Reviews for Beautiful iPhone Apps plus App & iPhone News

Groceries

App & Developer Details
App: Groceries
Developer: Sophiestication Software
Website: sophiestication.com/groceries/
iTunes Link: itunes.apple.com/app/groceries-the-grocery-shopping
Price: $1.99

Review
Shopping lists, love’em or hate’em, we all gotta deal with them… well, I do anyways. The App Store has a few different apps that allow you to manage your shopping lists, but I found one that has a beautiful UI. Groceries, by Sophiestication Software. Groceries sports a clean UI, a nice layout and is simplistic in use.

Groceries

I’ve used other apps like Shopper and GroceryIQ, to name a few, so I’m familiar with shopping list management apps. I was a fan of GroceryIQ but got tired of waiting for them to add pricing to their app (which it now has, but at the time I was waiting months for them to add it). Then I came across Shopper, which I fell in love with… that is until MidCentury Software (the developer of Shopper), got scandalous and started adding ads to a paid app, then got even more scandalous and started charging to remove the ads. Shopper is was an excellent app and if MidCentury wanted more money for the app then they should have just raised the price. Many other users of Shopper share my feelings of being cheated, which you can see for yourself by reading the app reviews within iTunes/App Store.  Since Shopper’s fall from grace, I’ve been searching for an alternative app.

Which brings me to Groceries. Once again, simple to use, just create/name your shopping list or list’s, then start adding items.

Groceries; Lists

Groceries features a nice clean aisles list already for you to choose from or you can setup your own to match the store you’re shopping at. You can create a “favorites” list for item’s you frequently purchase, view your “history” of items you’ve purchased and setup items that aren’t on an aisle (like items that are at the front end of an aisle).

Groceries; Aisles

Then choose from a pre-set list.

Groceries; Add Items

And even add your own items to the items list.

Groceries; Add Item

The shopping list item screen is nice and simple, displaying your items by aisle.

Groceries; Shopping List

With one click from the Groceries list screen, you can email your list (by clicking the button with the envelope on it, on the lower left corner, as shown above).

Groceries; Email

Groceries even offers the “red badge” to remind you how many items you have on your shopping list.

Groceries; Badge Reminder

Going back to what I mentioned earlier about other apps, Groceries is missing a couple powerful features those apps currently have. Specifically Pricing, Sales Tax and Barcode Scanning. According to Sophiestication Software’s website, planned features are…

• Data Detectors to compose lists even faster
• Share lists from Device to Device over Bluetooth
• Cloud syncing
• Track prices to stay in budget

I asked Sophia of Sophiestication Software about adding barcode scanning and sales tax to which she replied “yes these features are planned. However, I can’t/shouldn’t promise when they will be ready for release though “. So, time will tell when those goodies are added.

Overall, Groceries is a clean, simple and well designed grocery list manager, a must for anyone looking for both quality and simplicity, all at an extremely fair price of $1.99. I’ll definitely check back down the line to see it’s progression, hoping it’s feature set expands as pricing, sales tax and barcode scanning are features I’ve come to not only enjoy, but rely on.

Website
Sophiestication Software’s website, much like their/her apps, is also clean and simple. When you first go to sophiestication.com, your automatically forwarded to sophiestication.com/apps. Here your offered three apps available for the iPhone/iPod Touch and a controller for iTunes (for Mac). When you click on the “Groceries” link, the page you’re taken to is quite nice and the layout is very clean. It features a nice pic of the app running on an iPhone, some additional text  to the right of it with a link to a Quicktime/.mov video of the app in use. Below that is a list of Groceries features, a list of features that are being added in the future and finally a couple of brief reviews and a link to the app on the iTunes/App Store.

Overall Rating
User Interface: ★★★★★
Layout & Design: ★★★★★
Customer Support: ★★★★★
Website Design: ★★★★★
Price: ★★★★★