Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! lets you bump and share your grocery lists
Gone are the days of the handwritten grocery list. With apps like Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie!, iOS owners can ditch the pen and paper and grab their iPhone the next time they head out to the grocery store.
Design
Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! has the look and feel of your typical paper shopping list. The top part of the app has the appearance of a ripped piece of paper and contains the items on your shopping list. The bottom half of the app is dark grey and holds the items that are checked off your list as you shop. There's also a list management screen that allows you create new lists and manage multiple lists.
The top part of the app is also where you build your list, one item at a time. You can type in an item or select one using the pre-installed entries. Unlike some shopping apps that have hundreds of items (most of which you won't use), Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! includes a variety of staple foods like milk, OJ and carrots.
The items in the database are not written in stone. You can delete each item or modify it to reflect your personal preferences. For example, you can easily change the entry for mayonnaise to Hellmann's Mayonnaise so you remember to buy the brand name instead of the generic.
Each item in your list can have a quantity that you choose when you add it to your list and a color to help you organize your list. Unlike other shopping companions, Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! uses colors instead of categories or aisles to sort your list. Though the colors look nice, I found them difficult to remember, especially when dealing with a long list of items. I can easily recall that milk is dairy and bread is bakery, but I was constantly forgetting that milk is yellow and bread is green. This labeling convention got easier as I used the app, but it still isn't as intuitive as text-based categories.
Functionality
Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! is delightful to use. Its emphasis is on easy management so there are not a lot of details to enter or settings to tweak. Adding two cartons of eggs is as easy as typing Eggs:2 and hitting enter. You can also select items from a database that ships with the app.
This list of shopping items in the app's database is dynamic, and the app stores new items that you add to your shopping list. It also prompts your to enter these stored items the next time you try to add them to your list. When I added Fluff to my most recent grocery list, it was also stored in the database. The next time I went to add fluff to my list, I typed "fl" and the app prompted me to enter "Fluff." It's a small feature, but a handy one that helps to minimize your typing time.
Similar to other shopping apps, Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! has a syncing feature that lets you share your list across multiple devices. The app syncs to an account you create through Skript, the company behind the Buy Me a Pie! app. Syncing was extremely quick and notification support made sure everyone else following your list was alerted of any changes. The latest version of the app also adds a bump feature that allows you to bump two iOS devices to share a list.
Conclusion
Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! is a lightweight shopping app that makes it easy to manage multiple shopping lists on your iOS devices. It doesn't have the advanced features of other shopping apps like Grocery Gadget, but it makes up for it with a clean, efficient UI and fast syncing. Grocery List - Buy Me a Pie! is on sale this week for US$0.99, which makes it a must-have for iOS owners.
Pros
Neat, clean interface
Quick and easy way to enter items on your device
Fast syncing of lists between devices
Cons
Missing features like aisles, coupons and photos that are found in other shopping apps
Color coding to sort items is visually appealing, but harder to remember than categories
Who is it for?
Anyone looking for a lightweight grocery shopping app with easy entry of items and blazing fast syncing.
