Category: iPhone app

iPhone app

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401k and Personal Finance iPhone app

Some myths on retirement savings

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During the annual benefits enrollment a while ago, I knew health insurance premium would go up quite a bit in 2011. So what can I do to offset that premium increase? Decrease the savings for 401k?

Just kidding. Over the years I have seen a lot of confusions and myths on the 401k savings. For me personally, I started my job without enrolling into the company 401k plan for slightly over a year. When I started to enroll, then came the questions such as saving percentage, and fund choices.

How much should we save in 401k (percentage-wise), should we just save enough to get employer match?
I read this article from Yahoo Finance a while ago 3 Ways to Get Free Money for Retirement, and I recommend it. Ultimately how much to save depends on how much we want to get after retire, and the investment return rate. My iPhone app myNestEgg is trying to get some mystery out of this process. For me personally, I’m now putting 15% of salary into 401k.

Social security, how much can we expect?
Unlike some of the rhetoric on topic, such as “Social Security will go bankrupt”, or “Social Security will not be there when we (gen X) retire”, I do have some faith on this program. I think I can count 30% of the retirement income from social security.

How much should I save?
I feel 70% of the “income ratio”, as shown in my iPhone app myNestEgg, is probably good enough.

Orange_keyboard_clear_2010-08-29

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iPhone app

iOS app plans for year 2011

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It’s that time of the year again, the time for new year’s resolution and planning. The past year has brought interesting addition to our family: our baby girl “Youyou”. On business (or iOS app) side, I joined the iPhone (iOS) developer program in July (paid the $99 annual fee), and released the first app myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator in middle Sept. The second app collegeFund ~ college savings calculator shortly followed. The results exceeded my expectation, as I released a few updates to fix the problems/add features. Meanwhile, I went to the Voice That Matters – iPhone developer conference (Philadelphia) in Mid Oct. Meeting iPhone developers and learning new things are the main take aways there.

For the new year, I am thinking of two things: 1) Continue to improve the existing apps; 2) Work on an iPad version of retirement savings planner. I don’t have a definite timeline yet, as I still have a day job, but I hope to release the iPad app before the iPad 2 arrives.

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iPhone app

myNestEgg v 1.3 released

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This is to fix a show stopper problem in v 1.2, as pointed out by one of the users. The problem happened after a user used the keyboard to input data (dismiss the keyboard by tap background), the app will add a comma to “beginning savings” and “salary”. This causes confusion and mis-calculation down the road.

The problem is fixed now in v 1.3. The user needs to update the app to get the fix. In some cases you may need to re-enter the “beginning savings” and “salary” if those numbers are no longer correct in the app. Please let me know if you have any problem.

I am sorry for the inconvenience it may have caused, and wish all a good holiday.

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iPhone app

The first bug reported for myNestEgg v 1.2

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This morning I received an email from a user saying that the app stopped working. After one round of back and forth, I realized I shipped the product with a serious (show stopper) bug: I was playing around with adding a comma separator around the time I made change for v 1.2, and I left the code there when it shipped. Now I break pretty much everyone’s nest egg if they run the updated (v 1.2) app.

myNestEgg_bug_1

This little incident again illustrate the thing I mentioned last week: testing

and another topic I would like to talk some time later: source code control.

Luckily, the fix was relatively easy: I comment out the code where I put in “exta comma” for numbers. Because the app persists the number to the file system, I need to do some String manipulation in Objective C (basically remove the extra comma) when reading from the file during app loading. Here is a StackOverflow discussion thread I followed on this topic.

BTW, the user has entered the opportunity to win the $25 Amazon gift card, as I said a bit earlier.

PS: it appears the ratios (saving progress; income ratio) are still correct in those cases, despite the error of dollar amount. Note the ratios are more important in reality, though I can understand the dollar amount are more important in most people’s mind.

PS 2: it’s interesting to see sometimes, when things are broken, it started to get attention. This reminds me a story in which an app got a lot of “ad click” because the useful data feeds were broken, and all the user can see is the Ads.

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iPhone app

Software engineering 101 for iOS app development: I

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I thought this for a while, when I was in the Voices That Matter iPhone developers conference, I have seen the great interest from iPhone app developers, from indie developers (individual or small team development shop), to high school teacher who taught self programming and teaches kids on iPhone programming. They come from different background, software consulting, development, education, authors. Being from enterprise software development background and have created iPhone app on my own time, I think I can share some of my thoughts on “applying software engineering principle to iPhone app development”. Hopefully this can shed lights on the best practice of iPhone app development, and ideally those thoughts can be applied to software development on other areas as well.

The No. 1 thing I want to talk is testing. Why we need to test an iOS app?

As my old C++ professor said in the class: a program is a novel if it does not run as expected. We always want to test the software (aka app) if it’s a bit complicated and takes some time to develop. For simple iOS app sometimes we would just skip the formal testing process, and in some cases we just assume it works. I learned the lessons the hard way recently.

1) After I uploaded the binary via iTunesConnect, I found some problems with the app. So I rejected the app, fixed the problem, and uploaded it again. I did this 3 or 4 times in one case. After the last upload, my app was end up in “Upload received” status but did not automatically move into “Wait for review”. Waited anxiously for a few days. Finally I googled and found this article on StackOverflow and followed the instruction to contact Apple, waited for a few more days, and it got resolved eventually. Had I tested the app more thoroughly, I would not have to go through all the pain and the app would get reviewed soon.

2) More recently, I added a feature to the app and tested it on iOS 3.1.2. After it being released, I tried it on iPhone 4, and I found the feature does not work. Ouch.

How to test?
Ideally we should have a test suite and automatic test. But we don’t live in an ideal world. As I minimum, I would test the following:

Continue reading “Software engineering 101 for iOS app development: I”
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iPhone app

myNestEgg 1.2 released

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Known problem in version 1.2
(11-21-2010) I received a user bug report this morning: the calculation results is not right due to the extra comma separator in “beginning savings” and “salary”. I fixed the problem this afternoon and submitted the binary (version 1.3) to App store. Stay tuned.

myNestEgg_bug_1

What’s New in Version 1.2
1) Add new icons for the tab bars (the 3 bars at the bottom);

2) Add “shake” function to “Settings” tab bar. When at “Settings” tab, if the user shakes the phone gently, the rates will reset to default values: 7% annual investment return, 2% annual inflation. Note the user still needs to tap “Set Rates” button to make the rates take effect.

3) Fix the minor problem where the inflation rate picker moves when the user switches to the “settings tab”. Note this behavior has not affected calculation results.

I just found a bug shortly after the release. If someone reports the problem to me, he/she will have the opportunity to win the $25 Amazon gift card.

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iPhone app

collegeFund free for now at iTunes App store plus more

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(Update Dec 16, 2010) Free again for limited time (until Dec 25).

What is it?
collegeFund is a college savings calculator iOS app (iOS 3.1.2 or later) I released a while ago (Oct. 5 to be precise). Link to iTunes App store here. For a limited time (this annual benefits enrollment and holiday season), I am making the v 1.0 app for free. I will end the promotion as soon as the v 1.1 approves.

collegeFund_iTunes_store_2010-10-27

Why free?
I am out of mind 🙂 Actually I thought about this before the release. Over the years I came to believe college education is a prerequisite for many things in life: the college experience, the knowledge learned and friendship formed in college, last but not least, the skill of “how to learn on one’s own” and a path to entry level job. For me and my wife this is not possible without the sacrifice of our parents. This March our baby daughter was born, and we enrolled in a college saving plan for her shortly. We are just trying to repeat what our parents did for us.

In the same spirit, we would like share this little app with all the hard working parents.

Is it really free? Am I ask anything in return?
Yes. If you are happy with the app, you can help me out by

1) send me feedback, including write reviews on iTunes store, good reviews only 🙂 ; send me unpleasant reviews by email (uudaddy no spam AT gmail DOT com).

2) I do have a paid app, myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator at App store. So if you have an extra dollar(s), you can buy or gift this little app during holidays 🙂

What if you already paid for the app?
First I want to say “thank you”. I can either refund you the 99 cents, or give you the myNestEgg app.

What if you already bought myNestEgg too? We are not entering an infinite loop here, let me know and I will send you something, for your patronage.

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401k and Personal Finance iPhone app

Earn $25 filing a bug report, enhancement request, or user story

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for #iPhone #app #myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator (link at iTunes store) and receive an Amazon gift card (one winner per category).

I am starting this mostly for fun, three categories ($25 per category):

bug report; enhancement request; user story

Send email to uudaddy(No Spam) AT gmail DOT com. This runs until Dec 31, 2010. One entry for one person.

How the prize being determined
My 7 months and a half daugher gets to decide 🙂

Seriously, I will decide according the merits.

AmazonThankYou2010-04-27 myNestEgg_12_2010-10-25_2

Version 1.2 is coming
Just in time for annual benefits enrollment. The following is a glimpse. Note I purchased Glyphish Pro icons this time. So hopefully you can show this app to your friends without being embarrassed for lack of icons in version 1.0/1.1

F.A.Qs

Continue reading “Earn filing a bug report, enhancement request, or user story”
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iPhone app

myNestEgg 1.1 released yesterday

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I know, I know, I am a little late making the announcement. But I was fighting a small battle.

Anyway, the latest and greatest is here. It has all the goodies of version 1.0 plus the following new things:
========
Fix the problem in “email results” when income_ratio is larger than 100%, the email results shows 100%. Now it shows the correct number.

Set default inflation rate to 2% (was 1% before the change); set default investment return rate to 7% (was 6% before the change). We believe the new numbers are more realistic numbers.

Change the calculation of inflation adjustment to fix the “divide by zero” problem in some cases.
========

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iPhone app Stocks

The iPhone development provision problem

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I got this problem 2 days ago, exactly same as it being described at Stackoverflow. My environment: Xcode 3.1.4, iPhone OS 3.1.2, Mac OS 10.5.8 (yeah, I am a little old school).

Struggled a bit, tried creating new certificates, using old certificates, blah blah blah. Nothing, still see the same message after I added the provision (downloaded from iOS dev center) to Xcode: “A valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found in your keychain”

I read that Stackoverflow carefully, also looked at the Apple Offical Q&A 1688. Finally I figured it out: I need to download the dev certificate approved (automatically) at iOS dev/provision center, double click it (to install on Keychain). It initially complained about “two certificates using same name” or something like that. I deleted the old dev certificate in Keychain. After that I fixed the provision for my apps, and download the relevant provisions, then drop those to Xcode => Organizer. I no longer see the error. Subsequent build and install worked beautifully.

A small battle was won.