Unique features & Missing Features
App Purpose:
- Shopping List Manager
Cool:
- Tag cloud of past purchase items
- Attractive interface
- Wireless list sharing
- Easily track items of different sizes
Drag:
- No grouping of items within a list
- Awkward editing of items in list
- Weak English directions
Bottom Line:
- Great if you share shopping list management with someone
- Good for simple list management only
Full Review:
I bought the app because it has an attractive interface with some innovative features like a tag cloud and wireless list sharing. Upon using it though, I discovered it is missing a few features and will keep searching for the perfect shopping list manager.
The most notable deficiency for me is the ability to organize items to be purchased by groups. The app will let me keep separate lists. It uses a page metaphor similar to Safari on the iPhone. It seems that you use this function for keeping track of a single shopping trip -- like groceries bought last week is one list and those for this week becomes a second list. However, within a page, I can't group all my dairy, meat, beverages etc. I am able to manually sort a list though.
Clearly, English is a second language for the developers. Of course that's fine, but the directions are a bit sketchy as a result. I realized by accident that I can choose items from previous purchases by rotating the iPhone to landscape mode. This makes adding items easy in some ways, but it takes a bit to figure out how to select different size items like a gallon of milk versus a quart. I do like this 'units' feature though. It keeps track of the prices for different sizes.
The tag cloud (the app calls it 'bubbles') is a cool feature that I have not seen in other shopping apps. TooShopper tracks how much you purchase each item. Your most purchased items appear at the top of the list in larger type. So, if you buy bread, milk and eggs everytime you go to the grocery store, you can quickly add these.
Editing an item in your list to say, add a new price, takes too many taps for my taste. You have to tap an edit button and select the the item, then edit it. Tapping the item directly behaves as you would expect adding it to your checkout list, but it would be nice if each item had a little edit button for direct updating.
I would love to find a shopping app that gave me a report of buying over time. TooShopper comes close, but misses the mark for me. Choosing the tag cloud in portrait mode, I can tap on a individual item an see when I last bought it, and how much I have spend on that item over time in total. Furthermore, I can email a list to myself or wirelessly share it with TooShopper users. Both provide collaborative shopping which is not that important if you handle these duties by yourself. For me, having an email record is better than no reporting. As for how much I have bought of something, it would useful to see total quantity, not just dollars. There is a little glitch in the functionality of this feature as well. If you are trying out the list without actually shopping, there is no way to undo its record of you having bought something. The app has a shopping basket, but it needs a formal checkout step before adding purchases to your records.
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