As you may have noticed, the Cha-Ching 2.0 Beta is set to expire on September 30th.
You might be wondering what is going to happen with the current beta when this happens.

This blog post is meant to clear up any confusion you might have. We are working very intensely to bring the next update out to all of our loyal beta testers. We had planned to do this much earlier in the month but we have run into a few unavoidable roadblocks that have thus far prevented us from publicly seeding the latest beta.

As we have mentioned in the past, we have been maintaining a delicate balance between Cha-Ching touch in the App Store and Cha-Ching 2.0. Development has been split between the two projects as we work to bring feature parity to the Cha-Ching ecosystem. We have continued to work on Cha-Ching 2.0 while developing Cha-Ching touch.

As we work to add user driven features to both applications (especially in the areas of transfer support and better budgeting) we have had to be very careful to maintain the sync relationship between Cha-Ching for Mac and Cha-Ching touch for iPhone.
In order to add features like budget sync and linked transfer sync we had to make many changes and enhancements to the sync code.

That brings us to today. Any changes (there have been lots) to Cha-Ching touch also results in changes to Cha-Ching 2.0. Currently because these changes include enhancements to syncing and budgeting the releases of the next version of Cha-Ching 2 Beta and Cha-Ching touch (1.6) are co-dependent upon each other.

So what is the roadblock?

Last night, we received word that Cha-Ching touch 1.6 had been rejected for the second time. We originally submitted touch 1.6 at the end of August. As with past updates we figured the update would take no longer than 14 days for approval. The app had already run the gamut once and been rejected for a few niggling issues so we didn’t expect anything major this time around. We gave ourselves a full month for approval.

Unfortunately after waiting 14 days Cha-Ching was rejected for an issue relating to App Store keywords. Basically, we got rejected for using a keyword that was also the name of another application in the store which Apple took exception to. This resulted in rejection #1 for Cha-Ching touch 1.6.

We immediately removed the keyword in question and resubmitted the application within minutes of the rejection hoping that with this easy fix the app would be in the store soon. Unfortunately we were wrong. Another 16 days with passed with no word form Apple only to have 1.6 rejected once again this time for violating the Apple HIG for iPhone applications.

This time the rejection had to do with location services. Essentially, when you assign a location to a payee in Cha-Ching touch we show a progress indicator until the location has been assigned. This is were Apple took exception. Apparently if the user chooses “don’t allow” when prompted to allow Cha-Ching to use current location, the progress spinner continues to spin indefinitely instead of providing the user feedback that will tell them why the location wasn’t assigned. According to Apple this behavior could lead to user confusion and thus means Cha-Ching in its current state couldn’t be posted to the store.

To this point I do not disagree. This is indeed a bug that needed fixed (and has since been fixed and resubmitted). What is maddening about this situation is that we haven’t changed a thing about the way a location is assigned to a payee for 1.6. The application has been for sale for several months with this seemingly show stopping bug in place. We have received hundreds of feedback emails from customers and not one user has been “confused” by this behavior.

But I digress. The worst part of all of this is how it affects you the customer. Cha-Ching touch 1.6 is going to be a great upgrade. It fixes many issues (including the memory related crash that edge and 3g owners are experiencing) and adds several great new features. Unfortunately we are completely at Apple’s mercy to deliver this upgrade to you the customer.

So what does this mean for Cha-Ching 2.0?

Well like I said at the beginning, Cha-Ching 2.0 is dependent upon this release for certain features to work as expected. Without the 1.6 update, the 2.0 beta won’t sync with the iPhone application. Therefore we can’t in good conscience put out an update that we know will break syncing for our users. We are waiting, hoping that 1.6 will be approved very soon.

So what are we doing in the meantime?

It would seem that the easy thing to do would be to simply update the expiration date of the current 2.0 beta (build 340) and call it a day. This morning I had planned to do just that. Unfortunately due to a hard drive failure and a corrupted Snow Leopard Time Machine backup the source code for build 340 is no longer available to compile a new extended beta expiration copy. Today has not been a good day here at Midnight Apps :(

Currently, I am hard at work attempting to make the current 2.0 beta backwards compatible with touch 1.5. It is unfortunate that we can’t just post the 2.0 beta as is but that is the current state of things. We hope to have a beta update ready for tomorrow and we are also crossing our fingers that Apple will finally pull the trigger on the touch 1.6 update and ease some of the difficulties this is causing us.

On a personal note, I really appreciate the support the community has given as we work to deliver a great and easy to use product to you our loyal customers.

We will keep you posted and please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@midnightapps.com with any questions or concerns.

Thanks,
Juan Alvarez
Midnight Apps