iPhone App Review: TIPR
I was taken aback about my post about the new iPhone Apps as someone that I didn't personally know actually made a comment! I thought only like 3 people read this blog. I guess we're up to 4 now! Yay! :-)
The comment asked for some feedback about their iPhone application, TIPR. TIPR is a new iPhone application that does what the name suggests - help you calculate tips at a restaurant. Now I personally love this app because I am severly math-challenged. It should be simple enough to calculate a 20% tip, but I constantly screw it up.
The application is the best kind - it does one thing, and it does one thing well. The user interface is simple and elegant - just like the phone it works on. You simply punch in the amount of the check, dial-in the tip percentage (be gracious people) and click submit. It comes back and gives you the tip along with the bill total. Including the total is a nice touch, especially for math-challenged people like me.
The only issue I found with the app is a calculation error for hefty bills. Punch in something like $987 with a 20% tip and it comes back with a $-986 tip for a total bill of $1. Nice if it were true. This is not likely to come up much with average users, but I have personally put a similar business expense on my corporate credit card in the past.
It would be nice if the keyboard defaulted to the numeric keypad when entering the bill amount, but I'm pretty sure that's not something that could be controlled via the Safari browser. Hear that Apple? We're having to sacrifice a superior experience because you won't give developers a true development kit. I hope Apple rethinks their approach. While developers will indeed come up with some outstanding apps, they'd be even better if they could get to the core of the environment.
The only other enhancements I could think of would be a way to access customary tips when traveling outside the US and a way to "split" the bill amongst X number of people in a party. How many times have you been out to dinner/lunch with a group of people and it takes 45 minutes to figure out what everyone owes. However, this might need to be a separate app (with a simple link from TIPR) or something. I wouldn't want to clutter up the simple TIPR interface with a less-common need.
Great job on TIPR guys! Definitely an early must-have iPhone app.
3 comments:
Thanks for all of the feedback and for finding the error; I thought I had caught them all. It's fixed now. Happy tipping!
Aaron
Can you explain why the app does not work as I would expect it to? If you type in $10 with 20% tip, shouldn't it come up with $2 tip, with a total of $12.
Why does the app come up with $2.21 tip and $12.21 for the total. I know that seems like a minor diference, but when you have a large bill, I would love to know that I could trust this app. Otherwise, I would just use the calculator on the iphone and mulptiply the total by 1.2.
Thanks
If you read the FAQ, you'll see.
Tipr is designed to provide the tip amount, but it is also designed to provide you with a total that is a palindrome. This makes it easier to run down your credit card or bank statement and detect fraud. I've been using this method for more than a year and have actually caught places cheating me out of my hard-earned money.
To me, spending an extra 12 cents (or whatever it takes to make the palindrome) is worth the convenience of being able to quickly determine if a restaurant or bar is ripping me off.
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