Today is all about a tiny project we’ve been working on for the iPad (and iPhone).

Introducing Calcbot.

Yes, we went and created a calculator app. What’s the point? Calculators are always useful and Apple never shipped one on the iPad. There are other calculator apps on the App Store, but we weren’t happy with any of them. None of them brought anything new to the genre. Calculators haven’t changed in decades. We really wanted to make a better calculator and solve issues that plague them. I have two common issues with the average calculator:

1. There’s no way to see my calculation expression so if I’m even slightly distracted, I lose my place. I almost always repeat calculations twice to verify the result.
2. I’m bad at remembering numbers and I have no idea how those memory buttons work.

We think we were able to solve these two issues by creating the live expression view and history tape. The live expression view is not entirely new. It’s been done in expensive graphing calculators for years. But I have no idea why no one (as far as I know) does it for standard calculators. But we did improve on the concept by always providing a live preview of your final calculated value as you type. Use calcbot for a few days and you won’t be able to use a calculator without a live expression view again.

The history tape is also not a new concept. But we wanted it to be easy to understand and usable in every day calculations. It basically replaces the memory keys found in most calculators because you can recall any number (or expression for that matter) in your history. You can even append history values to a new calculation.

We finished Calcbot for iPad in little over a month. We didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it as we know people were waiting for some other Tapbot app and we also wanted to keep it simple. We submitted it to Apple and about a week later, it was approved and ready for sale…or was it?

tap tap tap-bots?

Around the time the app was approved, we shared our new app with tap tap tap. They make great iPhone apps and we occasionally share and bounce thoughts off of each other. Tap tap tap doesn’t only make great apps, they are the marketing geniuses behind Macheist and many highly successful iPhone apps. We make great apps (or so we’re told), but don’t quite have the knack for marketing. The guys at tap tap tap really liked Calcbot and wanted to help us make sure it succeeded. And I have to say, partnering with them on this app is a big win for our customers.

They pushed us to develop an iPhone version and make it universal. At first it may not make sense to buy a calculator for the iPhone since Apple already ships with one. But once you experience the expression view and history tape (and of course the Tapbots’ style), you really can’t go without it. The default calculator starts to feel archaic and bland. Another feature they pushed us to do is provide all the scientific functions that exist on the default calculator. They were kind enough to let us borrow their SwipePad concept for switching between different keypads. This was an original tap tap tap idea planned for one of their apps. And finally, with their ability to reach a much larger audience, we are able to sell this universal app (with very unique experiences on each platform, I might add) starting at only 99 cents. Partnering with tap tap tap on Calcbot has made it even better than it would have been and we are really excited to hear what you think about it!

We’d also like to thank Vincent Knobil, Yuzuru Shiraiwa, Filippo Spiezia, Martín Marconcini, Tobias Brummer for their great work in getting Calcbot localized.

But wait, there’s more!

In typical Macheist fashion, they are providing a great mac app that you can have for free, just by sharing the release of Calcbot on Facebook. That app is Socialite from Realmac Software. Socialite allows you to interact with Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and RSS feeds all from one beautiful app.

Just visit macheist.com/calcbot to learn more about the promotion.

Learn more and view screenshots of Calcbot for the iPhone and iPad.

Read tap tap tap’s post about our partnership on Calcbot.

Why the Cat’s out of the Bag.

If you keep up with any tech news, you probably heard the announcement that Twitter is acquiring Tweetie and the developer, Loren Brichter, is going to continue working on the app for them. They will change the name to Twitter for iPhone and make it free. This is really great news overall and congrats to Twitter and Loren. An official client is something Twitter always needed.

But this news changes things for us. We probably won’t be able to charge for the app anymore. Who’s going to pay for a Twitter client when “Tweetie” is free? We are a very small team and can make things work. We put 2.5 months of hard work into this app and feel really good about where it’s going. The last thing we want to do is just give up, but we need questions answered before we can continue moving forward.

Concerns with Moving Forward.

Our biggest setback is not knowing what Twitter’s plans are for their new app and how it relates to 3rd party clients.

1. Will the official Twitter client gain access to private APIs that others can’t access?
2. Will it get a higher query limit?
3. Will it be the only client to have true push notification?
4. Will they eventually kill all 3rd party iPhone/iPad clients to prevent confusion between their app and all the rest?

What are their intentions? If it’s just to provide an official free client for users, that’s great. But we need to know if they’ll continue to welcome and encourage 3rd party clients to keep going. They also need to give us a fair chance to succeed by not giving their official client an unfair advantage when it comes to accessing the API. There are so many unanswered questions right now. We are aware of their dev conference this week, Chirp. We aren’t attending, but hopefully good news will come from this event.

I have to say, even though the Twitter news sounds bad for 3rd party client developers, it made me more excited about finishing our app. We just need some assurance from Twitter that their intentions with this acquisition are good and they will continue to welcome and support the 3rd party clients.

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, we are really curious as to what your thoughts are on this situation. Let us know in the comments!

You guys have been quiet for a while. What are you up to?

For the past two and a half months or so, we’ve been hard at work on app #4. This is an app that we’ve been wanting to do for the longest time, but always put it off knowing it would be a huge project for us. We decided it was time to give it a shot. This app is currently being developed for the iPhone and an iPad version is also in early design stages. Our #1 priority is finishing this app for the iPhone and there’s no ETA yet.

The iPad was announced back in February. Other companies seem to have had plenty of time to release iPad versions of their apps. What’s the hold up?

As excited as we were about the iPad announcement, there were many reasons why we didn’t drop what we were working on to get an iPad app ready for launch. The biggest reason is the fact that we did not have a device to test on. A big part of our apps is the overall experience of them. We would not develop and release an app without being able to use the app as a normal user before selling it. What looks good in simulation doesn’t always work out well on the actual device.

The second reason we weren’t going to develop for the iPad early is because we had no idea how well the market would receive this device in a new category. We hoped/expected it to do well and initial numbers are very positive, but why take a risk when we can develop a new app for an already established market? It was an easy decision. Develop app #4 for the iPhone. By the time we are done, we’ll have plenty of play time with the iPad and have a better idea where the market is headed.

I have Pastebot running on my iPhone and iPad. Why can’t I sync both of them to my Mac?

Pastebot Sync was purposely designed to be very simple. We wanted it to be free and not create a lot of support requests. The less it does, the less issues it can have. That’s one of the reasons why the Sync app only supports one device at a time. The other reason was that most people only had one device anyways. If they had multiple, they probably only used one as their main device. With the release of the iPad, this changes things a bit. I think it’s safe to assume that anyone who buys an iPad already owns an iPhone or iPod touch. We are working on an update that will make the sync process with multiple devices a little better.

When will we see Weightbot/Convertbot/Pastebot made for the iPad?

We understand that our apps are not a great experience on the iPad right now, but it’s no surprise as they were designed for the iPhone. Since our apps have a custom interface, they take a lot of time to develop. We can’t say that all three apps will have iPad versions someday, but the one that makes the most sense right now is Pastebot. So if we develop iPad apps for our current apps, the first one will most likely be Pastebot. No official announcement on this because we still need to finish app #4.

Apple announced multi-tasking today. Does that mean Pastebot will finally run in the background?

We were hoping for good news regarding multi-tasking. It was great news for us as users, but not so great for Pastebot. While Apple’s multi-task implementation is smart, it doesn’t support the ability for Pastebot to grab what you copy in other apps in the background. If you really want Pastebot to import clippings in the background, tell Apple. The good news is going between Pastebot and the app you are copying from should be a better experience.

That’s about all I can think of for now. If you have other questions relevant to this topic, feel free to ask in the comments. We’ll do our best to answer some of them.

• New Language Translation Filter
• Ability to select app launch location
• Ability to create new folder during move
• Ability to duplicate clips
• Ability to group and ungroup clips
• Support/About sections in preferences
• Enable/disable text links in preferences (disabled by default)
• Various bug fixes

I wanted to mention that there have been some reshuffling of some of the button icons and menus. We hate making changes like this, but felt it was necessary for the growth of the app.

You also need to update your version of Pastebot Sync. FYI, the new version of Pastebot Sync doesn’t work with Pastebot 1.0x and vice versa. You can grab the new version of the sync app here.

We are now hard at work on app #4 and extremely excited about it. Let us know what you think and don’t forget to leave a review in the app store!

The new site is a little rough around the edges, but like our software, it will improve over time. Our goal this time around was to keep things simple. Easier for us to maintain, and easier for our customers to find what they need. We hope we’ve succeeded.

Bye Bye Getsatisfaction.com

We’ve had numerous complaints about how confusing getting support through getsatisfaction.com was. Well we are ditching it and trying a new support approach. Our support section is modeled closely after the support section within our apps (at least after the updates). The most common questions we get are clearly listed with answers and then the option to get more help or send us a suggestion is at the bottom. These forms send emails directly to us, only organized and filtered so we can manage them better. We’ll see how this works out over the next few months. We’ll continue to answer support questions on getsatisfaction.com, but we won’t send our customers there anymore.

Our Mailing List

If you scroll to the bottom of our website, you’ll notice an input box to subscribe to our mailing list. All this does is add your email address to a secure database so we can send you an email when we have big news to share. You won’t receive weekly or monthly emails. In fact, you may only receive 1-2 emails a year. Add your email address to be notified when we have big news to share. We will NEVER share or sell your email address with anyone.

If you do want more frequent updates (like when we post on our blog), you can subscribe to this site’s RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, or become a fan of Tapbots on Facebook.

That’s about all the info we have for you. And let us know what you think (the good and the bad) about the new site in the comments!

Updated Graphs

We’ve made a few changes to the way the graphs work. But before I talk about that, I wanted to mention that you can now disable the BMI markers (overweight/underweight lines) and the trend line (blue line) in the settings if you wish. You can also now set a starting and goal date which create markers in the graphs. The goal date is optional.

So back to the graph changes. The week view (7 days) now focuses on your current weight goal. That is, you can only scroll from your start date to your goal date (or current date, whatever is later). The reason for this is so it’s easier to focus on your current progress. It also means the trend line will be more accurate because it will only take into account your current progress towards your goal. And the final benefit is the graph will be zoomed even closer because it won’t have to take your old weight data into account. We also added a new month view (30 days) that shows the same data as your usual week, only with more data at a time.

There’s always a few who don’t like change. If you don’t like this new focused view, all you have to do is set your starting date to the oldest weight you have recorded and it will behave like it has prior to the update.

What about the old month and year views? We’ve made minor changes to those as well. If you double-tap the graph to toggle the month/year graphs, you’ll notice that the blue trend line and goal line is gone. These 2 views are now just a way to get a quick overview of your plotted weight history without all the noise.

Updated Settings

Like we did with Convertbot recently, Weightbot’s settings have been completely redesigned. They should look better as well as make much more sense. Weightbot also now has the Support section so you can quickly read FAQs and email us from within the app if needed.

BMI Optional

We mentioned that you can hide the BMI markers in the graph. What about the BMI on the main screen? Just tap on it to toggle to a view that displays the weight change between the currently selected day and the last weight.

Withings Scale Support

We are excited to announce support for the Withings Scale. We’ve had many requests for this ever since Withings released their beautiful WiFi scale. All you need to do is login to your Withings account from Weightbot and it will automatically download your latest weight data every time you launch the app. It’s truly magical.

For more info about using Weightbot with the Withings Scale and Promo Code, go to our Withings page.

That’s about it for v1.5. We are now working hard on Pastebot v1.1.

• 60 new units and currencies (including all the old European currencies obsoleted by the Euro). Convertbot now has about 520 units.
• New and improved way to select units. Hold the unit button for a split second, rotate the wheel, and then release to select a unit. The 3-step selection process can now be done in 1.
• The unit selection animation is now faster so there’s less wait time between selecting units.
• Updated Settings UI
• Search added to enable/disable units section.
• New support section in settings for easy access to help topics, contacting support, and providing feedback/suggestions.

Here are a few screens of the updated settings:

And here’s a quick and dirty demo of the new way to select units (the old ways still work as well):

And finally, we should mention that we feel Convertbot has matured enough to justify a higher price point. So once 1.5 is released, the price will become $1.99 USD. So if you haven’t purchased Convertbot yet, you better get it at 99 cents while you still can! Convertbot 1.4 is available now on the app store. Convertbot 1.5 is currently being tested and localized. It should be submitted to the App Store within a week or 2.

Stay tuned for info on the upcoming Weightbot update and then Pastebot soon after.

New Features

• Ability to paste images directly to the Finder and iPhoto.
• Ability to copy groups of images both ways.
• File names of images copied from the Finder, iPhoto, and Safari are saved and also automatically become titles in Pastebot for better search results.
• Titles added to images in Pastebot become the file name when pasted to the Finder

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed issue with no menubar in 10.5.
• Fixed issue with images appearing in Pastebot as “Unknown Data” in 10.5.

There are 3 ways to get this update.

• Wait for the auto-update to pop up.
• Select “Check for Updates” from the Pastebot Sync menu icon. (10.5 users can’t do this because of the bug which has been fixed)
• Download directly from our website (If you redownload, be sure to turn the Sync app OFF and back ON after the install to restart the service)

Let us know if you have any questions or issues!

App #0003 has finally launched! It’s been 6 long months since we started on this project. I don’t want to turn this into a long post about how we got here, because all that really matters is we made it and hope you’ll enjoy it. Pastebot is definitely different than our previous apps. Some would say it’s riskier. But there’s no other way to grow and move forward without taking risks. After all, who would have thought anyone could make a living creating software for mobile devices? Pastebot was a lot more work than our previous apps, but it also does so much more than them. We are happy with the results and hope you are too.

Visit the Pastebot Website for videos, screenshots, and more info

Download on iTunes

A Quick Thank You

We want to thank our customers for keeping us driven to make more apps. The reviews, emails, and twitter posts have really kept us excited about what we do. We also want to thank our beta testers for all the support and feedback they have given us. They truly helped make Pastebot a better product than it was. And last but definitely not least, we want to thank our localizers (Guy Parrot, Yuzuru Shiraiwa and Tobias Brummer) who have taken their free time to help translate our app into other languages.