MealPlan for iPad

For the first time in a long, long time, I've released some software that I built myself, for myself. The app is called MealPlan and it's available for the iPad.

I even built a website for it, here. "Fall Day Software" is an entity I created to own the app, but it's just me so far.

Here's what the app looks like:

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Click to see a larger version.

It's a pretty simple app. The goal is to help you plan out what meals you're planning to make over the next few days. I think there are people who will instantly get this, and people who will say "why would you want that?". If you're the sort of person who has ever tried to do this in a spreadsheet, then this app is for you.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the workflow around planning meals. This isn't the first app to tackle this problem, but I think it's the most efficient. The goal is to spend as little time as possible fiddling with the app, and more time getting the job done. So to populate the meals for a week, here's what you do:

(This is in the simulator so you see a mouse pointer (horror) instead of your finger doing the work, but you can see the workflow).

And once you've entered enough data into the app, you can use the Magic Wand to help you plan things. This is a huge time saver. Here's how this works:

You tap the magic wand and any empty meal tiles are populated with pseudo-random choices from previous days. Any choices you like you can tap on to lock them, and when you're done, you can choose to keep just the tiles you locked, keep all the choices, or cancel the whole operation.

The app is a native Objective-C application. MealPlan for the PlayBook is a Flex based application, but for the iPad, I wanted to take advantage of printing, native email support, and various other features of the iOS platform that were just awkward from Flex.

Some plans for future versions:

  • iCloud support - the app already uses UIManagedDocument to store data so iCloud support isn't a big leap. This would really work well with...
  • iPhone support, for viewing your meal plan while you're in the grocery store.
  • Customizable meals. Not everyone wants "Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner".
  • Meal properties - like being able to associate a recipe link or calorie count with a meal.
  • Where the app goes from here really depends on the feedback I get from this release.

    I know this isn't going to be a blockbuster app, but I'm hoping people who want this sort of app will find it and like it.

    So here's that link again. MealPlan. Go give it a try, and let me know what you think. Thanks. :)