alestateyall
Well-Known Member
I have seen iBrewMaster described as the BeerSmith of iPhone apps. This is not true.
IMHO iBrewMaster is not worth the $10 price tag. I recommend avoiding it.
I bought iBrewmaster with great anticipation after reading so many positive reviews on itunes and positive reviews here. I admit I may not have searched hard enough here before buying it.
I am writing this thread to offer my impressions of the tool now that I spent $10 on and can't get a refund for.
I find iBrewMaster to be poorly designed and incomplete in as much as it lack obvious features.
Here are some issues I found:
1) Navigation within the app is terrible.
When brewing, after setting up a recipe, you work from the batch screen. Before I mashin I measure the grain temperature. To change this value you have to navigate through 6 screens to get from the batch view to the screen where you edit your mash profile. Here is a tour:
Start in the batch display. Press batches to get to the list of batches.
From the list of batches, press setup on the bottom row to get to the setup screen. Please note, I edited the bottom row to avoid having to go through the "more" list. That would have added one more screen.
Now on the setup screen scroll down and press the to mash profile option.
Now select your preferred mash profile.
Finally we can edit the grain temperature. To get back we repeat the same multi screen process in reverse.
When setting up recipes and getting the tool optimized I was constantly walking through pages. It got old and made the app a chore.
2) Entering numbers for values requires endless use of numeric sliders rather than just typing.
The photo above is an example of the numeric sliders. These are all over. They really slow down number entry. This has been pointed out to the developer (by other users) through the in app feature request tool.
The developer responds: Status: Under Review, comment from Joe "See the sync feature request notes...considering the dozens of places pickers exist and the thousands of lines of code behind them...this would be part of the rewrite to support iCloud syncing"
Under synching Joe comments, "We really want this feature, unfortunately, it will require an entire rewrite of the apps...This will be an extremely large under taking and is under consideration...we may implement this with more advanced features, elimination of pickers, and expanded functionality. We'll first complete the inventory model, Mac fixes, and release the Android version, at which time we'll take a closer look at this".
Sorry for all the quotes, but, bottom line the pickers will be there for a while.
By the way, the in app feature request tool is a good idea.
3) The app requires users to enter efficiency when designing an all grain recipe, but, the app doesn't bother to calculate efficiency from your measured volumes and original gravity.
This drives me crazy. Calculating efficiency is easy. Probably an oversight, but, to me it is a big one. If they get around to efficiency I hope they add the ability to add measured pre-boil and post boil volumes so you can calculate accurate mash and kettle/brewhouse efficiencies.
IMHO iBrewMaster is not worth the $10 price tag. I recommend avoiding it.
I bought iBrewmaster with great anticipation after reading so many positive reviews on itunes and positive reviews here. I admit I may not have searched hard enough here before buying it.
I am writing this thread to offer my impressions of the tool now that I spent $10 on and can't get a refund for.
I find iBrewMaster to be poorly designed and incomplete in as much as it lack obvious features.
Here are some issues I found:
1) Navigation within the app is terrible.
When brewing, after setting up a recipe, you work from the batch screen. Before I mashin I measure the grain temperature. To change this value you have to navigate through 6 screens to get from the batch view to the screen where you edit your mash profile. Here is a tour:
Start in the batch display. Press batches to get to the list of batches.
From the list of batches, press setup on the bottom row to get to the setup screen. Please note, I edited the bottom row to avoid having to go through the "more" list. That would have added one more screen.
Now on the setup screen scroll down and press the to mash profile option.
Now select your preferred mash profile.
Finally we can edit the grain temperature. To get back we repeat the same multi screen process in reverse.
When setting up recipes and getting the tool optimized I was constantly walking through pages. It got old and made the app a chore.
2) Entering numbers for values requires endless use of numeric sliders rather than just typing.
The photo above is an example of the numeric sliders. These are all over. They really slow down number entry. This has been pointed out to the developer (by other users) through the in app feature request tool.
The developer responds: Status: Under Review, comment from Joe "See the sync feature request notes...considering the dozens of places pickers exist and the thousands of lines of code behind them...this would be part of the rewrite to support iCloud syncing"
Under synching Joe comments, "We really want this feature, unfortunately, it will require an entire rewrite of the apps...This will be an extremely large under taking and is under consideration...we may implement this with more advanced features, elimination of pickers, and expanded functionality. We'll first complete the inventory model, Mac fixes, and release the Android version, at which time we'll take a closer look at this".
Sorry for all the quotes, but, bottom line the pickers will be there for a while.
By the way, the in app feature request tool is a good idea.
3) The app requires users to enter efficiency when designing an all grain recipe, but, the app doesn't bother to calculate efficiency from your measured volumes and original gravity.
This drives me crazy. Calculating efficiency is easy. Probably an oversight, but, to me it is a big one. If they get around to efficiency I hope they add the ability to add measured pre-boil and post boil volumes so you can calculate accurate mash and kettle/brewhouse efficiencies.