Use the RedLaser barcode scanning application on your iPhone? Be warned – don’t upgrade to the new version that was unleashed today.
RedLaser is an iPhone app that scans a product’s barcode, performs a lookup online, and gives you a price comparison. It quickly climbed to the top of the iPhone paid app charts and was an incredibly useful app. Our tech podcast team even rated this as one of the top must-have iPhone apps (see the transcript)
Occipital, producers of the top-rated RedLaser barcode scanning software have replaced the Amazon and Google search engines with the find.com product search engine. It’s not clear whether they’ve done this for legal or financial reasons, but the practical upshot, at least for us in the UK, is that this formerly excellent app has been killed by the switch to find.com in the v2.5 release of RedLaser.
Here’s a ‘before’ and ‘after’ screenshot:
RedLaser – Before |
RedLaser – After |
From 24 matches, to just one.
We’re also now seeing prices popping up in dollars instead of pounds:
The advice is – don’t upgrade! If you have upgraded, you may be able to roll back to v2.2, but only if you installed the upgrade direct onto your iPhone and not via iTunes. To roll back, uninstall RedLaser from your iPhone, then perform a sync with iTunes. While conected to iTunes, go to Devices, select your iPhone, go into Applications, tick RedLaser and Sync your applications. The backed-up application will then be restored to you iPhone – You” then have to remember not to install the update until the developers release a working application.
Affected? Disappointed? Add a comment below, review RedLaser on iTunes or contact Occipital
Here’s hoping Occipital bow to pressure and the negative iTunes reviews they’re getting, and restore this app to its former glory.
November 26th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Agree 100%. I 'upgraded' this morning and I'm looking forward to getting home and re-syncing tonight with iTunes to get the older version back.
I normally welcome upgrades and enjoy the extra functionality they typically bring. This, however, is a very poor upgrade and makes the app less useful than it was previously.
As version 2.5.0 stands I can not envisage using it as the results it returns are poor, inappropriate (i.e. $ prices), and fewer than the previous version's results.
I previosuly rated this a 5 star app. As of version 2.5.0 i'd amend this to 1 star. The barcode scanning is still fantastic (quick, easy, etc) but it's the results it produces that I'm ultimately interested in.
November 26th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Glad to see that I'm not the only one miffed by this. One of the most useful apps around has been made little better than useless. I thought I'd missed a setting to enable and disable searches for Amazon and Google, but no, it's gone, presumably because the developer did a deal with that product search engine. Brilliant.
Thankfully I updated directly on my phone, so I'll be rolling it back as soon as I get home and can sync my phone.
November 26th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hi guys – I'm one of the developers at Occipital and we are working to fix this for the UK. We've re-enabled Google Product Search, effective now. Could you let me know what the exact UPC/EAN code is on that McAfee box so we can confirm that it's working? Thanks in advance.
November 26th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Retested – Google results seem to be appearing – Find.com was reporting £25.82, but Google reports best price £21.42. Google results much better – thanks for that.
McAfee barcode is 7 31944 58871 1
Just need Amazon.co.uk back now. As an example, Star Trek XI DVD is £29.99 on Find, £9.95 from Google results, but Amazon is best buy at £8.98 – this result currently not shown on RedLaser
December 3rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I am also having the same issues, actually, it is worse now, as the app scans barcodes correctly but it doesn't return any results. I am in the process of downgrading back to 2.2 via iTunes. Hopefully that'll fix it until the Developers release another great version.
Wow, 2.5 is really, really, bad… BRING BACK AMAZON RESULTS!!!
January 3rd, 2010 at 8:21 pm
The free Amazon app for Droid has scanning/lookup capability. Wouldn't be surprised to see the scanning/lookup function appear on the Amazon app for iPhone soon.
Agree that this is "worst upgrade evar"