Blog Pod - Archive for June, 2010

With the launch of the new iPhone 4 I have noticed that the images on many apps are appearing blurred or fuzzy. This is as a result of the iPhone 4′s display containing double the amount of pixels over prievious iPhone models. iOS4 will automatically scale your images up for you but this will cause images to appear blurred.  The following example shows the icon taken from our iPhone VAT Calculator, VAT Pro. The small image is the standard 57×57 icon which is shown on the iPhones home page.  If you double the size of this you will see how blurred it gets.

So what do we do to fix this?

Luckily Apple has introduced an easy way for developers to get the best of both worlds and supply two versions of each image (one for standard resolution iPhones and one for the retinal display on iPhone 4). All you need do is create a new version of your images at twice the size and save it with the same name appending ‘@2x’ to the end.

So for example, say we have an image that is 100 x 50 pixels called animage.png. We would redraw this image at 200 x 100 pixels and save it as animage@2x.png and add it to our app’s resources. When your app runs the SDK will automatiucally use the higher resolution images if the device supports it.

It is best that you re-draw the image at twice the size and not up-scale it using your graphics package as this will not add any real benefit – in effect this is what the SDK does for you anyway. You will get much sharper images by redrawing them and from now on, when ever you need new images for your app, draw them at double the resolution required and then scale down for older iPhones.

This image shows the same icon re-drawn at 114×114 which would appear sharp on the retina display.

A word about app icons

If your app is to support both iOS4 and older iPhone OS versions then again you will need two app icon images. Keep the original icon.png file at 57×57 pixels and add a new file called icon@2x.png at 114×114 to the resources folder. Now, to get this to work you will need to edit your apps info.plist file in xcode. Find the key named ‘Icon File’. You will probably have this set to ‘icon.png’, remove the ‘.png’ so the value simply reads ‘icon’.  There, job done. If your app is installed on an iPhone 4, the hi-res icon will be used and if installed on an older iPhone, the normal 57×57 icon will be used.

We had our new iPad app, VAT pad rejected today simply because it had the word ‘Pad’ in the title. Apple said that this would make people think that our app was associated with Apple! I guess this explains why there are no other apps with the word pad in the title.

We deliberated over the name for some time coming up with ideas such as “VAT Pad – the nothing to do with apple VAT calcualtor for iPad” but eventually settled for VAT Pro HD.

One of our planned future updates was to add the US states to the list of European countries already available in VAT Pro HD. This has now been brought forward so that the initial release of VAT Pro HD will now include VAT rates for all European countries, all US states plus five custom settings.

Anyway, here’s hoping that it gets accepted this time.

A bug has been found in our popular iPhone percentage calculator, percentages, in iOS4.  The decimal point no longer appears on the keypad, instead a grey empty space which does nothing when tapped. This bug only effects customers who have upgraded their iPhones to iOS4 or use an iPhone 4. iPad customers are not effected.

We have now submitted an update to Apple to rectify this issue and you will receive the version 1.5 update as soon as Apple approves it.

Thank you to all the customers who reported this and we apologise for any inconvenience.

Our latest iPad app, VAT Pad,  has today been submitted to the app store for approval.  VAT Pad is an iPad only app utilizing the many great features unique to the iPad including split and pop over views.

VAT Pad currently supports over 29 countries with all tax rates plus five custom countries and we will be adding more in the near future.

Features include:

Professional and intuitive interface, 30 Countries with all tax rates, Five custom countries, Inclusive and exclusive calculations, VAT breakdown, Automatic currency symbol based on location, Instant recalculation on change of rate or country, Remembers the country last used, Supports all orientations.

iPhone Margins version 2.4 has been submitted to the app store. Version 2.4 is a universal app meaning that it will run natively on the iPad as well as the iPhone. The iPad version has the same powerful features as the iPhone version but with a larger, clearer layout especially optimised for the iPad screen.

Margins is an iPhone Profit Margins Calculator and iPad Profit Margins Calculator to help you easily perform both profit and markup calculations. Simply enter two of the available fields and Margins will instantly calculate the remaining fields for you.

Click here for more information and screen shots

We finally found some spare time to give our website a bit of a makeover. The new features you can benefit from straight away include easier navigation, improved product information and full size screenshots of our apps. Soon we will also add user manuals for each of our products which you can download for free.

Percentages 1.4 has now been submitted to the app store for approval. Version 1.4 brings an enhanced user interface, some new features, calculations and a native iPad interface. Version 1.4 will be available as a free update for all existing users as soon as its released by Apple.

Lets start with the interface update.

We have had many requests to increase the size of the fonts used in percentages. So we have re-jigged the layout slightly which allows for much larger numbers and an increased font size for the ‘Explanation of answer’.  Since we also wanted to add new calculations we had to sacrifice the help text. This has now been moved to a button on the title bar that when pressed will show help and examples in a popup.

New Features.

Context sensitive help. If you press the ‘Information’ button on the title bar a popup will be displayed showing help and an example of the calculation.

Swap input values. A new button has been added (in between the clear and calculate buttons) that when pressed will swap the two input values around.

Two new calculations have been added: After % deducted and After % added.These two new calculations allow you to find the original values after a percentage was either added to subtracted.

Last but not least a natve ipad version

Now if you run Percentages on your iPad it will run as a native iPad app and display a completly new interface.

This is all included as a free update to existing Percentages users and still only £0.59p for new users. If you are lucky enough to own both an iPhone and an iPad then you will only have to purchase the app once!