
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….
