GoGrinder for iPhone

[jdl]

I bought this for my iPad last night. It's nowhere near as polished as SmartGo Kifu, but it's a good app. Certainly worth the price.

[hyperpape]

I bought the app a few days ago, and here are some observations about usability. Let me also say that I really appreciate seeing that you're paying so much attention to feedback, and have an obvious interest in improving the app. In spite of the couple of areas in which I think you could improve things, I'd say this app is a definite buy for go players with an iPhone.

Obviously, these are mostly just ideas to think about. For these types of design decisions, I can only say how they seem to me, and you might have really good reasons for the way you do things.

• I haven't seen the problems mentioned with positioning the magnifying glass (3G, iOS 4.1 8B117), but the magnifying moves a bit sluggishly, and I think a bigger magnifying glass could be nice. (compare Smartgo).
• Why is the button labeled "hint" rather than "solution"?
• Can you not return to previous problems?
• It also is a bit surprising that "back" and "next" do not perform symmetrical actions.
• When you first click on a problem in the built in collections, it often just says correct, and continues, even when it would be better to make sure that you have the right continuation.
• The problem difficulty is extremely inconsistent in the beginner pack. Many problems are simply recognizing living or dead eyespaces, including the simple bent three. Other problems are more complicated sequences that might be 10 kyu problems or slightly tougher. Splitting the pack into more fine-grained groups might be nice.
• After placing a stone, the status indicator (correct/wrong/black to play/white to play) often flashes too quickly to read. Similarly, when comments appear, like "this is not seki" the next problem may appear too quickly to register the comment. I can see why you might not like the model in which you have to hit a button to go to the next problem, but I'm not sure the current situation is optimal.

[TimKington]

I'm glad you like it, hyperpape. Apple is currently reviewing an update that fixes some of these, see below.
I expect it to be available Monday.

• Why is the button labeled "hint" rather than "solution"?
  Because the solution can have a sequence of moves, and this only tells you the next one. If you try the XXQJ problems, you'll see the difference.
• Can you not return to previous problems?
  In the updated version, you'll be able to swipe left to go to the previous problem.
• It also is a bit surprising that "back" and "next" do not perform symmetrical actions.
  Agreed. I thought about making "back" say undo, but this way it's consistent with the Java version.
• When you first click on a problem in the built in collections, it often just says correct, and continues, even when it would be better to make sure that you have the right continuation.
  There are two things going on here. One is that auto-advance is on by default. I changed that in the new version too. You can turn it off in the preferences.
  The other is that the app just shows you what is in the problem file. If it only has one move and calls it correct at that point, that's what you'll see. If it has a longer sequence, then you need to play all of the moves.

[Yertle]

I just got the update for my iPad and now it doesn't work at all. It brings up the splash screen and then immediately closes. I restarted my iPad but that didn't fix it. I hope this is corrected soon, it has become one of my favorite apps.

[judicata]

I just got the update for my iPad and now it doesn't work at all. It brings up the splash screen and then immediately closes. I restarted my iPad but that didn't fix it. I hope this is corrected soon, it has become one of my favorite apps.

Oops---yeah, this happened to me on my iPhone. If you haven't upgraded yet, I'd suggest you hold off until the next update. I'm sure it'll be fixed real soon.

[TimKington]

Ugh. Sorry about that, guys. I tested the upgrade process as thoroughly as I could, but
it turns out Apple moves everything to a different directory when you upgrade, so GG can
no longer find your currently selected problems. I'm pretty irritated about this - it's
partly my fault I guess, but it's also caused by Apple's closed development process.
There's no way to test the upgrade until it goes live on iTunes.

There are two ways around this - you can delete the app and reinstall it, and that will fix
the problem. If you made a note of your bundle ids, you can use them to reinstall any problem
sets you had added. Otherwise, you'll have to wait for the next update. I'm planning to
fix this today and submit to Apple, but it takes about two weeks for them to approve.

Tim

[TimKington]

Just thought of a third option - you should also be able to restore the last backup of your
iPhone/iPod to get back to the original version.

[TimKington]

Thought this was another way, but it's no good - you lose your data, so you're better off
just reinstalling the latest one.

Here's another way:
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/d ... iphone_app

[judicata]

Ugh. Sorry about that, guys. I tested the upgrade process as thoroughly as I could, but
it turns out Apple moves everything to a different directory when you upgrade, so GG can
no longer find your currently selected problems. I'm pretty irritated about this - it's
partly my fault I guess, but it's also caused by Apple's closed development process.
There's no way to test the upgrade until it goes live on iTunes.

There are two ways around this - you can delete the app and reinstall it, and that will fix
the problem. If you made a note of your bundle ids, you can use them to reinstall any problem
sets you had added. Otherwise, you'll have to wait for the next update. I'm planning to
fix this today and submit to Apple, but it takes about two weeks for them to approve.

Tim

Thanks, Tim. I did an uninstall and re-install. While it gets past the splash screen, it crashes after selecting any problem set.

[rubin427]

I'll make a general comment that I feel is true about every Go themed i-device app I've tried. I dislike the extensive use of the magnifying glass for input, and I'll be suggesting an alternative touch input method.

Brief summary, the new schema would be "touch and drag, then tap to confirm". How it works is when placing a stone on the board; there would be a fixed offset from your finger touch location to the visible input cursor (I'll suggest about two fingers wide to the right for right handed users). dragging your finger on the screen moves the cursor. When you remove your finger from the screen, the cursor stays at it's current location. If the user taps again at the same area (within some tolerance), the move is accepted and a stone is placed. A tap outside of the tolerance area cancels the previous action and allows you to drag the cursor around again to reposition.

The goals here are the following: 1) the offset between the touch location and the visible cursor minimizes the visual occlusion caused by the user's finger, 2) the visual cursor allows the user to unambiguously adjust the input to exactly the correct area.

Terrible drawing attached for illustrative purpose, and to allow maximum trolling of this post.

[oren]

KGS for Android is very similar to what you describe there, and I also like it. I was implementing it for gobandroid as well, since I find it far more intuitive than a magnification.

[grillapa]

The new release fixed the crashes i was experiencing! Thanks,

and sorry for not sending those crash reports.. forgot about them

[TimKington]

Great to hear that, grillapa!

[1986]

i just found out about this post and i been using the go grinder app for a minute and i just wanted to say you did a excellent job also thanks for the extra problem set i got mine today

[Spieler]

Hi all,

here is the collection ID for problems from goproblems.ru (about 7300 problems). Unfortunately comments in russian could not be packaged correctly by GGBundler, so I made a transliterated version of the comments.

530C38DE