A guidebook can often be the best travel investment you can make - and one of the cheapest

With this slogan, Lonely Planet (LP) does present its travel guide books section and, if I tell you the truth, I agree. That being said, I have to say that Lonely Planet guides are not my favorites. I recognize that they have the most (useful) information, but they lack visual appeal. Many times I have fallen into the “trap” of following the descriptive prose of LP guides, and after arriving at the place described, I found myself disappointed. That is why I prefer the DK (Dorling Kindersley) guides.

Taking advantage of the end of last month when the LP guides of various European cities could be downloaded for free, I decided to try them. Keep reading, I will tell you my impressions…

APPEARANCE: 2

No complications here, simple menus, and few, very few images. The graphic design of the interface is quite simple.

FEATURES: 4

You will see five icons at the bottom of the screen. One is the guide; another the nearby Points of Interest (POI); another a map; another a search section and the latter gives us access to the images (33 to be exact, photos of the city in question) and Favorites (sometimes, a heart icon shows up after selecting a POI. If you click the icon, the POI is saved in the Favorites folder, and we can access it more easily at a later time.)

Both, the finder POI and the map have a filter so you can choose the icons you want to see on the map (restaurants, sightseeing, entertainment, shopping and places to stay).

When selecting a POI, it displays relevant information about it. You can dial the phone number or send an email (you’ll leave the LP app) directly from the displayed menu.

USABILITY: 2.5

There are two main points. One is the ease of use, it’s easy. Another, is the navigation through the menus of the guide itself, it’s quite cumbersome.

VALUE: 4.5

Given that the paper version of the downloaded guides cost about 20€, we must recognize that the iPhone version is a bargain. Depending on the chosen city, prices range from $2.99 to $5.99 , as I said before, a bargain. Even if you do not compare it to the paper editions, the price is fine. The guide brings lots and lots of information.

Conclusion

If what you are looking for in a travel guide is information (although browse in it is tedious) and you do not give much importance to the photos and pictures, do not hesitate, Lonely Planet is your best option. For the rest, you MAY have better options in the vast ocean of applications from the App Store.

TOTAL: 3.25 out of 5.

DANIEL FERNÁNDEZ

Let’s make things clear before starting this review, TwoNav is a GPS application for the iPhone that is made for Outdoor activities and also Voice Guided Turn-by-Turn navigation. My review is mainly focused on the latter.

TwoNav has provided me with the code for the application and links to download maps so I was able to test the road navigation from the BeNeLux where the TeleAtlas map is not bundled yet with the basic TwoNav app.

The editions that have a Sat-Nav bundle are;
• TwoNav France
• TwoNav Spain
• TwoNav DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
• TwoNav Italy

So if you buy these editions you don’t have to go through all the steps I had to. For me to get all working I needed to download and install CompeGPS Land 7.0.1 from the http://www.compegps.com web site. I was unlucky because only Windows is supported, but anyway I have a dual boot on my Macbook Pro, so I could install the software. After opening the PC application I was a bit intimidated by all the options and menus, but hey that is just me because I am new to this Outdoor map & trekking things. I am sure that if you have hobbies like this, you would have a big smile on your face now.

I had to download maps and place them in the correct folder in CompeGPS Land (CL from now on). Afterwards I could enable FTP in the TwoNav iPhone app and transfer the maps to the iPhone. With a little help from the friendly people of TwoNav I got all right to be able to make this review. My advice here is that if you want to use the app unbundled like me, read the CL manual first. CL can be downloaded and tested for 30 days for free by the way.

Menu

TwoNav has 2 main menus that have the two colors, green (leaf symbol) for the Outdoor functions and grey (wheel symbol) for the road functions. Getting the details of the TeleAtlas maps works only in the road menu. I have a little issue with the interface design, it looks futuristic but it feels like you have to learn the system, which could be avoided by using more interface guidelines from Apple for the iPhone. On the positive side, most buttons are big which is easy when you are moving and you can change the menu system to column layout, which did not always work good for me.

Display

The display works in portrait and landscape mode.  Pinch to zoom works but also the plus and minus symbol to zoom. In the top of the display there are 4 little icons that can be collapsed when you don’t need them. First a little square to ask for more statistics, an arrow to point the map to the north, 3D to 2D switch, and sound on/off. The map can be scrolled around with your finger, a bit like Copilot Live and Sygic Aura. My only gripe here is the displaying of the street names, which follow the road. Good is that you can see the max speed sign which will color red when exceeding. POIs are displayed with descriptive icons. The display can switch automatically to night view and in tunnels.

Routing types

You can switch while navigating from car to bike to foot. Further more can you define fastest or shorted route and allow: tolls, highways and unpaved.

Navigation test

I took the app with me on several trips to see how it calculated the routes.  The results are comparable with Sygic, which also uses TeleAtlas Map tech. The English lady who was giving the commands was speaking a bit slow but guided me correctly to my destinations.

Others & Settings

TwoNav has also speed limit and camera alerts, and they are configurable like CoPilot Live can. Routes can be simulated and all the waypoint, tracking routes features that are in the Outdoor part of the app are also available here.

Further more, the data fields to display can be tuned for the Data Bar, Data Page and Compass/Graph. The 2D / 3D+ environments can be tuned. If you dig deeper in the settings you can see that you can change your pointer to a car or motor of something else (remember iGO My Way, anyone?). I found also an EcoCalculator inside and the option to change your tracking prefs. Did I already mention the WayPoint Alerts?

Conclusion

TwoNav for the iPhone is a big application that needs time to learn and explore, certainly in combination with the CompeGPS Land PC app. But this learning curve also means that the application has a lot to offer.

Things that can be improved are the voices and the displaying of the street-names (and maybe an interface redesign). I can recommend this app for people who do already Outdoor activities or plan to do so in the future. You have Sat-Nav app to drive to your location and the Tracking app to plan, manage, record and graph your actions.

Features - 4.5
Appearance – 3.5
Usability – 3.5
Value – 4.0
Overall: 3.87 stars out of 5

Brussels, Robin Bollen, May 11 2010.

The long awaited Sygic Aura recently hit the App Store street and we were lucky enough to get a test version (1.15). Remember that Sygic Mobile Maps should have been the first iPhone Turn-by-Turn Voice Guided GPS app for the iPhone if it wasn’t for a nasty App Store bug, which gave Navigon the official title.

Sygic Mobile maps has been good reviewed and received by the community for producing a solid GPS app based on TeleAtlas Map technology. I have used the app for thousands of Kilometers without any problem. In the mean time, the competition has also improved their applications with many updates and new features. TomTom is one of those that have improved a lot, although some payable options are still expensive.

Every self-respecting GPS app maker out there knew the growing need of adding social features. I have seen it first in CoPilot Live, later in Waze , Navigon (facebook and twitter) and now in Sygic Aura.

community

Sygic Aura has implemented a community, which consists of other Aura friends. You can look them up in the application and ask authorization to become friends. Also messages can be composed in the app and sent to your Aura buddies. The goal of all this is, like their slogan says: Drive, walk, meet. A good GPS app should not be switched off at the end of your car trip, but continue to serve you to your final destination, which is mostly on foot. The meeting of other friends depends of the popularity of the application. My tip here to Sygic is, to build it also into Mobile Maps to quickly increase the potential user base.

A nice thing is that it also has city guides incorporated now. In the Benelux edition that I am testing, there are 3 city guides, Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam. The city guides have a general tab, where all the general city topics are discussed and next to that you have the categories.  These are like extended POIs, with lots of extra information and even data for the nearest train and metros. You can share these locations with friends and meet in the same restaurant, which you even can give a rating.

New Menu

The whole menu has been greatly simplified, with four main items: Find, Community, Info and Settings.

Find is where you have Destination, My neighborhood, City Guides, POI, contacts, favorites and history.

Community we just talked about, except for the fact that you can change your status, location and quick message.

Info; is for Route info, Traffic info, Weather, World Clock and Country info. The last 3 info items are not bound to the region of your edition.  The Traffic feature I still have to check out and update this article accordingly.

Last is the Settings menu, where you can change almost everything, from the Sound; trap alerts, speed limit, friend & message notifications.
Display; with different map views, details, color schemes, signpost info and lane assistance.

Online; Account, Total traffic (down/up volumes) and auto connect.

Route Planning; Avoid toll and Route computing (fast/short/eco).

Safety Camera; Enable radar and show on map.

Regional: Tons of different voices, plenty of interface languages, keyboard layouts, units, time format, temperature and GPS coordinate display.

Cinema graphics

I am using the application daily now, and it is an exiting app to use. The display of the map is fantastic, so realistic with all the buildings, nature and objects around you. Navigon 1.5 has Panorama View 3D for which you pay extra, but you cannot compare it with what Aura has visually accomplished. You should check out all the screenshots, Sygic Aura is simply beautiful. You can move the map around with your finger to look forward and backwards (which was fist implemented by CoPilot Live this way). When you now tap the red square, you will be presented with a new menu;

• Drive to
• Walk there
• Share location (to one of your Aura friends)
• Add POI
• Nearby POI
• Add to favourites

And with the scroll wheel at the bottom you can scroll around your axis, again very well implemented. One thing to note is that once you have moved the screen around, you need to press back to go back to the navigation mode.  It’s a pity I cannot show you the elevation images, because the Benelux doesn’t have high mountains.

Cities that are supported in 3D coverage are; Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Liege, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Groningen, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

Tapping

4 Other things I found out by tapping the display is;
1. When you tap the top right corner, which contains your status icon, you can change your status.
2. When you tap in the middle of the bottom status bar while navigating, you have the option to report a speed trap of accident.
3. When tapping the lower left bottom corner while navigating, the app speaks again the last voice instruction.
4. When touching the top left corner, shows you all the details about the weather. (Does anyone know what Gust speed is?)

Even you know the route of the trip you are going to make, you still want to use Sygic Aura, just for the stunning visual experience, and possible speed trap updates.

Conclusion

Sygic has done a marvelous job with Aura, it is the default Sat-Nav app on my iPhone (and I have a few, believe me). The fact that all the info is available without data connection is a plus. I am waiting eagerly for the Westen Europe Edition.

With Google breathing in the mobile neck of Apple and implementing a free GPS Turn-by-Turn Voice Guided application in the Android phones, I can only recommend Apple to consider buying Sygic Aura and make it their default navigation app that ships with the new iPhone OS 4.0. The competition does not stop there; Nokia ships it’s smartphone with free Ovi Maps and Microsoft just announced that Bing just added Voice Guided Turn-by-Turn navigation to its mobile app for Windows Phones 6.1 and above. Apple sits on an enormous amount of cash and could encourage people staying on the iPhone platform, by delivering a slick and very valuable navigation app for free. Think about that Steve!

Note1 The app is still in introduction pricing until end of May.
Note2 Aura is not replacing Mobile Maps, both will live side-by-side.

Features - 4.5
Appearance – 5.0
Usability - 4.5
Value - 5.0
Overall: 4.75 stars out of 5

Doc revision: May 12 2010, extended the conclusion.

“If it’s on your computer, it’s just a touch away!”

With this slogan, LogMeIn does present the mobile version LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone, and do believe us: this app rocks.

After installing the LogMeIn Ignition app on your iPhone, you will have instantly access to your desktop, to all your applications and every file on your computers/servers wherever you are, as if you were sitting in your office. Except you’re not (psst, don’t tell anyone): actually you’re on the go and wearing torned jeans.

Brussels, Robin Bollen, April 28 2010.

You read that good, it isn’t Shaving Private Sheep, a game where you must collect as much wool as possible. No this is of course a parody of Saving Private Ryan, a war movie about the invasion of Normandy in WWII.

Your mission is clear, operation “Iron Wool” has been launched and you are responsible for giving the sheep their green territory back, so they can graze in peace forever.

Saving Private Sheep (SPS), is a puzzle game created by Bulky Pix, a company who have released a dozen titles already for the iPhone and has 3 more up their sleeve; Roll Out, Drums Challenge Charlie Morgan and UNDEAD the last Refuge.

SPS is intuitive to play, you have always a scenario that goes like this; you see a pile of crates with General Sheepard on top of it, all standing on a platform, with open space left and right. In the open space below the platform the violent and hungry wolves are waiting for you to fall into. With your finger you tap on the crates you want to disappear so your sheep starts falling with natural gravity physics applied. Some objects later in the game, you cannot dissolve, like iron objects. In other missions extra objects appear to play a role to successfully land your sheep, like explosives, swings, balances and so on. In some missions the scenario changes that you will have to see for yourself, I won’t spoil all here.

When you start playing SPS, you notice immediately the high quality delivered, everything shines, the animations and graphics are smooth, the sounds are excellent, the game physics very well done and most importantly the excellent humor. This is one of those games created for the iPhone that really stands out.

You will notice that when you need to kill time waiting somewhere you will launch Saving Private Sheep to get to the next level, the difficulty gradually increases which makes it also for the younger gamers a challenge. There are numerous things to unlock in the game like levels, success and medals.

I stop writing about it because you just must try it out yourself, and I am sure you won’t regret this purchase. Bulky Pix delivered! I can’t wait to get the iPad edition in my hands.

Features – 5.0
Appearance – 5.0
Playability – 5.0
Value – 5.0
Overall: 5 stars out of 5

Psst. Over here. Yeah, I’m talking to you. Wanna hear a review of
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars? I thought so. So listen up, worm, and I’ll tell you the way it’s gonna be. Now pay attention because I’m not going to repeat myself.

That’s the kind of attitude Rockstar Games brings into this small screen version of the GTA franchise. The one thing they amazingly accomplish is anything but a small experience. A game franchise that made itself famous with the “here’s the city - go play in it” design leaves that same door wide open. I can tell you when I first entered the touchscreen world of GTA I was apprehensive about the ability to make it “real” and as wide open as the console versions… Have no fear - the game is yours to play however you want!

Appearance / Graphics - 4
The look and feel is pretty consistent with the historical GTA franchise and is also what you would expect when shrunk down an put into the palm of your hand. I have seen the PSP version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars - and this in pretty much dead on. Things are very well rendered in play from a 3D perspective and there’s lot of nuance for the observant eye to catch. I wouldn’t say the graphics are going to blow you away - especially since a lot of the game is spent looking down on the city or talking with cartoon drawings of shady characters…  but the feel is clean and consistent for the franchise. If it sounds a little like I’m on both sides of the fence on this one, I might be, deal.

Features - 5+
Ok - I’m not going to tell you all the things you can do here because, well, a massive amount of fun in the game is all about wandering off the beaten path and then going “holy $%@# - I can do THAT too” (and of course you swear because you are playing GTA).  One great design element in the game is the fact that your character is plugged into all the different activities through his PDA. It’s a GPS for locating missions or people you need to “deal” with, it’s your email hub, it’s your everything (including lock picker for some high tech cars).  It makes managing this massively open world way easier than you would expect. Need to know what’s next, where the pick up is, where your contacts are - the PDA answers all.

One detour I have to take here in talking about the features of this game without offering too much of a spoiler is the drug trade. I actually found myself losing interest in the story at times and focusing on buying my drugs in one part of Liberty City and selling them for a price premium in another part. The entire drug economy of this game reminds me of an old black and white game I used to have on my very first Palm Pilot called Dope Warz. It’s addicting - but I guess that’s because of the drugs, right man.

Playability/Emotion - 3
I have to give BIG points off in this category because I was almost completely unable to master the virtual joystick while in a vehicle. I found driving the car to be a disaster (good thing it’s so much fun running into things, beating up people, playing the lottery, stealing money and dealing drugs - none of which need the car). I just never could get the hang of the perspective changes the game made and the responsiveness of the joystick. A cool part here is, car by car things change - the sporty looking ones are sporty and the fuel taker truck (won’t tell you what havoc I raised with that one) drives like a tanker full of really explosive fuel.

I quickly discovered the more you smash into things the more damage your car takes (funny how that works, huh?).  The nice thing is - I got really good at destroying my car, jumping out and stealing another car (is it wrong to smile when you drag someone out of their car and they sound like someone you know)?

Value - 5+
Look buddy - there’s no free ride here. This game costs you $9.99 - and a big slice of iPhone storage…  but come on - let’s be real. You get games within games. You get completely open-ended play. You get a plot and story that’s full of more twists and turns than my pathetic in-game driving. Is it a lot - no way! This game is definitely worth every penny - actually I would go so far as to say it’s a BARGAIN. The poor suckers playing this (with their real joysticks - ohh how I envy them) on their PSP are paying $30 for the exact same game. This is value defined. And since you saved so much scratch on this version - I don’t suppose you would be interested in sending some my way… I have a nice little pistol I’m thinking about buying…

Overall - 4.75
Honestly dude - I’m not sure how the folks at Rockstar did it. How they took a franchise built around the power and openness of a console and shrunk it down in size only to fit on my phone. The fact this game has so many elements (many of which I don’t talk about because the “coolness” of discovery is a massive part of the ongoing enjoyment in this game) it’s hard to get tired of the game. If you do get bored with mugging people for some pocket change… well - you can always go steal a taxi and charge unsuspecting fools their fare… or, well… I just can’t say enough about the depth of gameplay. Well, I could…  but then I’d have to ask you to step out back so the story stays, um, private. Now - stop staring at this screen and go get the game, punk.

ANDY PRIOR

NOTE: RockStar Games provided a licensed copy of GTA: Chinatown Wars for this review.

New York, Tony Karakashian, April 22 2010.

For devotees of Facebook, there is a game that everyone knows: Farmville.  In this game, your character is given a plot of land on which to build a farm. You can plant crops, raise cattle, purchase decorative items and so forth.  Most folks end up playing it for a few weeks until their farm grows larger at which point it becomes a major pain in the butt to maintain and ends up requiring more time than an actual farm would.  The author of the game does offer items that would make it easier to play the game…if you’re willing to buy them with actual cash.

Take the above paragraph and substitute “Zombie Farm” for “Farmville”.  Zombie Farm for the iPhone is practically a kissing cousin of Farmville.  The characters look the same, game play is fairly similar and the requirements of purchasing things with your hard-earned money are available in this portable form, too.  But…there’s zombies!  Aside from planting mundane crops like corn (good ol’ corn), lima beans (kids love ‘em!) or coffee (which has no witty tag line) you can also plant zombies of various types (although the variations aren’t as large as they’d seem).  These can then be sent out to invade a rival farmer, go after the bank foreclosing on your mortgage or even some high seas adventure!  During these invasions, you simply send your zombies to attack the opponent while one of them throws things from above on your undead friends and another fights them hand-to-hand. The zombies, however, have different ideas and you have to keep tapping them to keep their attentions focused. 

As mentioned, game play is almost exactly the same as Farmville and if you’re familiar with one, you’ll be familiar with the other: plow land, plant, wait, harvest, plow, plant…etc.  It’s good mind-numbing fun in the beginning, but as your farm grows, it becomes more and more tedious.  Just like Farmville.  At around level 10, though, the free games ceases to be free.  Around this point, you need “the blue grave” which allows you to plant blue zombies.  Without the blue zombies I found absolutely no way to win the invasions and I lost them every time.  The problem is the blue grave costs 99 cents of actual money, so in order to proceed further you have to spend it.  Honestly, the game was still fairly entertaining at that point, so I spent it.  I’ve since achieved level 21 and haven’t had a need to purchase anything else since.  Every other “needed” item can be purchased with in-game currency.  At first I was put off by having to purchase this item, but as I thought about it, it wasn’t a bad deal.  The game itself is free and I got a good two weeks of play out of it before I had to make a purchase.  That’s really no different from most shareware games that have limited levels unless you buy. 

That in-game currency, BTW, consists of gold coins, which you’ll get for harvesting crops, winning an invasion or as part of a daily bonus.  You can link the game to your Facebook account, and if you have friends who also play you get bonus coins.  The other currency is brains.  What else would you have in a zombie game?  These can buy more advanced items like “the red grave” (not the well-regarded actress), which is needed to purchase red zombies which are stronger than the blue ones which are stronger than the green.

Brains are very rare, though.  Since I started playing, I’ve managed to get about 13-14 of them.  The better items you can purchase with them cost 8-10 brains, so spend them sparingly in the beginning.  I bought the mutation monument with mine.  If you plant a zombie next to certain crops there’s a small chance it’ll mutate.  So, if you get a zombie that mutates next to celery, it gets a celery arm which makes it faster.  I found that if you plant your zombies between alternating rows of crops, you get some interesting mutations.  The mutation monument simply raises the chance of mutation to 100%.  So, now, I always have cauliflower-haired, garlic-headed, celery-armed, lima bean-bodied zombies with which to wreak havoc! 

Despite what appears to be a lot of griping, Zombie Farm has probably been the game I’ve spent the most time with since getting my iPhone. I’ve played it for the last few weeks, and for the most part enjoyed it.  But, my farm is large now and it takes 10-15 minutes just to harvest and replant.  The author just put out an update recently that included a couple of new plants, but that’s about it.  There are really only about 6-7 zombies, despite there being three levels.  Each of the three levels is a repeat of the preceding, just in a different color.  My biggest problem is that as you progress and your farm grows, the game slows down terribly.  With a dozen plus zombies running around, 120+ tiles of crops and a myriad of other things, it really chews up memory.  If you’ve got a 3G, be warned.  It won’t be the fastest game you’ve ever played on your device.

My recommendation is if you liked Farmville, even for a short time, you’ll probably enjoy Zombie Farm for about as long.  Play it, and if you don’t like it, stop when you have to purchase the blue grave.  It’s fun, despite its shortcomings…just not for long.

Features - 2.0
Appearance - 3.5
Playability - 2.5
Value - 3.0
Overall: 2.75 stars out of 5

Unlike Tony, I prefer to read paper books instead of books in digital format. This does not mean that I have some ebook readers and some comics and books stored in my iPhone. Often unexpected waits arise and having a book in hand, always helps pass the time.

You can read on Readdle’s web that ReaddleDocs is a complete document and file management solution for your iPhone. ReaddleDocs features a document viewer, file manager, network file server, web storage client and web browser combined within a single iPhone application package. Let’s see how this app works on the iPhone.

Over the past three months, we made a couple of application analysis on cost control. We started with Receipts (the simplest one); the next one was SplashMoney (more complete than the previous one). Today, we will review iBearMoney.

The application has been developed by iBearSoft and version 4.0.2 has been analyzed (latest update available). Pending the release of a free computer program, IE the desktop version, it will surely bring more functionality and versatility to the application.

New York, Tony Karakashian, April 13 2010.

“There was a war. A few years from now. Nuclear war. The whole thing. All this … everything ... is gone. Just gone. There were survivors.
Here. There. Nobody knew who started it. It was the Machines… Defense network computer.  New. Powerful. Hooked into everything.
Trusted to run it all. They say It got smart… a new order of intelligence. Then It saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side.
Decided our fate in a microsecond…  extermination.”

– Kyle Reese, Terminator movie

When it first debuted, the Interwebz were filled with comparisons to Skynet and after seeing it in action, I’m not entirely sure they were unfounded. Billed as a Computational Knowledge Engine, Wolfram Alpha stands as one of the most unique endeavors on the Internet. In a nutshell, visitors are presented with a single field into which they can enter free-form natural language queries. Wolfram Alpha will crunch the numbers and spit out results faster than expected. What counts as a free-form query? I’ll give you my personal favorite: “big mac, large fries, medium coke.” Just enter that and Wolfram Alpha assumes you want to know the nutritional info on your value meal, and so it gathers the data and presents it to you in a recognizable format. 

But, just as easily, you could have entered an integral from your calculus homework. You could ask about astronomy. The example page gives the example query “alpha Centauri A, beta Centauri, gamma Centauri”. This one will provide you with every piece of data needed to compare these three bodies in detail. Frankly, I’m wasting my time trying to tell you everything you could do with this amazing tool. Go to their site and poke around. This review isn’t about Wolfram Alpha, after all, it’s about the iPhone app…

Released last year, it entered the AppStore under a small amount of controversy. Debuting at $50, it was one of the most expensive apps in the AppStore. Worse, there was apparently no difference between what the app could do and what you could get by simply going to the Wolfram Alpha mobile site. That is, until the mobile site was pulled and replaced with an ad for the expensive app in December. As expected, this generated a lot of negative chatter in the blogosphere. Wolfram Alpha has since reversed everything by reinstating the mobile-optimized site, slashing the price of the app to $2 AND offering refunds to anyone who asks. 

I’d been wanting to review this app for some time, and when we got a code from Wolfram Alpha, I jumped at the opportunity. I just couldn’t see shelling out $50 for an app that wasn’t even getting great reviews. Now that I have it, though, what’s the verdict? In a nutshell, well worth the $2. Don’t get me wrong, the technology and service provided by Wolfram Alpha is well deserving of the kudos heaped on it since its inception. The iPhone app, however, is simply a conduit into that technology (I like their advertising: “it’s the supercomputer in your pocket”). I think the best way to see the benefit is to compare the app to the mobile website. After all, if you can access the site via Safari, is there really a reason to pay for the app? (Aside from the geek cred that so totally comes with having it on your Springboard. Add to the Dock for extra credit.) Let’s take a look…

The first pair screenshots (below), should show the first benefit of the app: the advanced keyboard. Of immediate benefit are those taking calculus. Having an integral symbol rather than having to type “integrate” is a time saver, especially on those nights your prof inundates you with homework. In trying to type in the example I used for both, it took about twice as long to do on the mobile site because I had to keep switching between keyboards (the caret is on the “second” symbol keyboard on the iPhone, for example). At first blush, it may seem a trivial benefit, but in the long run, it’s huge.

Next, we have the examples section. Team Wolfram does not leave you to your own devices when trying to figure out how to use this beast. They provide ample examples for a myriad of subjects in which you can try to push the limits. Both the mobile site and the iPhone app will show you the same examples, grouped by the same categories. In both, you can click the example shown and it will calculate your result.

One huge plus in the favor of the iPhone app, though, is at the bottom of its example screen: a History section. Once you’ve got a formula entered as you like it, you can save it for future use by saving it as a favorite. Now, granted, if you’re using the mobile site, you can actually bookmark your results and return to them, and Safari does have a history if you need to go back to it. But, how often do you browse other sites? How likely is it that result’s going to be in your browser history a week from now? A month? Wolfram Alpha has a long memory…

The final comparison is only of benefit to math geeks, who, frankly, already purchased the app and are just reading this one as a positive affirmation of their choice. However, if you’ve just walked out of a cave: the iPhone app allows you to export your results and/or formulas in other formats. Most specifically in the language of Mathematica so you can use the results on your desktop. The mobile site returns results as graphics, so you can only save them to your camera roll.

Overall, when compared to the mobile site, it’s my opinion that the app is definitely worth $2. I have no idea what they were thinking when they initially priced it at $50, but they’ve gotten over that sickness. Time to forgive and forget, and give it a shot!

Features - 4.0
Appearance - 3.0
Usability - 4.5
Value - 4.0
Overall: 3.9 stars out of 5