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App News - General News about my Apps Electronic Toolbox News

Some news regarding Electronic Toolbox updates

Some news

I am currently preparing a data update which will be sent out during the next days.

A new app update is also under development but I decided to wait with the distribution to Apple. Since I expect iOS 6 to be released soon, I thought it will be better to add iOS 6 support to the next update as well. Of course, the app will also remain backward compatible to iOS 4.

These days, I am receiving many mails per day. A lot of good suggestions and feature requests. Many many thanks! Please be assured, I am reading every single mail and updating every single suggestion or finding with my ToDo list.

So please don’t get angry if you don’t receive a response to your mail immediate.

I am also struggling with many support requests from people who did not pay for my app. A simple statement at this point to those people: Updates will not work if you have not paid for the app.

Unfortunately, the person called “Redulon” who reported issues with his iPad3 and my app did not contact me so I can’t help him. I am using an iPad3 myself and can’t find any issue.

I am looking forward to send out the new data update soon as well as the next app update after iOS 6 has been released.

Many thanks and have a great weekend,
regards,
Marcus

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Categories
App News - General News about my Apps Electronic Toolbox News

Electronic Toolbox data update 1.15 available

A new data update V 1.15 is available

This is just a small data update with the following content:

  • IP-Ratings added in the tables tool

The following ICs were added:

  • CC2570, CS2570 (ANT RF Network Processors)
  • DS18B20 (Programmable 1 – Wire Digital Thermometer)
  • UDN298x and ULN200x (8-channel drivers)

And finally:

  • Improved formula images throughout the whole app
  • Some corrections in the 40xx and 74xx IC section

 

Another data update and app update is already under development but I thought I should send already out an update with the above.

 

Thanks again for your support, help and suggestions.

Have a great weekend,

kind regards,

Marcus

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Categories
App News - General News about my Apps Electronic Toolbox News

A few words about cracked versions of Electronic Toolbox – update

Update to “A few words about cracked versions of Electronic Toolbox”

As I concentrated on improving and extending Electronic Toolbox during the last weeks and months, I lost track about the number of cracked versions of ETB circulating on various platforms.

Last week, I found I should check and was quite surprised that again, various versions of my App are available for free again. Those versions have been downloaded and installed about hundred thousand times and the installation base of those cracked versions is higher than the installation base of the version from the AppStore.

I even found two cracked versions that were not just cracked but also contained some additional code. As far as I was able to see, this code accesses the address book and creates a lot of network traffic. Also, some iOS system files (etc/hosts and some others) are being modified. Very strange though.

I still can’t understand why people are not willing to pay a few bucks (the same amount they pay for a BigMac) for an app that is being supported and extended now over years whereas a BigMac just lasts for a few minutes.

Moreover, some of those people even asked for support and submitted change requests.

Crazy world!

So last week, I decided to find out who is uploading cracked versions of my App to those platforms. To my surprise, almost all file-hoster (e.g. uploading.com, limelinx.com, datafilehost.com, sendspace.com etc.) were open to co-operate. They sent me detailed information about who uploaded and who downloaded the suspicious files. Very detailed information that helped me to identify a couple of those guys. Of course, some of them have previously bought a legal version of my app but some didn’t and just wanted to swagger with their ability to crack apps.

I was surprised about the co-operation of those file-hosters but I anticipate that they are quite under pressure after the FBI took action against megaupload.com.

I first thought I should take legal action against those guys and some of my friends encouraged me to do so as they saw this as a good opportunity to make much money.

As this it is not my intention to make money with other people’s mistakes but to develop great apps that are useful for many people, I decided against that.

Instead, I contacted a few of those guys via phone (yes, it was even possible to get the phone numbers of some of them) or via E-Mail. Obviously, those people were all quite shocked to get contacted by the developer of the app they cracked. None of them denied that they uploaded my app (otherwise I thought I should change my mind and take legal action against them).

All of them promised that they will never ever upload cracked apps again and my feeling was that they regret what they did.

I really had the impression that they learned their lessons. My lessons learned were, that it is obviously much easier than thought, to catch people who up- and even download cracked apps and that it can be quite dangerous to download cracked apps as there are obviously cracked apps available that have been flavored with additional code.

Now that I caught some of those guys, I will get back to my work on Electronic Toolbox.

My ToDo List of user requests and my own ideas is still quite long and there is much work for me to do but I am happy to implement all of them.

So you can expect more data-updates and app-updates during the next weeks.

Thanks to all users who paid for my app and special thanks to your amazing support!

Marcus Roskosch

UPDATE:

I am pretty sure that this case : Sony vs. Tenenbaum, where Joel Tennenbaum uploaded a few songs on file-sharing platforms and now finally found guilty and has to pay US$ 675.000 for his damages can be compared to uploading cracked apps on file-sharing platforms.

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Categories
App News - General News about my Apps Electronic Toolbox News

Electronic Toolbox reviewed on What’s On iPhone

Whatsoniphone.com iOS App reviews

The Guys from What’s On iPhone wrote a great review of Electronic Toolbox Pro.

 

Please read the review at : www.whatsoniphone.com

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Categories
App News - General News about my Apps Electronic Toolbox News

Electronic Toolbox featured on The DailyAppShow

Electronic Toolbox Pro has been featured by the DailyAppShow.

You can even find a small video of my App. Just have a look at : http://dailyappshow.com/electronic-toolbox-pro

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Electronic Toolbox News

Update of Electronic Toolbox available!

New Version 4.01.01 of Electronic Toolbox is now available!

This version is mainly a maintenance update to fix some reported issues but also contains some improvements:

  • The unfortunate issue in the LED tool has been fixed
  • When switching between calculation types, reasonable unit types will now automatically be applied
  • Some improvements in the NE555 tool
  • Added some additional LED types in the LED tool
  • Projects and project attachments can now be deleted by using the swipe gesture
  • Projects can now have URL attachments to websites
  • Possibility to fine-tune the frequency in the Frequency Generator in order to measures an external sound in note and frequency easier
  • Some accessibility improvements for VoiceOver
  • Some preparations for iOS 6

And finally one new tool:

  • Capacitor Charge and Energy calculator

Thanks again for your support and help.

Have a great weekend,

kind regards,

 

Marcus

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Categories
Electronic Toolbox News

Electronic Toolbox Data update V1.14 available

As announced yesterday, a new data update V 1.14 is now available.

The data update contains the following changes:

  • Temperature chip LM35 added
  • A few coax cables, such as LMR-400 added
  • Comparator ICs LM139,LM239 and LM339 added
  • Function generator IC XR2206 and Oscillator IC XR2207 added
  • New group of Atmel controllers AT89xxx added
  • New section I2C-bus in the IC tool with some I2C-bus ICs like the PCF8574
  • New section Optocouplers in the IC tool with some Optocouplers like the 4N35
  • Some corrections and additions in some databases
  • And finally some preparations for the next App version

Thanks again for your support and help.

Have a great weekend,

kind regards,

Marcus

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Categories
Electronic Toolbox News

Electronic Toolbox V 4.01.00 released

I am really happy to confirm the release of version 4.01.00 of Electronic Toolbox.

This version contains many changes “under the hood” but here is, what you will notice and hopefully like:

  • The RL module has now been turned to a RL / RC module.
  • A bug in the filter tool when adding a component to a project was fixed
  • It is now possible to switch off the splash screen to not appear when the App is re-started (e.g. when switching from another app)
  • The frequency generator now also offers the possibility to select musical notes.
  • The sliders in the frequency generator will now be adjusted when another fixed frequency is selected.
  • The sliders in the parametric filter (e.g. Transistor, FET etc.) will now work for small values.
  • In addition, these sliders also offer the possibility to enter the minimum and maximum value manually.
  • Now, the app will only check for new updates once per day. This speeds up further starts after one check has been done. So if you disabled automatic update because of high latencies of your WiFi network, you may want to check if you can re-enable automatic updates.
  • The Transistor database has been completely updated. There are now many additional parameters and many more types. The transistor database now is quite huge and it took me some time to keep the speed usable on slower devices.

New Tools:

  • An IGBT  database was added.
  • A Tubes database was added (see notes below).
  • Along with the change of the RL / RC Tool a new Tool for reactance calculation was added.
  • A pi / T attenuator Tool was added.
  • Two new tools to calculate the cable length were added. Due to the quite different standards and approaches between US and European cable length calculation, I had to add two different Tools (US and IEC). You can hide the Tool you don’t need for your country in the organizer.

A note to the Tube database: It took me some time to collect and manually maintain this data. The database is already quite huge. However, the socket pin out for some Tubes are still missing. I will add this over the time. For the socket diagrams, I mainly concentrated so far on the most popular types like the EC/ECC81 etc. but if you are missing a certain type, just let me know.

I will now continue to work on the To-Do list that contains all your ideas and requests. Please don’t be disappointed if a specific request has not yet implemented. I usually set the priorities on my ToDo list according the number of people asking for certain functionality.

Like always, please let me know if you are experiencing an issue with my app or if you are missing a certain feature or functionality. I promise to listen to you and consider your mail.

As this update now has been released, many of your nice and kind customer reviews will get invisible as customer reviews only apply to the most recent version.

I kindly ask you to update your review or add another review for this version in order to help me to keep up my work on this app.

Thank you and kind regards,

Marcus

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Categories
Electronic Toolbox News

Some news

After a few quiet weeks, some news about my progress.

I have finished development of the next version and will continue with some more testing before I will send this update to Apple for reviewing.

Besides some bugfixing, speed improvements and a lot of minor changes, the next version will add a few new tools. Some of them long awaited.

Fortunately I was able to work through a full page on my to-do list but the list is still quite long – which is good.

Now, that I am finished with development, I will create a new data update over the next days. This will also fix some data issues and especially I plan to add some more Analog ICs as I have received many requests.

So stay tuned!

Thanks for your support and suggestions and sorry that I can’t come back to each of you individually.

Kind regards,
Marcus…


Categories
Electronic Toolbox News

Data Update 1.12

As announced, a new data update is now available with the following contents and changes:

  • Several OpAmps added (TL07x and family, MC1458 and several LM types)
  • Additional analog ICs such as the ICL7660, TDA1522 etc.
  • Improvements of the ANSI and ISO drill sizes
  • Several additional data corrections

This data update also contains data for the next App version which is still in the review process of Apple.

This was my last update before my annual leave next week. I hope that Apple will release the update before I leave.

I will be back first of August so please be a bit patient if you have a support request or question.

Thanks again to all of you and have a great summertime!

Marcus Roskosch…


Categories
Electronic Toolbox News

Electronic Toolbox 4.0

Over the time, I received many requests and good ideas to extend Electronic Toolbox. So almost once per month, I brought out an update with more functions and extensions. Now it includes more than 30 mini-tools with loads of calculations and databases. By now, Electronic Toolbox has been updated more than 60 times.

By this however, the App became more and more complex more and more confusing and difficult to use over the time.

So I decided to completely rewrite Electronic Toolbox from scratch. It took me now eight months (and several nights and weekends) to finally let the new Version 4 show up on the App Store.

These were the main goals for version 4:

  • Perfect foundation for hundreds of additional mini-tools that will be added over the time
  • Easier navigation and searching for mini-tools
  • Consistent and easier to use user interface throughout all mini-tools
  • Taking better advantage of the higher resolution Retina display and larger iPad screen
  • Offering more background information about calculations, formulas and circuits

 

NEW PROJECT FUNCTION

Another goal was to include a global place where calculations, circuits, components or documents can be stored for later reference. For this reason a global Projects function has been introduced in Version 4. Projects can be used to collect all this type of information. They can also be exported, sent via E-Mail or printed from your device. Documents can also be imported into projects via DropBox.

The new Project function will be the basis of many additional Ideas I have for the future. For instance the possibility to order missing parts online or to connect it with a cross-reference database. I am also considering a Mac-Desktop Version of the App where Projects can be exchanged between the Mac version and Smartphone version.

DATABASE UPDATE OVER THE AIR

As the database of Electronic toolbox already grew quite a bit, I decided to implement a new way to provide each App with new data “over the air”.  With the new version, I can distribute data for the mini-tools (e.g. the Sockets database) without the necessity to distribute a new App Version to Apple. This makes it much easier to extend the databases over the time and you will get these updates much easier and quicker.

FORMULAS

Hundreds of formulas that have already been used internally inside the App for the calculations will now also are displayed within most of all mini-tools. So with Version 4, you can nut just do your calculations but also look up the corresponding formulas for the calculations.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

My goal was to address professionals as well as users who are new to electronics all at once. For this reason, I added a lot of textual background information on how to use each tool but also about the components or calculation of each tool. Most of the tools now offer additional information when scrolling down and much more information when pressing the (i) info button in the upper right corner.

DIAGRAMS

Hundreds of diagrams have now been re-created as Vector images so they now show much better on the Retina display or the iPad and no longer as blur as sometimes in Version 3.

ORGANIZER

An organizer was added to sort the mini-tools to better suit your requirements. You can order the tools, disable them or even create folders for group of mini-tools.

LANGUAGE SUPPORT

Version 3 supports six languages (German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Netherlands). My initial thought was to restrict this to English only for Version 4 since otherwise I would have to deal with those languages for all of the additional text that will come with Version 4. Once I did announce this here on my website, many users wrote me and encouraged me to change my mind and so I did. As a result, Version 4 now supports 16! languages including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Greek and some more. However, the compromise was, that some of the longer texts like the extensive detail background information will still only be available in English but for the user interface, one of the 16 languages can be selected. Like with version 4, this language can be selected from inside the App.

MUCH MORE…

Besides all of that, there are numerous improvements that are addressing your feedback (Thank you!) and requests to make Electronic Toolbox more powerful.

The new version consists of six times more lines of code compared to Version 3 and the database is about three times as big.


PRICING

You may wonder how much to pay for the new version. The good news is, it’s for free for all existing users. I was thinking about this quite often but those many E-mails I have received with compliments and suggestions and words like “I love your App, keep up the good work” really helped me in this decision.

About 248.000 users worldwide (figure from December 2011) are using my App without having ever paid for it. They just downloaded it from repositories other than the App Store. I see this as a major problem and this is not just bad against me but also a slap in the face for everybody who has paid for the App in the past.

As I became aware about this some time ago, I was struggling whether it really makes sense to continue to improve my App. I decided, yes, it makes sense and hope now that this new Version 4 of the App will encourage some of those people who are using my App for free to think twice and purchase my App now as they can see, that they just have to pay a few bucks and will continue to benefit from all my improvements over the time for free.  Hopefully they will.

Please cross your fingers for me.


PLEASE NOTE

There are a few important things to know for the new version:

1.) First version

For this version, I started a big Beta test with users in many different countries and received a lot of bug reports and very good suggestions during the test phases (Thank you!!!) . I tested internally function by function and on all my physical Test devices (iPhone 3G,4,4S,iPad 1,2,3 and iPod 4G). We did our best to find as many bugs as possible. As this version 4 is a complete rewrite, this version may and will have some initial bugs. So please consider this when installing this version. If you find a bug, please not just write a bad review, instead please report the bug and I will ensure you that it will be fixed quick (as always in the past).

2.) Mini-Tools

As this version was basically meant to achieve the goals mentioned above, I didn’t add more mini-tools so far. I know that some of you are desperately waiting for some new tools or the extension of some of the existing tools (e.g. more circuits in the NE555 tool). With this new
Version it will now be much easier for me to add new Mini-Tools. For the first time after the release of this version, I will be prepared to fix reported bugs with high priority as mentioned before. Once this version turned out to be stable or got stable, I will start over to add and extend more mini-tools and will handle my long “Wish list” for you.

3.) iOS Version

In the past, I did my best (not always initially successful to be honest) to maintain my App for all iOS Versions available. With the new Version I had no other choice than cut the support for older iOS Versions than 4. So for those of you, who have an iPhone 2 or older iPod, you can’t update to the new version 4 of my App. I am really sorry about that and would have been more than happy if there would have been an alternative.

One alternative would have been to introduce Version 4 as a separate and new Version on the App Store. So I would then be able to still maintain the existing version 3 for iOS 3.x. But then, everybody who already paid for Version 3 would have to pay again for version 4.

As I promised to “thank you” for purchasing the previous version by offering the new version for free, I decided against this.

Kind regards,

Marcus Roskosch…