A few weeks ago I saw a tweet that mentioned Louisville now had an iPhone app. I immediately went to the iTunes store, paid my $1.99 and downloaded the app. I’m sorry I did. The app was so bad. I was going to write a review of it then, but was afraid I would just sound pissy and unsupportive of Louisville because the review would not have been favorable.
Well today myLouisville was updated and the price was dropped to 99¢. The update promised “Significant changes, Simplified tab scheme, Improved graphics.” I downloaded the update and was genuinely hoping the app had improved.
Not by a long shot.
In the world of iPhone apps, this has got to be one of the worst, even with the update. The updates are not “significant.” Here’s a rundown of the app.
The first screen that comes up is Share. You can upload an image and description, but that’s it. No author information is available unless you put it in the description. You can comment on the images posted or flag them for abuse. Not much content here so far, but given the layout if a lot of people post photos you’ll never see the older ones. You’d have to do a lot of scrolling once this list hits 50 or so.
The next screen is a map with user generated locations. This is okay I guess, but still pretty lame as far as iPhone apps go. The new version seems to place a limit on the number of tags. So far there are 28 out of 50 max. 50 is a low number for even one of Louisville’s denser neighborhoods. 50 for the entire city is useless.
The Map screen has Center on City button. Apparently the center of Louisville is in the Ohio River. Who knew?
One last thing that really bothers me. There’s a Facts screen, that says Flag until you select it, and they’ve improperly scaled the city’s logo and turned it sideways. What the hell?
I’m hoping that the developer, Splaysoft, LLC, just churns these apps out for any city it finds on a map. I sure hope the city didn’t contract them to make this. That would disappoint me.
By the way, the Courier-Journal wrote a short piece about this app when it was released and mentioned none of this. I’m guessing the writer never even used the app. Sloppy.
I hope that someone finds this post before they download the app. Save your buck for a quart of gasoline or a Cadbury egg. Spend it on anything but this app. If you want to promote the city and the businesses here there are dozens of better ways than this.