Wow, that was fast. I submitted FatWatch 1.4 on Wednesday and two days later it is available in the store. Other developers, I’d love to share my secret but I have no idea what I did. I was actually hoping I’d have a few more days to update the website.
Anyway, if you’re curious about what’s changed since FatWatch 1.3, here is a complete list of changes in FatWatch 1.4, minus some under the hood stuff that is only interesting to me.
Big New Feature: Body Mass Index (BMI) Monitoring
To enable, go to the More tab, switch it on, and select your height. Afterward BMI will be displayed in various places around the app, using the following color scheme: red for obese, yellow for overweight, green for normal, and blue for underweight. Classifications are based on the World Health Organization’s guidelines. Think BMI is bunk? Don’t turn it on, and you won’t have to look at it.
Log
- Added a control to toggle between displaying Variance (your scale weight’s distance from the moving average) or your BMI (if enabled).
- Improved drawing of long notes.
- Added a “hint” cell at the top of the table.
- “Go To” screen has larger buttons.
Weigh-in
- Visual update, changed background color and tweaked control layout.
- If BMI is enabled, weight picker cells are colored according to BMI zone.
- Note field is larger (easier to tap), supports multiple lines of text, and has sexy rounded corners.
Trends
- Added overeating and undereating labels to the energy surplus/deficit field.
- Added total weight gained or lost during trend period.
Goal
- Goal weight picker uses whole numbers, regardless of selected scale precision.
- If BMI is enabled, start BMI is displayed, and you can set a goal by selecting a BMI value in addition to selecting a weight.
- Added an info button to explain how start weight is computed (its the moving average, not your scale weight).
More
- Added a switch to enable BMI monitoring.
- Added a button to open FatWatch’s page in the App Store.
- Removed unnecessary section titles and added a hint referring to the Settings app.
Chart
- Now offers several preset zoom levels: Past Month, Past Quarter, Past Year, All Time, and Browse (the original scrollable view).
- If BMI is enabled, chart regions are shaded to indicate BMI zone.
- If database is empty, displays an empty chart (instead of a boring-to-look-at message).
- Browse mode scrolling is linked to Log: start position is determined by current Log position.
- Label text is drawn using Unicode encoding, making better international support.
Settings
- Renamed “Scale Increment” to “Scale Precision” — the latter sounds more precise, don’t you think?
- Added a switch to disable Bonjour, in case you don’t want to publish Wi-Fi Import/Export’s web address when you turn it on.
- Shade Weekends is now enabled by default.
- Added “Shade BMI Zones” in case you don’t like so much color in your chart.
Miscellaneous
- Added a startup image.
- When you quit FatWatch, it remembers which tab you had selected (i.e., Log, Trends, Goal, or More) and returns to it when you next launch the app.
- Setup screen respects existing preferences.
- Added a cancel button to the Set Passcode screen (that never should have been left out in the first place).
- Wi-Fi Import/Export displays device name (“iPhone” vs. “iPod touch”) as appropriate.
I hope you find it worth the wait.
Hi
Thanks for the updated version, the Bmi will help me focus on my target.
One question.. Are you considering adding multiple persons on the app. I would love to be able to also log my wife’s weight on this app. At the moment I have to use a different app for her weight. And I definitely prefer fatwatch.
Abid, I won’t rule it out, but it won’t be for a while. The iPhone is very much a personal device; adding functions to switch between people would require significant changes to the app, and there are other features I want to add first.
Benjamin,
I’ve found a significant change in the graph when I do not enter weight on a particular day. I have gone back and enter interpolated values on those days and the graph (trend line) comes closer to my weight. (If you email me, I’ll send you my data. Interpolated values are check boxes)
Also, after comparing weight loss to a fellow dieter who is using Eat Watch, this calculation for a trend seems to have trouble “keeping up” with weight loss. I could be mistaken, as I only have data for 3 weeks and he only had data for 5 weeks. It would be nice if there was an option for another trend line such as an n-day moving average. I just think there are formulas that will predict weight loss more accurately than the formula developed originally in Eat Watch.
However, I love your app. And, I only wish you could have gotten more than 70% of the $10 that I paid.
Thanks for the kind words, Joe.
If there is no scale measurement available for a day, FatWatch simply does not include that day in its calculations. The behavior you describe is expected: adding interpolated values will pull the trend line closer toward the later scale measurement.
It is completely expected that the trend line will lag behind your most recent scale measurement, that is simply how the statistics work. Choosing a different method could make the trend line follow your weight more closely, but it would also result in a smaller margin of error: that is, a slight increase on the scale is more likely to be flagged as above the trend.
At the end of the day, the trend line is meant only for that: to determine trends. The line is there to tell you what direction you are headed in; the number on the scale can tell you where you are at this precise moment.