I like pubs. A lot. I ‘m also a fan of Irish pubs – having lived in the UK for a number of years, and having lived in a few areas where there were some good, genuine ones.
So the iPub app for the iPhone “ which promises to guide me to the nearest Irish pub anywhere in the world and help me find ‘The Craic ‘ (good times) “ was of immediate interest for me.
I installed iPub last week and have given it a look over the last several days. Below are my thoughts:
What Does It Do?
Just what it says on the box, or in this case the App Store description. It asks you to let it use your location, and wants Location Services turned on for this purpose, but just once when you first launch the app. Once it has located you, it provides a Google map view as well as a list view of Irish pubs near to you.
The app also provides directions to any of the listed pubs you select, and a short profile page for each pub as well.
That ‘s about it for features “ except for a ‘Send a Pint ‘ tab where you can send a hoky email to a friend with a ‘virtual pint ‘ for them to (not) savor.
What Does It Do Well?
Sad to say, but for now, for me, this app ‘s best feature is that the little marker to indicate each Irish pub on the map view is a pint of stout “ and I love a good pint of stout, so that ‘s a great icon.
It does provide a fairly decent looking listing of nearby Irish pubs “ though it is difficult for me to judge this very well as Austin only has a handful of Irish pubs. So far, it has identified two out of three well-known local spots “ so an OK result, but not stellar.
I would ‘ve liked to give it a try on other cities I know and see what kind of results it offers “ like London for instance. I haven ‘t been able to though because it will not let me manually enter a location “ so all I can look at is Austin, unless we do some traveling.
What ‘s Not So Good?
As mentioned just above, there is no ability to manually enter a location “ which I would find very useful “ partly just to see the quality of results, but also if I was thinking of making a trip to another city, I might well want to give that a look as well.
The actual listing page for each pub is very basic and poorly done. There are no photos, no reviews, and for one out of the two Austin pub listings, not even a description. Both Austin pubs “ and one San Antonio entry that somehow made the list “ were missing phone numbers.
All you get is a short set of four ratings “ for Overall, Food, Drink, and Atmosphere “ with no real explanation of where the ratings come from or how they ‘re arrived at. And two of the three listed pubs for my area were missing these ratings as well.
Oh, and the link in the ‘Send a Pint ‘ email sends you to a web page that is just one big ad for the application – with not even a token gesture towards showing a virtual pint glass there.
Overall
This is the sort of fun, little app that I ‘d really like to like “ but I ‘m sorry to say this one left me pretty thoroughly disappointed. For an app that wants to help you find ‘The Craic ‘ there ‘s virtually zero ‘fun ‘ elements in it “ not even so much as a good picture of a lovely pint of Guinness anywhere to be seen.
This app needs a lot of work to be worthwhile “ an ability to look at different cities, much better details on pub listing pages, and some graphics or fun elements spread throughout the app.
iPub is in the App Store now, priced at $0.99.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS: iphone apps
