My thanks to Alex Solonsky for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote his iPhone app, Saver.

Saver is, by far, the most attractive and clever expense-tracking app I have seen on the iPhone. It’s been featured by Apple, has been ranked as the #1 Financial App in iTunes, and has been praised by the likes of MacStories, Minimal Mac, and The iPhone Blog.

With its completely custom UI, Saver looks simply fantastic. It has a similar feel to what you would see from a Tapbots app, but custom designs in Saver are not quite as as heavy handed. And the design and attention to detail are still top-notch. It’s an app full of subtle animations and well-placed pixels, and they all add up to something wonderful. Only an iOS developer would take the time and the care to build a financial app that is so splendid looking.

But it’s not all looks — the functionality of Saver has also been well-designed. Regardless of the task — adding expenses, viewing past transactions, getting a high-level look at your budget, etc. — the app is fast and easy to navigate.

Here are a few things about saver that I find especially clever:

• When looking at the overview of your budget, Saver shows you a colorful pie chart. Tapping on a color of the pie chart drills down to a detailed view of that category’s expenses.

• Saver gets iPhone users: there’s an iTunes category that has sub-categories for music, movies, shows, Apps, and books. Clever.

• You can set which startup screen you prefer. Most financial apps like this insist on believing that when you launch the app it must be so you can see the money you’ve spent. But 9 times out of 10 you’re launching the app so you can quickly add a new expense and be done with it.

Since Saver lets you choose which screen you want to appear when you launch the app, you can tell it to bring up the New Entry pane upon launch. This way you launch it, add a transaction, and be on your way.

• Automatic data backup to their secure servers. In case you don’t plug your iPhone in to your computer often (I sure don’t), Saver has an option to do OTA backups to

• You can set a 4-digit passcode for when you launch the app.

• You can add you own tags to expenses by sliding the tag chart over to the left and then tapping and holding on one of the three dots. Moreover you can add a note for each transaction, and you can even snap a photo or add a photo from your iPhone’s camera library. This is great for snapping a photo of a potentially-important receipt and then tossing the physical copy of it. (Lord knows I don’t like to keep receipts around, but sometimes there are ones which you know you’ll need.)

I see Saver as having a use case for both those with a complex budget, as well as for those with simpler budgeting needs. For the former, you likely already use an online or desktop financial tracking app — in which case Saver makes a great companion for helping keep track of where we spend that cash which is so good at burning a hole in our pockets. And for those with simpler budgeting needs, what better tool to keep track of your monthly spending than with an app that is with you all the time?

This week Alex is doing a giveaway to help promote Saver. Check out the Saver website for details.

If you don’t want to wait on, or take your chances in the giveaway, you can grab Saver for just $3 in the App Store.

Because you’re never too old to play with Legos. ([Via Kottke.](http://kottke.org/11/08/lego-camera))

I’m embarrassed to admit that I think Dan’s right. And by embarrassed I mean that I’ve been assuming that an “Amazon Tablet” would be just another Android Tablet Device Flavor of the Week that just so happened to be powered by many of Amazon’s services. But what Dan is proposing makes a lot more sense. Dan and I may be eating ours words later, but I hope not. I hope Dan is right about the “Kindle Tablet Whatever It May Be”. And if he is, I’d buy two of them: one for me and one for my wife. And my iPad would likely get a little bit dusty (sorry, boy).

Another action-packed episode:

Shawn and Ben start with some Keyboard Maestro tricks as weed whackers run in the background. Then they start talking about the new The Brooks Review design(s) and blog design in general. Shawn gives us a sneak listen to his LaunchBar review that he has been working on like it’s TextMate 2. And, of course, we talk about Steve Jobs and Shawn shares some very insightful thoughts on the timing of his resignation as CEO of Apple.

Brought to you by the heroes at Paste Interactive.

Fantastic article by MG Siegler on the timing of Steve Job’s resignation. This is the best piece I’ve read so far on the news this week; I wish I had written it.

Quoting Tim from Apple’s earnings call in January 2009:

And the values of our company are extremely well-entrenched. You know, we believe we’re on the face of the Earth to make great products, and that’s not changing. We’re constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollinization of our groups, which allows us to innovate in a way others cannot. And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit where we’re wrong, and the courage to change.

And I think regardless of who is in what job, those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well.

Cook’s official bio was updated last night along with the Apple Leadership webpage.

The poem David Pogue wrote for Macworld in 1999.

See? He hasn’t always worn a black turtleneck.

He’s not quitting nor is he leaving the company. He’ll serve as “Chairman of the board, director and Apple employee.”

We all knew this announcement would come sooner or later, and no doubt it will bring with it a lot of negative press and speculation about the future of Apple. People already think it’s a fluke that Apple is so wildly successful and they like to attribute it to the “Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field”.

In his resignation letter, Steve wrote:

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

Agreed. Apple will be fine and continue to be wildly successful. It’s Steve whom we all hope is okay.

Ryan Cash asked me some great questions about writing and life.

Add this tip to that beloved list of Little Ways to Simplify, Tidy, and De-clutter Your System.

And, so long as we’re on the subject, here’s another new-to-me tip: Not only does TextExpander not have to sit in your Dock, it doesn’t have to sit in your Menu Bar either. Just go to TextExpander’s Preferences → Appearance → Un-check “Show TextExpander in menu bar”.