Tell Brad at Beersmith we want a mobile version!!!!

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Revvy

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
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I just got the latest installment of the Beersmith email Newsletter, and it said this;

Your Thoughts on BeerSmith?

You've been receiving these emails for several months now, and now its your chance to provide me with feedback - your ideas really help me make my products, articles and services better.

Let me know what you would like to see next from BeerSmith - even if its just a line or two. Just hit reply to this message and give me your thoughts on articles you would like to see, products you would like or improvements to my existing business.

It is unlikely I will be able to reply to every message (the list has thousands of subscribers now), but I will read what you write, and use it to decide what to do next.

Thank you again for your continued support!
Brad Smith

For years we've been begging him for a version that will work on Android and I-phone platforms, but it's seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. On his forum whenever he was asked he said he'd consider it after version II came out, and then after it came out, he said, he'd consider it after the Mac version came out.

Now those are both done, and he's looking for insight into what to do next.

I figure if we flood his email maybe he'll finally put it together before he looses us all to the mobile apps already out there. This is our opportunity to get his attention.

Here's what I sent him-

Brad,

What THOUSANDS of us on the forums, not just yours and Homebrewtalk.com, but Northern brewer's and just about every forum I've looked are begging you for Brad is a mobile version of BS, both for Androids and Iphones. I just switched from android to the iphone, and all I need to make my life and my brewing complete is a mobile app that allows us to work with out recipes on our phones, and to have them communicate back and forth with the versions on our computers. I want to be able to both create recipes on my phone and computer, and be able to share them back and forth between platforms.

I also want to be able to use all the other great features on your program, for example the dillution calculator and bottling calculators.

There are so many mobile recipe creation apps out there, both free and paid versions, but I don't want to invest my time and money with them, when I've been using yours for years.

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE Make Beersmith even more excellent, by making it work on our mobile tools like smartphones and tablets.

So if you want one, then now's the time to request it, send Brad Smith and email at [email protected]
 
Good call, that would fantastic!

Can't count how many times I've ran upstairs mid-boil to tweak hops or use the dilution calculator!
 
Good call, that would fantastic!

Can't count how many times I've ran upstairs mid-boil to tweak hops or use the dilution calculator!

I figure we have a chance to flood his email with this. I only wish I had mentioned how it seems a lot of folks ARE migrating away from it to use Ibrewmaster and other mobile apps.

I can really see myself rarely sitting at a computer more and more, if I can easily do it on my iphone...If it weren't for all my recipes already in beersmith I could migrate away...But I do like it a lot, I've been using it for 5 years now. So I don't really want to switch.
 
At first blush, it sounds like a great idea. But I'm wondering if a mobile app would (could) contain the entire suite of options contained in the pc version. It seems like stripping it down to "fit" on an app would result in little more than an electronic version of a brew sheet. I know there are some pretty content-rich apps out there, but they all give up something.

That being said, my netbook with Beersmith loaded in Dropbox is a fundamental brewday tool.
 
I can't imagine typing in an entire recipe on a phone. I'd rather do it on a PC and then synch it with my phone, so sync must be an option.
 
I totally agree, it needs to supplement the computer edition. I let Brad know that I'd like to use it in addition to the current version. I also told him that I regretfully use competitive apps during my brewday.
 
Then Tell him what you want. Or don't want.

This isn't really meant to be a discussion with him, he's not gonna see this thread. This is just an information thread to say we have an ear to Brad right now.

There are already apps for mobile devices where you type entire recipes on your phone, or device, Like Ibrewmaster, and the ones I had on my droid. It's not groundbreaking. And if it's done right, it's not that difficult to do. I've even done it on my old droid in beercalculus on the web.

It takes getting used to like doing anything on a small device but it's not all that more difficult than surfing hbt and answering posts.
 
Someone posted Ibrewmaster screenshots on another thread. Looks like they use the rooller feature a lot for making selections. You just would roll through the selections til you got the grain or hops or yeast you wanted.

37680d1320497026-ibrewmaster-iphone-great-image-1420217485.jpg
37681d1320497043-ibrewmaster-iphone-great-image-1707192788.jpg
37682d1320497051-ibrewmaster-iphone-great-image-3130481504.jpg


I have apps on my phone for other things that do similar to make choices and stuff, if it can be done for a banking app, or Ibrewmaster, then Beersmith can do it too.
 
I can't imagine typing in an entire recipe on a phone. I'd rather do it on a PC and then synch it with my phone, so sync must be an option.

You should try BrewPal. It is pretty straightforward and easy to design a recipe using that. In fact in terms of usability, I would say BrewPal wins hands down.



What I would rather see out of Beersmith is a reworking of the user interface to make it more intuitive and easier to use. Even after having used Beersmith 1 & 2 for many years, there are plenty of cases where I have to sit there and scratch my head trying to remember how to do something because it is buried in a weird place. There are also many cases of having 2-3 (and possibly more) ways to accomplish the same task that could easily be streamlined to simplify the interface and make it less clunky.
 
I received a response to my email from Brad. Figured I'd post it here to share:

Thanks,
I've just started doing some iPhone programming in preparation for this.

At the moment I'm trying to finish a recipe cloud server first since you need to
be able to access recipes from mobile as well as fixed platforms.


Cheers!

Brad Smith

:ban:
 
Brewzor is a decent app for Android. I think it needs a few improvements to be complete, but it has a few nice calculators and I use it pretty much every time I brew.

Frankly, when I'm working on a recipe I could never see myself fumbling around with my touchscreen. I prefer a mouse and keyboard.
 
Brewzor is a decent app for Android. I think it needs a few improvements to be complete, but it has a few nice calculators and I use it pretty much every time I brew.

Frankly, when I'm working on a recipe I could never see myself fumbling around with my touchscreen. I prefer a mouse and keyboard.

I tried to make a recipe last night on my tablet in the Brewzor program. It was a pain and wont do it again. I do agree the calculators it has sure are handy.
 
Frankly, when I'm working on a recipe I could never see myself fumbling around with my touchscreen. I prefer a mouse and keyboard.

On Iphones a lot of apps use rollers to make selections rather than typing anything it.

37682d1320497051-ibrewmaster-iphone-great-image-3130481504.jpg


I'm assuming in Ibrewmaster all their grains and hops and yeasts are on rollers as are the measurements shown above. You choose a grain, then the roller with weights pops up and you roll til you get to the weight you want.

It's pretty quick and easy.
 
So what we've learned here is that Iphones have decent brew apps as far as data entry does, but android doesn't.

I can't say how decent the brewing apps are since I'm holding out on buying one til we see what brad is going to do. But I will say having owned both a droid and an iphone, that Ipones have much easier data entry options than my android ever did. I really find those little spinny wheely things to be very simple to use.
 
I can't say how decent the brewing apps are since I'm holding out on buying one til we see what brad is going to do. But I will say having owned both a droid and an iphone, that Ipones have much easier data entry options than my android ever did. I really find those little spinny wheely things to be very simple to use.

There is no reason why an android app couldnt utilize the spinning wheel selector. That is what erks me about android apps they have one for every iphone app available but usually are not as "polished" as their competitor. I think that as people are starting to migrate further and further away from PCs and more into the mobile smartphones as a do it all device we will and in some cases already are seeing that change for the better.
 
I got an email (might have been a cut/paste response) from Brad today indicating he is working on the backend functionality to make smart phone stuff work. He wants easy synchronization between phone and PC app, so cloud stuff is getting done now.

So I guess it's "in the works". Stay tuned. BTW, he mentioned Android / iPhone / iPad
 
For everyone complaining about iphone only Beersmith, I sent Brad a link to an API that should allow him to do cross-platform development for both iOS and Android.
 
I got a response as well, basically he said he's working on the cloud for recipe transfer and the app would get next priority. I guess well wait and see.
 
I got a response as well, basically he said he's working on the cloud for recipe transfer and the app would get next priority. I guess well wait and see.

I'm the one who started this thing, both here and my local brewing group on FB, and I'm like the only one who hasn't gotten a response. :rolleyes:

But I'll say it again. He's got his priorities wrong. He really should roll the app out then do whatever the **** he wants about "clouds" I don't give a flying frig about cloud connectivity. I want a freaking mobile ap yesterday. I'm now ready to buy Ibrewmaster if he still doesn't see an app as a priority.
 
I'm the one who started this thing, both here and my local brewing group on FB, and I'm like the only one who hasn't gotten a response. :rolleyes:

But I'll say it again. He's got his priorities wrong. He really should roll the app out then do whatever the **** he wants about "clouds" I don't give a flying frig about cloud connectivity. I want a freaking mobile ap yesterday. I'm now ready to buy Ibrewmaster if he still doesn't see an app as a priority.

I agree with you Revvy, but I think your original request was so that your computer version and your phone version could talk. This (I believe) is why the "cloud" application is required.

Maybe just get the Android version out (I'm android not Iphone..) and work on the pc-phone communication afterwards?

Something as simple as an ability to import/export a file could be used instead of the "cloud". I kinda think the cloud thing is an annoying marketing ploy to get us all to trust all of our data to some corporate entity anyway.

(^conspiracy theory alert!).
 
Something as simple as an ability to import/export a file could be used instead of the "cloud". I kinda think the cloud thing is an annoying marketing ploy to get us all to trust all of our data to some corporate entity anyway.

(^conspiracy theory alert!).

I agree 1,000 with ALL the statements in this paragraph.
 
Without some sort of "cloud" experience, how would you get it to the phone? Export it and email it to yourself and then open the attachment in your phone? I have not used Android since version 1.5, but then and now in the iPhone, if the Mail app does not recognize the file extension, it will not open. Without that sync (and why not do it through the cloud), you would have to recreate the recipe in the app (pointless). As someone who works in wireless and eCommerce, he is doing it correctly, IMO.
 
.... how would you get it to the phone? Export it and email it to yourself and then open the attachment in your phone?

I'd be perfectly happy with this scenario. Or sync it via my I-tunes. Some folks are able to open beerxls. files on their mobile devices, using drop box.

I'm not opposed to cloud stuff, I just think his priorites are skewed. I want something on my phone NOW. He can clean it up and make it pretty and cloud for all I care later, as an update. But give me something I can use on my mobile device first.

Even if it is ugly, but at least let me look at my recipe on my phone.

Why do I have to consider going elsewhere (like to Ibrewmaster) when I've devoted over 5 years to beersmith?

We've only been asking for this for as long as we've had smartphones.
 
You cannot just open beerxml (or any XML) files over Dropbox without an interpreter unless you want to read raw XML. Most who use Dropbox export to some sort of readable text file and upload that to Dropbox (that's what I do). In that case, there is nothing stopping you from doing that right now.

iTunes is not an option as it would require Apple to write code. I think the only viable non-cloud sync option, at least for iOS devices, would be a WiFi sync like BeerAlchemy uses. And at the point, syncing to the cloud is just as easy/difficult.

I definitely agree that developers of brewing apps have taken quite a long time developing mobile counterparts. I have no idea if this is their full time job, so I assume it is a hobby and that is why it has taken so long. But I am a BeerTools Pro user and am really in the same boat.
 
iTunes is not an option as it would require Apple to write code.

No, it's not. You can write support for syncing documents via itunes into any application, so far as I know. Take a look at e.g. Stanza.

Same goes for DropBox. If the respective application supports the file format and has a way to talk to DropBox, then it will just work. However, I consider DropBox support as being "cloud" storage anyway.
 
I agree with Revvy! Get one with it already. I have an app for just about everything and me wants my Beersmith on me f***ing phone!!! Hell I have a remote control app for my tv for god's sake.
 
No, it's not. You can write support for syncing documents via itunes into any application, so far as I know. Take a look at e.g. Stanza.

Same goes for DropBox. If the respective application supports the file format and has a way to talk to DropBox, then it will just work. However, I consider DropBox support as being "cloud" storage anyway.

+1 People on here ARE using dropbox to get to their beersmith files, I'm not savvy enough to do it though. And I don't think I should have to I want the developer of my favorite brewing software to do it for me. Or else I will migrate to another app that already is out there.

I agree with Revvy! Get one with it already. I have an app for just about everything and me wants my Beersmith on me f***ing phone!!! Hell I have a remote control app for my tv for god's sake.

:rockin: Ain't that the truth!
 
He's one guy: Brad Smith. Take it easy everyone. You know it's not microsoft we are talking about. He's responded to many saying he's working on it; I think the indignation is a bit much.

It was only about 6 months ago when everyone was pissed off because he hadn't released a new version since 1.4.
 

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