rather unpleasant. As you may or may not know, iOS developers can not contact their customers (and reviewers) directly. One customer in Italy has been complaining of display issues, where some units would only display single digits (and thus, incorrect values) of a conversion result. We'd love to cooperate with this user as we have already done with others who sent requests and feedback to our support mail address. Unfortunately, we can not reproduce the issue, as both the current and previous versions (1.0 and 1.0.1) do not exhibit this behaviour on any of the iPad generations we tested on (all generations, that is) and it is not reproducible in the simulator or with our prototype iPhone/iPod touch version.

If you think you found a similar - or any other - error in our app, please report it to grumpygirllabs@gmail.com. We're not the biggest studio, but we take our customers seriously and will put in the time and effort that you as a user deserve. As stated in our update notes, everybody who sends in valuable feedback will be rewarded with promotional codes for Convertinator to give away to friends and family.

The closing comment goes out to our Italian reviewer antonietto61:
Please send us an email describing the erroneous output and the steps to reproduce it in detail. We will be able to help you. And thank you for your time and effort to alert us of this issue.
Si prega di inviare una e-mail descrivendo la procedura per riprodurre in dettaglio. Saremo in grado di aiutarti. Grazie per il vostro tempo e fatica per la segnalazione di questo problema.

A glimpse of the Universal Convertinator

2012-08-27T12:46:00.001-07:00

Hi everybody, just to let you know we have been made aware of some minor issues with one of the units which we're working on to fix right now. We hope to have the update live within the next couple of days.

We'd also like to use this chance to show you how we're doing on the upcoming universal update to the Convertinator. That's right, if you already own the iPad app, it's coming to your iPhone screens at no extra cost!

Now, keep in mind that these are still work in progress, and the final version may look way different than this. However, if these pictures inspire you or there's anything else you have to say about the update or the Convertinator in general, do not hesitate to log-in with your GMail-Account and leave a comment, or head over to the App Store and tell us what you think in a review.

We're really excited about this next step and we hope to bring the superior usability experience from the iPad version over to the iPhone unharmed. It's a challenge, and that's why we're doing it! See you around, folks.

Convertinator iOS release

2012-08-15T10:47:00.001-07:00

After three months in the making, we are pleased to announce the release of Convertinator, our newest iOS app! Now you can finally delete all those other conversion apps that clutter your home screen and have this amazing all-in-one package almost for free.

Feedback is very welcome, just leave a comment and we'll be more than happy to reply and take care of any problems and requests that you may have.

US Store link DE Store link

Click the above AppStore badge to get to the respective store or type "convertinator" in your iTunes store search bar to find your version if you're not from the U.S. or Germany. We'll be updating this blog with more information on upcoming updates and new features regularly.

See you around!

Convertinator iOS upcoming release

2012-07-30T11:08:00.003-07:00

[Update]
Convertinator has been submitted successfully and is now awaiting review. We'll keep you posted.

[Original post]
GrumpyGirlLabs is pleased to announce the upcoming release of its next iOS App called "Convertinator"! The app will be submitted to Apple shortly and we'll feature it here once it is available in AppStores around the world.

Convertinator makes conversion of units of several categories easy as never before by introducing a simple three-step process:

1. Select source category
2. Select source unit
3. Type value.

No more tedious selection of "what-to-what", all available unit values are calculated and updated as you type. Check out the screenshots below for more detail or post a comment if you have any questions or feedback. Maybe you'd like to be included in future test rollouts? Just give us a shout!