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The XKCD Webcomic Reader iPhone App Shootout!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
ALL

The contenders.

Welcome, welcome.  Read, enjoy, and please leave comments.  Everybody has comments.  Comments are like…well, I won’t follow-through with that joke, but I will say everybody has one.

Ok, so a week or two ago, a friend sent out a tweet that said “there’s an XKCD iPhone app!!”  I decided this was a must-have-app.  I needed to add this app to my collection of almost 140 apps.  (Yes, I have a problem.  I know this and I’m currently avoiding therapy for it, thank you.)

So, off to the App Store I went and what did I find out?  I found out that there are a total of seven, yes SEVEN, XKCD iPhone apps available, and each of them are free.  Well, with that many free apps all created for the same purpose, I figured somebody on the interwebz had the geeky forethought put together a big ol’ app shootout to find out which was the best one.  I was wrong.

For once, somebody else hadn’t already thought to do this.  “Serisouly?” I thought, “nobody has done this yet?  For XKCD of all things!??!”  I couldn’t believe it.  So, I decided to do my own shootout review.  It’s my first review, so please be gentle if things aren’t as finely-polished as they could/should be.

In all truthfulness, you would not believe the PITA that this turned out to be.  Once I downloaded all the apps, many of them had different app icons and/or names than they showed in the App Store.  And since Apple was nice enough to let a few of them be named the same exact damn thing it was a bit tough sorting it all out.  And I couldn’t just go into the About page in some of the apps to sleuthly figure out which one was which, because some of them didn’t even bother with such time-wasting flimflam as info about the app.  It seems they let just anybody develop for the iPhone….although I basically already knew that.  :)   (a short tip for anybody who might take on such a task in the future: leave your iPhone plugged into your computer while reviewing, and just check/uncheck apps as you’re reviewing them in iTunes. especially when many of the apps are named the same, etc. word.)

Ok, enough back-story.  In case I don’t mention it in each review, most of these apps allow you to view comics in portrait mode AND in landscape mode, unless otherwise noted.  Enjoy, and I hope this giant shootout review helps you decide which XKCD iPhone app you like best.  If not, then I’m a horrible failure…. ;)

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Friday, October 9th, 2009