App Store reviews often seem to be an odd mix of bile and vitriol, misplaced support requests, and glowing praise, making my routine App Store review-sweep somewhat of a rollercoaster!
This time around, though, this review of The Cartographer made my day (this is the kind of person I write apps for!), and I had to post it here:
I just got back from 2+ weeks in Thailand on a practically unplanned, last-minute trip. I can’t tell you how many times this app saved the day. I only found (and downloaded) it two days before we were due to leave, but it quickly became indispensible.
It homes in on your location quickly using whatever info is available (great when you’re 100km from Bangkok having an argument with your taxi driver about whether or not you are where he agreed to take you); it uses either an on-line map or one you can download before hand, so *you* choose whether to use (possibly expensive) on-line data or not; downloading the map for off-line use is very simple and highly customizable; and it picks up your Google “My Maps” seamlessly and stores them away neatly on the beautiful shelves in your own personal Map Room.
Which brings me to the second set of reasons this app is amazing: it is stunningly beautiful! Everyone I have shown it to has said (some variation of) “That’s so pretty!”, and taken my iPhone out of my hand. Every screen is beautiful in the way something handmade by a skilled artisan is beautiful. The whole app feels warm and inviting, like it was made just for you by someone to whom your comfort and happiness are extremely important. Then, just when you start to feel like you are holding a time-honored, fine old antique in your hand, it performs some blazingly fast modern feat to give you the information you need.
And–the most amazing part of the package–the developer is incredibly, mind-blowingly responsive to bug reports and requests for help. He answers questions quickly, fully, and understandably. He can talk to newbies as well as to engineers and other developers, he’s extremely intuitive about frankly unintelligible requests, and he pounces on problems like it’s life and death that they be solved. Then, when he has provided impeccable customer service of a type most of us thought had been extinct for years, he *apologizes* for having taken a couple of minutes of your time and he *thanks you* for having brought this problem to his attention so he could fix it.
Thankyou, kind reviewer!