New Feature Ideas Welcome
March 18, 2020
Spare time on my hands....
Due to the Corona virus situation I seem to have time on my hands to work on the next major feature set for WWYS.
I'm currently working on adding more control to what gets displayed in the Expenses list view, and I'd like to give more control over what gets exported to CSV.
The other area I desperately want to improve is the whole export mechanism. Originally I wanted to send an export via email, and had in fact fully implemented it and tested in the simulator, but it appears the limitations on the Apple Watch means that low level socket code is not allowed so my SMTP integration was blocked (which begs the question of why Apple doesn't reflect that in the simulator....). Anyway I moved to an HTTP file upload at the last minute as the best solution I could find.
The only other solution that seem possible are to create an iPhone app to handle the export. I'm really reluctant to do this as my whole project was to create a standalone watch app. Of course Apple may have new possibilities in WatchOS7 in June, so in any case I'm not going near this till at least after WWDC.
I have also found some services that provide an HTTP access to SMTP server. This should be possible, but they change for usage and I don't really think this app would generate anything like enough revenue to cover the cost. I am thinking of investigating it though because I'd really like it to work this way! If I succeed it may have to be an in app purchase option.
Anyway if anyone has any thoughts or feedback please get in touch via the support email link.
wwyssupport@james-bell.net
Duncan's Blog
Delayed 3.1 Update
After the disappointment of any better messaging API this year, I've been experimenting with better ways to export the data from the watch. In the end I decided the best way forwards was to bite the bullet and sync data to iCloud and write a dedicated iPhone App. The move to iCloud data storage has taken quite a lot of work because changing the data schema in the future becomes harder, so I first of all had to bring forward other features such as multiple account support that impact the data schema. So I am going to do this in two stages. Firstly the next version will come with multiple account support and iCloud data sync, then at a later data an iPhone App to improve data export. I've just completed my first beta version for WatchOS, but its such a big change that I will need to road test it for a few weeks before getting ready to release. I also need to update all the instructions on this web site as its a big change to the overall structure and flow for quite a few use cases. If anyone wants to help out with beta testing please get in touch!
WWDC has been a mixed bag in relation to WWYS. I had really hoped for more message API support on the Apple Watch so I could improve export to use iMessage or email, but unfortunately I can't find anything that might assist. On the other hand SwiftUI has made some big improvements on what is possible. This leaves a dilemma; WWYS was always intended to be based on SwiftUI as being the best way to have a good WatchOS only app, the the reality of the current implementation is that quite a bit of the "Outer Shell" had to be built with WatckKit. In the new WatchOS 7 this would no longer be the case, but removing and porting to full SwiftUI would make it very hard to be backwards compatible with Watch OS 6. Having given it some thought I've decided that my approach will be to first update the current App so that it better aligns with WatchOS 7 during the beta period, using its current architecture in a WatchOS 6 backwards compatible way. This is to support anyone on the beta program and ensure WWYS keeps working. In parallel a WatchOS 7 only port will take place to release as shortly after the official WatchOS 7 release as possible. At this point I will drop WatchOS 6 compatibility and so users will need to upgrade to keep up to date with new versions. However, this will be preceded by a final WatchOS 6 release that is backwards compatible.
