Camera Genius 1.6 Approved!

Well we are excited to announce camera genius 1.6 has just been approved by apple!

Here are the new features:

Burst Mode Shooting.  Take 3 shots in rapid succession. (2 shots for 3G and 1st gen iPhones.)

Timestamp and Location can be added to photos. (Available via settings. Saving will be a little slower when this is active since it has to write this information on the photo when saving it.)

Confirmed Saving now lets you decide what photos to keep and delete when you take them.  (Available via settings)

Share photos via email or through the clipboard.

Repeat timer allows you to capture multiple photos at intervals of 10, 15 and 30 second intervals.

Faster saving. Take your next photo faster than before.

This update is free if you already own camera genius.  We hope everyone enjoys it and are already hard at work on the 1.7 update.

Camera Genius 1.6 submitted to Apple.

Well we have submitted Camera Genius 1.6 to Apple for approval.  Hopefully the review process will go smoothly.  Current wait times are 2 weeks being reported by Apple, if we don’t hit any snags.

So I wanted to show a few of the new features.  Probably the biggest new feature is burst mode.  This allows you to take three shots in quick succession (2 shots with 3.0 iPhone OS) and decide which ones you want to keep.  We also added a new save confirmation mode which can be enabled in the settings menu. This allows you to confirm you want to keep or delete each shot as you take it. This will be very helpful for some since we don’t have any way yet to delete photos in the review photos area.  For these new features we also spent a lot of time working on our save routines.  So things should be more responsive and a bit quicker on the saves.

We also added a timestamp feature which can add the date and time onto each photo you take.  Also you can now share photos via email or copy them to the clipboard for use in other apps that support this.

There are a couple of more features we added but I don’t want to give everything away in the preview.  Now we can start working on Version 1.7.  We still have a lot more we want to add.

3.1 iPhone OS surprises (Faster Saving!)

Well as most of you know, iPhone OS 3.1 is out.  This is very good news as there are some great new fixes and features we can take advantage of.

One unexpected surprise it that saving is now much faster.  You will notice when taking a photo with camera genius it is ready for the next shot almost instantly.  It’s now even faster than the iPhone’s default camera for being ready for the next shot. (You can keep snapping additional photos while the saving icon is active.) Also I have been testing with the 3Gs and it seems if you only have one photo being saved when you exit the app it will continue saving in the background (with the 3G and 1st gen iPhone you must wait for the saving icon to go away before exiting, otherwise the picture may not save.)  If you take a bunch of photos in quick succession you will need to wait for the save icon in the upper left to go away before exiting.  But at least now you can take shots much quicker than before.

Apple has really been working on improving the API and it’s getting better. They do seem to be listening to developers requests.  Faster saving is the thing I personally wanted most as it makes Camera Genius so much more usable for those candid shots.

We have so many great features planned, we are currently hard at work on 1.6 of Camera Genius.

Camera Genius 1.5 Approved!

I am very pleased that Camera Genius 1.5 has been approved by Apple.  I must say that apple has really been on the ball lately doing a great job.  I also noticed some other apps (facebook) has had several updates recently very close together.

Let’s hope this becomes a trend!  It’s great for developers and users alike because it means we can get fixes and features out quicker to you our customers.

Anyway be sure to get the new version of camera genius.  It has a lot of bug fixes and a few new features.

• Tap to Focus for iPhone 3Gs camera.

• Added Chinese Translation

• Added Japanese Translation

• Small speed improvements when taking anti-shake photos.

• Music playback is enabled unless sound capture is turned on.

• Pictures taken in landscape mode are no longer distorted in review.

• Ability to pan and zoom around in photos in review. (Pinch and zoom and double tap to zoom in and out.)

• Photos in landscape mode are shown entirely initially.

• Menu now highlights what features are enabled at a given time.

• Center camera button icon now has button border.

• Added camera genius help to camera manual.

• New Guides User Interface to make selecting guides much easier.

Anyway we have already started work on 1.6.  It will mostly be new features I hope.  Thanks for everyone’s support.  We plan to keep working hard to make camera genius the best app in the itunes app store.

Website Redesign Completed.

Well just a quick post to let everyone know the website design has been updated. We also have a 90 second screencast which explains the features of camera genius. Check it out.

Camera Genius 1.5 update

Well I haven’t posted in a little over a week.  We have been working very hard to get this update done.  We are getting ready to put it through the final testing over the next couple of days and get it submitted to apple.  There it should take a couple of weeks in review before it’s approved.  However sometimes it can take much longer.  So lets hope for a quick approval.

So I guess you probably want to know what’s new?  Well probably the biggest feature is tap to focus is now working for iPhone 3Gs cameras.  That has probably been our biggest gripe to date.  We also made several UI enhancements.  The main one is there is a new guides UI to make it easier to flip through the guide options. The main menu now shows what features you have active at a given time.  Finally the review photos now allows you to pan and zoom around in the photos.  Also the bug which caused landscape photos to appear squashed in the review is now fixed.

We also spent an entire week trying to get geotracking EXIF data working.  We tried every trick we could think of to get it to work.  Unfortunately it looks like it just isn’t possible without an update to the programming SDK from Apple.  We even submitted a request to Apple, who confirmed that adding EXIF / geotagging data is not possible to do at this time.  I filed a formal request asking for it to be added to the SDK.  I hope in the future we are provided with access to allow for this to be added.  Sorry everyone that I don’t have better news on it at this point.  I know everyone really wants it and we want it just as badly.  I guess if there is anything positive about our week of coding is that once it’s added to the SDK, we have everything else coded to take advantage of it.

Since I am talking about what hasn’t been added.  Let me discuss some other highly requested features.  Deleting photos in the review section isn’t going to be possible as we aren’t given this ability in the SDK.

Faster saving isn’t possible at this time either without updates to the SDK.  We have already done as much as I think is possible given the current SDK.  We made the saving threaded, which makes the camera available to take photos quicker while the photos continue saving in the background.  It would be really nice if apple gave us access to whatever routines they use for the default camera.  Then we could save much, much faster.

Finally swiping through photos to review them like the default camera app isn’t yet available either.  We have formally requested methods for all of these features and if Apple decides to provide them in a future SDK, we will be sure to take advantage of them.

The one thing Apple could do to fix 95% of the problems of the SDK.  They should develop all their own apps with the programming SDK they provide for developers.  This would allow for them to fix the problems that we have and would allow us to make our own apps with at least the feature set of apple’s own apps which users expect from developers.

Once we get 1.5 into review, the work on 1.6 begins.  Hopefully in that build we can focus on some great new features.  I think we have some amazing ideas for the future.

Stay tuned…

Tap to Focus fixed for next update.

Well we had a productive weekend of coding.  We were able to get tap to focus for the iPhone 3Gs fixed.  This has been our #1 complaint so far and I am glad we were finally able to get it working.  We want to fix a few more things and maybe add some new features before we go through the update process.  Generally once an update is finished on our end it goes through a review process at Apple which lasts a couple of weeks.  So we need to make the update bigger than just adding a feature at a time.

Anyway thanks very much for your patience and I hope you will be happy once the update hits the app store.

Why App Store commenting is badly flawed.

I look through my reviews everyday to see if people like or dislike Camera Genius. I also  see if they have feature requests or if they have problems with the app.

People have a lot of nice things to say overall and a lot of great suggestions.  However a few reviews are quite mean.  Unfortunately the worse ones have a tendency to bubble to the top.  Even though a bunch of people seem to not find the review helpful, it seems they still get to the top of the pile because Apple apparently only counts the yes for a review. They do nothing with users who didn’t find it helpful and marked no. 

It’s interesting because I think someone who has a problem with an app has a greater chance of coming back and figuring out how can they hurt you so they vote the bad reviews up after writing a review.  Someone who likes your program will come to the app store and write you a nice review. Sometimes they may even look at the reviews that are bad and say well that wasn’t my experience I am going to rank that review down. Unfortunately this has absolutely no effect on the bad reviews standing.  They never realize that what would really help more than anything else is voting up some of the highly ranked good reviews that they found helpful. 

I have no problem with someone writing a bad review.  It’s their choice and they paid money for the app.  I just wish that before they wrote it, they would come to me for some help.  I see many of the 1 star reviews could easily be resolved with a simple email.  

Maybe Apple needs to rethink how reviews are sorted so they are more fairly ranked.  As it stands now the bad reviews have a huge advantage over good reviews.