Introducing Convertbot
- March 26th, 2009
- 31 Comments
Well, it’s finally here! At first, I’m probably sure you are thinking, “Oh Great. Yet another unit converter?” And rightfully so! But just like weight tracking, converting units is another one of those mundane tasks that happen to be very important for a lot of people. And while there are some really great unit converters already available on the app store, they don’t make the task any more enjoyable to do. And that’s where Convertbot comes in. Our goal was, like with Weightbot, to create a simple app that did a simple task, only with a bit of flair. And hopefully we have accomplished just that.
Why don’t you have X category or Y units?
We purposely limited the amount of categories and units until we provide the option to enable/disable them all. I know there will be a few that really need that specific unit and we are very sorry it didn’t make the initial release. But rest assured that once we add the enable/disable feature, we will be adding a lot more conversions.
Why haven’t you updated Weightbot in so long?
Truth be told, it’s because of Convertbot. We are only 2 guys with families to take care of. We really thank our customers for their incredible patience. Now that Convertbot is released, we are going to give Weightbot the love and attention it deserves.
Contest Winners
We had 4 people guess the app name correctly in our little contest. They were @exkclamation, @nickteasey, @octover, and @HerbertKornfeld. Congrats to them all and thanks to those who participated!
In Closing…
We are really thankful for all the great support and feedback from our family, friends, customers, and fellow iphone developers. You guys all rock.
If you haven’t already, go check out our demo video and grab Convertbot while it’s only 99 cents!
Wow, great looking app as always. Congrats guys, keep doing such a good work.
Well, its not very accurate, for instance convertbot states that 100 kph is 74,58048 mph, in real life its 100 kph = 62.1371192 mph.
With a convert app its very important to be extremely accurate.
I don’t need to convert anything and I rarely do, but I bought this app just because of the beautiful interface. Great works guys!
No doubt – this is the best looking converter app in the appstore, it is intuitive, has great sounds and looks great.
BUT IT’S CALCULATES WRONG :-(
My bug list after 5min work:
meter-inch: not working
currency exchange: all wrong (just 1:1)
angle deg-rad: wrong (180
So great to see a new app, and even cooler that I was a contest winner!! WOO!
You guys give a good name to the iPhone app developer system. Keep rocking it with great functioning, great looking apps!
@rob – I think that you ought to reinstall the app, as in my tests, the app converts just fine…
@rob
Unfortunately a tiny bug slipped passed us in v1.0 for countries that use commas instead of decimals. This results in incorrect conversions. We already fixed it and submitted v1.0.1 to Apple. We are really sorry for this inconvenience and thanks ahead for incredible patience. :) There is a temporary fix though which is to go to your International settings and change your Region Setting to United States.
@Brad:
the problem only occurs to non-US customers.
I talked to Paul Haddad (one of the programmers) and he told me that an update is already at Apple, waiting to be approved. :-)
rob
Love your design skills. Very happy user of Weightbot, will buy Convertbot now, and put in a plea for $NZ in the currency conversion update, when it comes please!
Would like to see ONE more conversions.
Bandwidth: KB,Kbit,MB,Mbit,bytes,bits, etc.
@Henry Harrison – NZ is in the 1.0.1 update that was submitted to Apple. Look for it.
@Kevin – Bandwidth is coming.
One interface designer to another: damn that’s hot! Does it convert my lust for this interface to love? Because if so, I’ll buy it!
@Rob – Ah, OK. I’m in the UK, so I guess the bug doesn’t affect me either. Sorry.
@Mark – Bit of an esoteric request this, but could the length conversions also include picas and points, please. Would be handy when using indesign and illustrator…
I falled in love and brought it, removed my unit conversion app and the currency convert app…. so its beatifull and i slot less in my iphone, BUT,
theres no PEN or any Latin American currency, please we need those too.
Just curious, couldn’t tell from the screenshots or the video if you can input negative numbers. For example, -10 Fahrenheit. Would qppreciate a reply before I buy. Thanks.
@Sinbad
There are negative numbers for Temperature.
I have both Weightbot and Convertbot, and truth be told I can’t wait until you guys release another app. You are masters of the exact UI I’m looking for. Anxious to see if the 3.0 software can unleash even more things from Tapbots. (IMBot?, Cashbot?, Camerabot?, Flickrbot?, Twitbot?)
love the app! would love to see a few more currencies as well, since I’m currently working in SE Asia, so MYR and SGD would be much appreciated :-)
Love the app, but need to see more currencies, this is so limiting. I would immediately purchase the app just for the UI, but your UI limits you… You cannot add more currencies or your UI will have to change – or you add a pref pane… Or am I missing something here?
@Marcus
You can read more about why we temporarily disabled a bunch of units (including currency) here: http://getsatisfaction.com/tapbots/topics/will_you_guys_add_more_currency_options_to_convertbot
Bought the app and love it (also a weightbot fan), but have one request:
I do a lot of conversions of minutes:seconds into seconds (i.e.: 12:31 = 7:51). I see I can enter and convert m:s and I like that I can use decimals, but would love to see a colon (maybe on that unused key) or a m:s to s option.
Keep up the good work and keep the bots comin’
Congrats guys, this is an awesome iPhone application.
I’d love to have user defined currencies as well. I just bought the app (and bought Weightbot previously) and would love to have the Bahraini Dinar as a curreny (BHD).
I have Weightbot and want to buy Convertbot, but I have an existing converter app that includes computer memory conversion! Aaargh! I can’t believe you left that out . . . c’mon guys!
Great app. The design is exceptional. On the currency section is there any plan to add the Chinese Yuan. Considering China is a major economic power it seems strange it has not been added when Mexico has (no offense Mexico :) ). Plus I am moving there and really enjoy using ConvertBot so an update would be great. Thanks.
hi, Another great bot. Any chance a future update could convert fraction inches (5″ 1/4 ‘etc) to other decimal measurements?
keep up the good work.
@Hani & @Jacob that’ll be in 1.1
@Jacob that’ll be in 1.0.1
@andy we’ll think about that but not sure if it fits with our current UI.
First: Great app.
One thing that did feel a little off about the wheel UI, is that it doesn’t have the “flick” feeling common to many iPhone app interactions. That is, I kept wanting the wheel to continue spinning, and to gradually decelerate, after I lifted my finger.
It would also be nice to have weight/force units in addition to mass units (lb N for example).
The conversion of data units are wrong. Ex. 1MB is not 1000KB, but 1024KB.
Great app but I was shocked to find there is no conversion to the Chinese Yuan! That was a primary purposes of getting this app. Is there a work around or update that will take care of this limitation?
Thanks
tom
Hey Thomas,
There is Chinese Yuan. You just need to enable it in the settings.