MMM Android App Feedback

[MMMApp]

Greetings fellow Mustachians!

We are officially announcing the open beta of the Android Mr Money Mustache App here on the forums! We worked with Pete over the last year to create the official Mr Money Mustache App to help grow the Mustachian community and connect like minded people (you might recall his tweet earlier this year). We currently only support the Android platform but are actively working on an iOS version right now. The app has been in closed beta since May and is ready for open beta. We can use your help. We would appreciate more testing and feedback before we go public with the final version.

The app currently supports the following features:

• Read articles and track your progress
• Get notified when a new article is published
• Favorite and share the best articles
• Offline articles so you can read them on the go
• Read and submit article comments

You can download the app at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.truegem.mmm and you can read more about it at https://www.mrmoneymustacheapp.com/. The app requires minimum Android version 5.0 (Lollipop) and newer.

Our current development plans include the following features:
   iOS version (parity with Android)
   Meetup / Meet a Mustachian
      Mustachian Maps
      Meetup coordination / signups
      Profiles
   Tools
      FI Calculator
      FI Countdown
      Middle-Class to Kickass Analysis
      Measure your Mustache
Forums   

While we want to deliver all these features immediately we really want to make sure we have a stable and supportable app first. And as 2 developers in FI we are trying to be realistic regarding how quickly new features will be delivered.

We have great plans for the future and are excited to get your feedback on the app!

Jon & Helen
feedback@mrmoneymustacheapp.com

[elaine amj]

Thanks! Downloaded it.

Sent from my STH100-1 using Tapatalk

[slappy]

Can't wait for the iOS version!

[Johnez]

https://www.mrmoneymustacheapp.com/

Off topic and childish, but noticing this tickled me.

Will download, can't wait for the FI calculator.

[FiveSigmas]

Neat! Downloaded.

Thanks J&H.

[MMMApp]

Can't wait for the iOS version!

I'm sitting here working on it right at this moment!

[MMMApp]

https://www.mrmoneymustacheapp.com/

Off topic and childish, but noticing this tickled me.

Will download, can't wait for the FI calculator.

You found our easter egg! j/k

Funny coincidence though.

[nemesis]

Nice app.  I'm not sure why it requires the 'read phone status and identity' permission but other that it's great. 

[Cwadda]

PTF

[MMMApp]

Nice app.  I'm not sure why it requires the 'read phone status and identity' permission but other that it's great.

Good question! We are looking into it right now. That permission first showed up when we installed the Evernote background manager, android-job. We're looking into it further to see if we can remove the need for this.

Absolutely fantastic question, btw! We really appreciate the feedback!

Thank you

[MMMApp]

Nice app.  I'm not sure why it requires the 'read phone status and identity' permission but other that it's great.

Good question! We are looking into it right now. That permission first showed up when we installed the Evernote background manager, android-job. We're looking into it further to see if we can remove the need for this.

Absolutely fantastic question, btw! We really appreciate the feedback!

Thank you

We have a new version releasing to alpha today that removes this permission (hopefully releasing to open beta this week). Thanks again for this great find!

[chemistk]

I installed the app the other day and tried to do a few things to break it; it seems to be working very well!

Two things:

1) There's no landing page for the uninitiated. Right now I only see regular readers being the ones to use the app, so that's not a big deal. But, I pretended to be someone looking for personal finance who's never heard of MMM, and I couldn't find anything that would give me a concrete idea of what the site's all about. Just something to keep in mind before open release.

2) Data usage was just a hair high for my liking. I have a obscene amount of data right now so it doesn't actually bother me, but poking around and reading a couple articles, I managed to use 10MB of data. I know most people on here will use this on wifi, but some might use data and have low caps. Is there a way to cut down on the image resolution, or perhaps a low data mode that doesn't pull the images from the blog, just the text? (Edit: I now realize that the offline view can accomplish this...)

Other than that, I like it!

[MMMApp]

I installed the app the other day and tried to do a few things to break it; it seems to be working very well!

Two things:

1) There's no landing page for the uninitiated. Right now I only see regular readers being the ones to use the app, so that's not a big deal. But, I pretended to be someone looking for personal finance who's never heard of MMM, and I couldn't find anything that would give me a concrete idea of what the site's all about. Just something to keep in mind before open release.

2) Data usage was just a hair high for my liking. I have a obscene amount of data right now so it doesn't actually bother me, but poking around and reading a couple articles, I managed to use 10MB of data. I know most people on here will use this on wifi, but some might use data and have low caps. Is there a way to cut down on the image resolution, or perhaps a low data mode that doesn't pull the images from the blog, just the text? (Edit: I now realize that the offline view can accomplish this...)

Other than that, I like it!

Thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate it!

We had a feature in a prototype called "Maximum Mustache" designed to help beginner Mustachians track their reading progress from beginning to end. We ended up cutting it so we could focus on getting the app delivered. We definitely agree we would like to do something to help new readers get introduced to MMM.

In regards to the data usage, we agree completely. We really strove to keep the app size and data usage low. The offline feature was designed exactly for this as you mentioned.

[EverCurious]

Sweet. Downloading.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Zikoris]

It doesn't seem to want to download to a tablet. Surely a Mustachian app wouldn't require users to own a fancy-pants smartphone?

[MMMApp]

It doesn't seem to want to download to a tablet. Surely a Mustachian app wouldn't require users to own a fancy-pants smartphone?

That's definitely odd. We tested on multiple tablets. What model are you using and do you know what version of Android you are running (e.g. Lollipop - 5.0, Marshmallow - 6.0,  or Nougat - 7.0+)?

[Zikoris]

It doesn't seem to want to download to a tablet. Surely a Mustachian app wouldn't require users to own a fancy-pants smartphone?

That's definitely odd. We tested on multiple tablets. What model are you using and do you know what version of Android you are running (e.g. Lollipop - 5.0, Marshmallow - 6.0,  or Nougat - 7.0+)?

I'm not super knowledgeable about these things, but I see "Android version 4.4.4" on the settings.

[MMMApp]

It doesn't seem to want to download to a tablet. Surely a Mustachian app wouldn't require users to own a fancy-pants smartphone?

That's definitely odd. We tested on multiple tablets. What model are you using and do you know what version of Android you are running (e.g. Lollipop - 5.0, Marshmallow - 6.0,  or Nougat - 7.0+)?

I'm not super knowledgeable about these things, but I see "Android version 4.4.4" on the settings.

Short answer:
Unfortunately we only support Android 5.0 and up.

Long / techy answer:
We agonized over the decision to drop support for older Android versions for exactly the reason you pointed out. Our goal was to reach the broadest parts of the Mustachian community and originally we built the app to support version 4.1 and above. However, we ran into a conflict when MMM added https (specifically TLS 1.2) to his website. Ultimately it came down to a decision of security vs broader support since TLS 1.2 (https) wasn't working with the modules we use for interacting with the backend servers.

[MMMApp]

Nice app.  I'm not sure why it requires the 'read phone status and identity' permission but other that it's great.

Good question! We are looking into it right now. That permission first showed up when we installed the Evernote background manager, android-job. We're looking into it further to see if we can remove the need for this.

Absolutely fantastic question, btw! We really appreciate the feedback!

Thank you

We have a new version releasing to alpha today that removes this permission (hopefully releasing to open beta this week). Thanks again for this great find!

Just launched the updated version to open beta. The requirement for 'read phone status and identity' is now removed and the background sync still appears to work (/crossesfingers).

[dang1]

crashed the Chromebook Flip, lol!; running fine on the S7

[MMMApp]

crashed the Chromebook Flip, lol!; running fine on the S7

Thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear it's running fine on the S7.

We have yet to test on Chromebook. We've applied to the Google Chromebook emulator beta to see if we can find the issue. The crash didn't report back to our dashboard so we don't have visibility into what might have occurred. It would definitely be cool to see it in large screen mode!

[MMMApp]

We just uploaded a new version (1.0.29) to the play store in preparation for release. We think we're really close and would love some additional testing to identify any final bugs we can squash before going fully live. Please continue to provide your feedback here in the forums or via email at feedback@mrmoneymustacheapp.com .

New in this version you should get a one time popup at first launch asking whether you want to sort the articles oldest to newest. You can always change it again later but hopefully this helps new Mustachians get a good introduction to the content. Thanks for the feedback @chemistk, we definitely took it to heart.

Cheers!
Jon & Helen

[csr]

Good stuff! Thanks, I'll check it out.

[pichirino]

Would appreciate an alternative way to download
Said app as it says not available in  my country.

Avid MMM reader, is there another option?

[MMMApp]

Would appreciate an alternative way to download
Said app as it says not available in  my country.

Avid MMM reader, is there another option?

Hi @pichirino,

Sorry, the only way to get the Android MMM app is through Google's Play store. We made the app available to the top 4 countries based on Mr. Money Mustache's website statistics, thus we may have missed your country. Please send us an email to feedback@mrmoneymustacheapp.com or reply in this forum with the country name and we can look into it. Thanks for your interest!

[MMMApp]

One more update just released (v1.0.30)! Last one for realz!  :)
Assuming no major issues we will try and push this out of beta to production next week.
Thanks everyone for your feedback!

[MMMApp]

Thanks again everyone! Your feedback and early use of the app helped us out immensely.

We launched production live today.

As a beta user you can stay in the beta channel and you will receive app updates before everyone else or you can opt-out on the play store by clicking the LEAVE button (although it may require a reinstall of the app thereby losing your favorites, mark read/unread, offline, settings).

We are happy for you to stay in the beta program though as we will continue to release to beta first before launching to the production channel.

[MMMApp]

A new beta version launched today (version 1.0.36).

This fixes a hang at the loading screen when you click a malformed app link (although we still don't know where these are coming from).
We also switched out the networking layer since we were seeing a large number of timeouts. Hopefully this gives everyone a better / faster experience with the app.

We plan to roll this to production quickly since we have a few people who can't install the app until this is fixed but hopefully we'll see at least a few beta testers try it out today.

Cheers!
Jon & Helen

[MMMApp]

Another push to beta (version 1.0.39) was necessary as we finally resolved a rare issue impacting 0.2% of devices (it would hang at the launch screen).

We also had a brief outage that caused many crashes. Sorry about that folks! We were updating MMM's website and there were some backend changes that broke comments. Unfortunately this crashed many users in the app. We've added some code to better handle this in the future.

[Mikila]

Downloaded.  I wish the forum were included.  I probably spend more time there than on MMM.com 

[MrThatsDifferent]

Downloaded.  I wish the forum were included.  I probably spend more time there than on MMM.com

I’m on Apple devices so can’t use yet, but I would definitely prioritize the forum. You’ll want the app to get daily usage if possible and the forum brings me back, multiple times throughout the day, it’s easily the best feature of the website after you’ve read his main articles. The articles are the beginner’s course and then the forum is for the more advanced or to keep it all sustainable.

Great initiative!

[MMMApp]

Downloaded.  I wish the forum were included.  I probably spend more time there than on MMM.com

I’m on Apple devices so can’t use yet, but I would definitely prioritize the forum. You’ll want the app to get daily usage if possible and the forum brings me back, multiple times throughout the day, it’s easily the best feature of the website after you’ve read his main articles. The articles are the beginner’s course and then the forum is for the more advanced or to keep it all sustainable.

Great initiative!

We totally agree! The forums feature is coming. We wanted to get the first version out as soon as possible rather than delay the launch. As a husband and wife team our capacity is limited. We have a lot of great features planned that will hopefully arrive within the next year.

Thanks for all your support and keep the feedback coming! :)

[FiveSigmas]

We totally agree! The forums feature is coming. We wanted to get the first version out as soon as possible rather than delay the launch. As a husband and wife team our capacity is limited. We have a lot of great features planned that will hopefully arrive within the next year.

Thanks for all your support and keep the feedback coming! :)

Woot! Definitely looking forward to forum support. Keep up the good work.

[MMMApp]

We have added a feature poll to our website so that we can get a sense of what features people are most interested in.

https://www.mrmoneymustacheapp.com/featurespoll.html

Thanks for the support (especially the 5 stars ratings!) and keep the feedback coming :)

[Rytrik]

Can you please edit your poll to just have 'search' as its own feature? I know it seems minor, but search is incredibly helpful for people find specific articles. Especially if one is showing something to friends.

[MMMApp]

Can you please edit your poll to just have 'search' as its own feature? I know it seems minor, but search is incredibly helpful for people find specific articles. Especially if one is showing something to friends.

We agree that search is very powerful. We are excited to bring it as a feature but would batch it with the other features related to article reader improvements. When working on a specific area of the app it is easier to combine multiple updates together since we will be touching the same parts of the code and user interface.

Your message is definitely heard though and you are not alone in expressing the desire to have search capabilities. It is definitely on our list of features to add. For now we recommend using Favorites to save the articles you would potentially want to show friends.

[MMMApp]

v1.0.40 has been released for beta testing. This release is focused on resolving some errors reported by the wonderful Mustachian community! The most notable fix will be an issue where an article would not open properly when viewing MMM.com in a browser and then choosing to open the article in the app. We also have some minor improvements to the background notifications.

A few Android devices are experiencing an odd issue where they won't launch the app. We've added a fix for this to force users to move forward after 30 seconds on the launch screen. We're still trying to figure out why these select few devices have this problem. If your device takes 30 seconds to launch the app we would love to know which device you are using and whether it always takes 30 seconds (is it intermittent or always slow).

iOS is now our primary focus and it is going really well. We hope to have an early alpha launch in a few weeks.

A special thank you to the contributors and those who have used our affiliate links. We truly appreciate your support!

Cheers!
Jon & Helen

[Dicey]

This is great! Maybe it'll push me to finally upgrade my older Android phone. Oh, wait! I can't get the Forum yet? I'll keep using my current phone until then, so in effect, PTF. Thanks!

[MMMApp]

We just announced the iOS MMM App beta: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/mmm-ios-app-feedback/

[oysters]

I'm on Android with a Sony Xperia M5 dual sim. Works great!

Really looking forward to the forums. Also if you do push out a low data version, I'd definitely choose that option. Mainly just to speed my phone a bit.

Keep up the awesome work!

[crocheted_stache]

I'm not sure if this thread will get attention years later, but as best I can tell, it's the right place for app feedback.

I'm reading Alan Donegan's latest post in the app, and I see the picture by the pool just fine, but the images (sidebars?) under "Why didn't we do this sooner" and "Everything got rebranded" are showing as oddly framed 404 errors.

I can put/send this report elsewhere if somebody tells me where.

[MMMApp]

I'm not sure if this thread will get attention years later, but as best I can tell, it's the right place for app feedback.

I'm reading Alan Donegan's latest post in the app, and I see the picture by the pool just fine, but the images (sidebars?) under "Why didn't we do this sooner" and "Everything got rebranded" are showing as oddly framed 404 errors.

I can put/send this report elsewhere if somebody tells me where.

Thank you so much for using the app and providing such excellent feedback!

We looked into the Alan Donegan post and we see the 404 errors you are referring to. One of them is an embedded google map and the other is an iframe with a youtube video. While we haven't handled the google maps previously we do support iframed youtube videos. We will look into this further and see if we can come up with a fix. In the meantime, we have a "open in browser" button (rectangle with up arrow) that will allow you to open this natively if things aren't appearing properly.

Thanks again for the great feedback!

H & J (MMMApp developers)

[Chris@TTL]

Jon & Helen,

Hey guys! Thanks for working on this project, which, no doubt isn't exactly a big profit-making venture. I just sent you guys a private email with a little more detail, but really—I appreciate your efforts in helping expand the reach of the community. That's awesome.

As far as app-specific feedback—I know it's been a few years and it's a heavy lift, but are giving access to these forums still on the roadmap? Really looking forward to that!

Cheers!