On the iTunes app store, there are reviews of the applications.  I often read these, and sometimes pick up a useful point or two, but too often, the reviews don’t tell me much except that someone liked an app or didn’t.  And for me, that isn’t all that useful.  Sure if 100 out of 120 people said good things, that suggests the app may be a good download, but what is past that?  What is it like living with the app day in and day out? How often are those reviews written directly after download or shortly afterwards?

So, I wanted to start writing about some of the apps I have downloaded and used.  Something more than, “wow, what a great app!” or “I really like this app.” I wanted to write about why I picked an app; how I started to use it, and how it has changed things for me.

 

 iNap Arrival Alert

I rarely buy apps, but this was one app that I thought would make a big difference for me, and for $.99, it was worth trying out. iNap Arrival Alert, by moop.me is a app that allows you to nap while en route.  You tell it where your destination is, and how long before that you want to be alerted, and it uses the GPS in your phone to wake you are the designated time.

I stumbled across this by accident, but it was exactly what I needed.  I frequently fall asleep on the bus ride home from work each day.  Fortunately, I generally wake up well before my stop, but it has happened that I have missed my stop, or even if I awaken, I often feel a bit of anxiety about what if I miss my stop. $.99 was well worth it if it allowed me to nap peacefully without that worry.

 

After download, the app is really easy to use!  I opened the app, set a destination, selected an alert sound, selected an alert radius, set the “wake me up” to ON, and that is all there is to it!

I was surprised at how it found my destination so easily, and have since tried setting the destination in several different ways.  The first, I set with a street corner only- “Negley and Stanton” and it found it just fine.  I have also plugged in a specific street address (address of bank where the bus stops on the way to work) and that worked great too.  I tried a different corner for the trip home on the 500 bus, and wasn’t so successful.  Plugging in “Highland and Stanton” the map switched to somewhere- I have no idea where.  I added the city and the zip, and it found the corner just fine.

There was only one thing that I wasn’t thrilled with at first.  The shortest destination radius was .1 mile and the next was .5 mile.  Set at .5 mile, it wakes me up sooner than needed, but .1 mile isn’t quite enough time to get up and ready to step off the bus.  I emailed moop.me and got a quick reply back to my request, and now, there is a .2 miles option which works perfect for me.

I use iNap even if I’m not falling asleep many days, and especially if I am reading or caught up in thought or the weather is bad outside.  Since it is already pretty dark by the time I head home in the evening, it can be hard to see where you are by just looking out the window.  Some of the buses announce what the next stop is, but some do not. By setting iNap, I never have to worry about where the bus is.  The alarm lets me know that my stop is coming up.

I also can get pretty wrapped up and forget to pay attention if I’m reading, so iNap helps in that case as well.
There are three things I’ve noticed since I started using iNap:

1. The UI seems a bit backwards to me.  The first action item on the window is a slider “Yes/No” for wake me up.  But you can’t tell it “yes” until there is a destination selected. So the first time, it was annoying- I was trying to enable it, and it gave me an error because no destination was selected.  Led me to think that the Yes/No toggle should be the last action option in the list instead of the first.  But then, after that time, it remembers your destinations and the last entry, so you don’t get the error any more.  Not a big issue.  I get why they have it first.  I think it could be last just as easily, but I get why they have it first.
2. The second issue is something that I’m sure is because of Apple’s restrictions/requirements, and isn’t a fault of the app. It would be awesome to set iNap and then switch over to read email or twitter or something.  but this doesn’t work.  Two apps can’t be running at the same time is the way I understand this.  Maybe sometime down the line. You can however listen to music or podcasts and still use iNap.
3. The last is also something that I think is most likely a limitation of the hardware.  I sometimes like to set the music pretty low, but then the destination alert is low too.  It would be cool if you could set the destination alarm volume separate from the music volume. Again, not a big deal.  I just select alarm sounds that will be jarring enough different from the music.

Other apps can send destination coordinates to iNap which sounds really cool, but I haven’t had an opportunity to try that anywhere.

I use this app almost every day! The fact that it meets my need so well, works so well, and the speed and responsiveness of the developers makes this a really great app.  It is possibly the best thing I ever bought for $.99.