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
I feel your pain but I thank you for the hard work and two great tools I use constantly. Keep up the great work and I am sure that things will clear in the near future
I would just like to mirror yaniv’s comment and say a big THANK YOU for all of your hard work. I am very much looking forward to when apple finally stops screwing around and approves your app, but until then I will wait patiently as none of this is Midnight App’s fault and you guys have been brilliant with keeping your customers informed about what has been going on.
Whoa, that is very unfortunate. Couldn’t you just rollback your VCS to a known good version? How about off-site backups? Hard-drive failures aren’t valid excuses these days guys.
I’ve been sticking with Midnight Apps since version 1.0 of Cha-Ching but this is just unreal. I can’t believe the level of unprofessionalism that has been displayed by this “company”.
It seems like now is the time to consider alternatives. Best of luck.
Good luck guys with getting it approved through Apple! That is one of the biggest things keeping me from developing iPhone apps, is the concern I have over the approval process.
@camwest Nothing like kicking somebody when they are down. Good luck to you as you find another software vendor.
Thanks a lot for letting us know what the situation is. I deeply sympathize with you both for the AppStore and the TIme Machine problems (Time Machine in Snow Leopard really seems prone to corruptions).
I hope you’ll soon be out of the woods.
One option could have been to release a version that requires the 1.6 app while making it really clear it’s not available yet. That could be of use for people who do not have an iPhone or think they can live without the App for a while.
Just out of curiosity, if you can’t quite get the sync code compatible between releases, why not make a less hard coded expiration date in the future? i.e. Some file either in the bundle that could be a binary encoded (and signed?) expiration date. This way, when you run into a problem like this, you don’t need to compile the whole application again, just seed out a new expiration file that users can either drop into place or you could have a small app update the expiration date for you.
Just an idea. You guys keep up the great work.
Steve.
Unreal.
Time to pack up my database in the form of CSV files and move to financial software I can trust. Seriously, if you can’t be trusted to make backups or use version control software properly, you have no business making, let alone *selling*, personal financial software.
A quick tip on how to get your data out of the expired beta: http://blog.erikphansen.com/?p=351
So long.
Erik
I’m so sad :’(
But which the price СC2.0?
I can appreciate the update on the situation. Had I already purchased the desktop app, rather than just using the iPhone app, I’d be pretty upset. Admittedly I have spent like 4 bucks with this company so far for the iphone app. I hope that in the coming updates they can keep us posted on what plans they put in place to keep this sort of thing from happening in the future. I honestly planned to buy the desktop app once 2.0 was released, but this REALLY makes me worry about things like this happening in the future in an app I depend on every day.
Although I can sympathize with the burdens of the app rejection and hard drive failure, I can’t believe you guys, as software developer, don’t have a second backup or a proper versioning system in place. This seems to me like the basic steps any serious developer would take. Time Machine only, seriously?
All this situation could have affect us less if there was no expiration date on the beta. Unfortunately, after two years, it’s not the first time that we’ve been bite by this. Now that both the desktop and the touch versions of the app are interdependent for features and the always likely delay due to App Store rejection, wouldn’t it be time to make your and our life easier and just drop this annoying limitation?
Just sent @midnightapps a tweet to update us on the situation since the app has expired for some of us.
@midnight_apps
This is not cool at all, but after having no tech support for 10 years with Quicken, I am pulling for the little guy. Go Midnight Apps, sounds like you will be working well past Midnight tonight. Good luck in getting this resolved.
I’m really saddened by this, Apple fail on all levels. Time Machine blew up, App Approval took forever..
I’d suggest getting a better backup solution, such as Drobo. I know they are expensive, but angry customers are more expensive…
Hope this gets sorted out soon.
Dear Midnight Apps!
You should definitely hire more workers! Take a look at 37signals.com, great apps too.
I think you could have a lot more customers!
And please keep a Backup on a Disc too! Or a Server with Raid! But a little more professional!
Hope your company will survive! And your app too, it changed my Life by keeping track of my money!
Awaiting the update!
Raymond Willems
Incompetent.
Completely unacceptable that the beta expired without a plan in place.
Not getting approval from Apple is not an acceptable excuse — you should have seen Sep 30th approaching and already have prepared a failsafe. That date has been there for a LONG time.
You want people to trust their financial records with you and you can’t even be bothered to keep a backup of your source code? What kind of company sells software that they don’t have multiple copies of the source code in multiple places?
At a minimum you should at least have a way for people to be able to view/extract the information from the Beta after expiration. Here I am, tracking all of my balances in Cha-Ching — and I can’t use it.
Sometimes users can’t upgrade immediately or at alll — even if your company didn’t drop the ball — give them a failsafe option to extract to CSV after expiration.
Complete and utter failure. I will be returning to download the new beta solely to extract my data as a CSV. I WILL NOT purchase another thing from your company after you’ve shown this level of stupidity.
I appreciate the update. It does sound pretty harsh that some users would slam you when you are having these issues especially after having the courage to be straight forward. But mac users are demanding folks as you know. If you say nothing — then silence is also something to be chastised for — as they say, you can’t win.
Maybe this will give you comfort, when people lash out — it’s usually because they are unhappy in another area of their life — and you just provided them an opportunity to express that. And for that you have just done them a service. Instead of taking it out on a loved one — they just slammed you, a safe place since there’s no repercussion for doing so. Nothing personal, but can certainly sting I know.
I do know of the app store approval process – it’s an unfortunate problem for developers and customers as this recent MacWorld article vehemently describes:
http://www.macworld.com/article/134960/2008/08/appstore.html
Non-resistant bliss is all that matters so that’s where I’ll be to the best of my ability … I recommend it to all and to all a blissful night.
Thanks for being up front with what is going on.
I went through all of the apps before and ChaChing beat them all out. Really easy to use for multiple checking accounts. It’s even been free this whole time (so complaints and frustrations aren’t really justified from above).
I’m looking forward to an updated beta or the 2.0 here soon, as I do need to update my checking info before I start writing checks for the month. I’m going to backdate my computer and trick it to an older date to get the CSV data and then use a free version of something else until ChaChing is ready to go.
PS: Don’t feel like you are losing your customer base. Some people are hard to please no matter what you do. For a small team, you have been the most professional experience I have been part of. Other companies just ignore you until they resolve the problem or pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Adobe has major bugs right now and Snow Leopard has been out for months.
To those of you that bitched,
How does anything get to be good or great? Most likely not through angry, rude, and ill placed frustration. Rather than direct your unhappiness toward the creator look for a solution. Although mistakes were made, which I’m sure many of you assholes have done before, there is a certain level of decency that should be administered. Those of you who did not pay for this application have no room to complain. Roll back the date on your Mac to September 29, 2009, open ChaChing, and back up your files. Then when the update is released (which I’m sure won’t be long unless the developer has give up due to your cynicism) just reload it back in and enter in all your receipts you’ve saved! :) I’m tired so goodnight and screw you to all who bitched :)
@stevieg20 – Bravo sir. Love that you give everyone who has complained the most amazingly simple solution to pull their data out of Cha-Ching.
As for me, most pleased to see this update on the state of things here. I agree that a version control system would be most excellent, but, so it goes, one lives & learns, and none of us have ANY idea the sort of budgetary/physical constraints y’all operate under.
v2.0 is what I’m waiting for to finally switch away from using another software in my daily finances (which, while it doesn’t compare to Cha-Ching, also has all of my categories in it, and until I can import those into Cha-Ching, I’m not quite sold, but last I checked, that’s on the to-do list.) Cha-Ching’s interface, forward-thinking, and iPhone app have me constantly hoping 2.0 will materialize. Good luck getting things going!
This sucks! It’s yet another appalling App Store policy failure that should never have happened. I hate that this happened and that you guys have been so effected by it, it’s not fair to such a good developer.
I agree with others somewhat on you guys having better versioning and backups or not hard-coding the expiration but that’s a simple mistake, especially when you thought you did have good versioning with Time Machine.
But I do not agree with the people who are leaving and getting really upset about this. It’s not like you’re the first developer who has had disaster strike and a program unusable for a few days, they only difference here is that you guys were up front with us about what happened so it’s easy for us to say you guys failed. That’s silly and I appreciate your transparency.
I think Cha-Ching is a great product and I would have given you the benefit of the doubt if you said ’something major broke, we’ll have a new version up shortly’ but I’m even more inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt when you’ve handled the situation with so much integrity. I won’t be jumping ship anytime soon!
@ stevieg20 – Thank you.
Of those above (and below) that bitch and moan, I am sure the percentage of you that have already purchased Cha-Ching is very small… VERY small.
You have been using this software for FREE while it is in BETA. Some may say the BETA is too long, but that is beside the point. You haven’t paid a dollar and how many months have you used it. One little fuck up in the middle of the week isn’t going to destroy your world of personal finances.
I wont disagree that there is some fault to blame on Midnight Apps, however a one-night outage (for us Snow Leopard users) or a 2 day outage for Leopard users isn’t a good enough reason to call out the developer as being “unfit to maintain” your financial data.
Although it’s true that we’re all using a free beta, I would gladly pay for a license if it meant we would see more steady updates to the software.
As it currently stands, the latest beta is set to expire in 13 minutes (December 31st, 2009). I was hoping for an update to the beta by this point, but alas I haven’t seen a thing. Don’t leave us hanging, guys!