Filed under: Reviews, App Store, App Review
Five Apps for NYC tourists
I was in NYC for a week and feeling a bit bored, so I took a look at a passel (anyone still use that word?) of NYC tourist
NYC Subway 24-Hour KICKMap - $1.99. Rating: Horrible.
This is a generic subway map that's "24 hours" because you can tap the day/night button to switch the background from white to black. Wow! Hold your finger on a station for 3 seconds to bring up the address of the subway stop and often a disconnected phone number. Tap 'Alerts' and the app tosses you to the Manhattan Transit Authority site in Safari.
HopStop - Free. Rating: Wonderful.
Tell it where you want to go and it'll get you there via public transportation, just like the website hopstop.com, but with GPS built-in.
UpNext 3D NYC - $2.99. Rating: Meh.
Useful for finding businesses, not so useful for saving personal information. I don't want the world to know where I reside in NYC and marking it will show it to the world. Social networking eats its young -- don't trust it! Plus, how can you choose hotdogs/hamburgers near Broadway and 72nd street and not bring up Grey's Papaya first? Nice maps though.
New York City Highlights - Free Rating: Horrible.
This is supposed to be a walking tour of points of interest in NYC. Running it in Times Square played less than five minutes of generic and out-of-date drivel. At least a podcast has a pause button. Did you know that Virgin Records closed? They didn't.
SitOrSquat - Free. Rating: Are you kidding?
Help me out here, the app is, hmmmm, can I say poop? The GPS map screen can't even locate me, but searching seems to work. McDonalds is squat only. Did I need an app to tell me that? This was funded by Charmin as an afterthought. Note to Government: Don't bail out Procter and Gamble. They have more then enough cash if they paid for this.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tobi said 5:42PM on 8-04-2009
iTrans NYC is a great Subway Map :)
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Benny said 5:54PM on 8-04-2009
And Exit Strategy NYC! http://exitstrategynyc.com/
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David Winograd said 6:01PM on 8-04-2009
Funny you should mention Exit Strategy.
We're doing a series of 5 apps for..... and Exit Strategy was my 6th and had to be cut.
Mike Rose did take a look at that last week:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/16/reality-doesnt-get-more-real-2-iphone-views-of-the-nyc-subway/
Benny said 7:10PM on 8-04-2009
I know :) I'm the iPhone developer for the app so I thought I'd mention it !
Johnny said 6:13PM on 8-04-2009
itrans is worth every penny. i worked in NYC for 3 months earlier this year and after being frustrated at the format of hopstop a friend recommended itrans to me. after a week i was making trips in times that had my friends that lived there trippin.
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SoItsComeToThis said 6:49PM on 8-04-2009
I second the motion for Exit Strategy NYC. I live in NYC and it's come in handy for those stops I'm not familiar with. Its such a simple interface and you can essentially plan out your route with it. Its no map but its darn close. Plus, it mirrors the maps you see on the support beams in each station; those maps highlight the line and the direct with every stop. So its easy to compare where you are on the app and the subway station you're in.
I've recommended it to all my visiting friends.
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Karl said 7:01PM on 8-04-2009
The day/night feature on KICKMap is super helpful because the lines change at night, a fact that isn't easily discernible in most other maps. Some trains stop running altogether while the route of some others is drastically different. The feature is far less worthless than you state.
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racco said 7:19PM on 8-04-2009
I have just this last week come back from a week long vacation in NYC
Here's what I used
The best app for a NYC trip is the built in maps app with the iPhones GPS. With the public transit info the app gives you and street view, its all you need to know exactly where you are and exactly how to get to where you want to go
to compliment the maps app you could also grab any of the subway map apps.
And then theirs Skype if you need to make any calls. Especially good if your traveling to NYC from outside of the US and have to deal with painfully high roaming rates. Buy some Skype credit, find some free WiFi (Bryant Park FTW!) and any phone calls you make won't end up costing the earth.
Also, if you tweet. search for #NYC #newyork and start following. There's a bunch of great twitter accounts tweeting out whats going on around the city.
Other than that you don't need anything
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adam said 8:26PM on 8-04-2009
It behooves me that one would write an article entitled "Five Apps for NYC Tourists" when 80% of the apps on the list ARE NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE USER. This is potentially one of the most useless articles on TUAW. Perhaps you should have considered writing an article on five apps that I would ACTUALLY USE if I were to visit NYC. Like the comments, I recently visited NYC and recommend iTrans, Exit Strategy, Google Maps, and (briefly) Frommers' guide. The built in Maps is great for public transit and if you actually want to know what's going on in the city, grab a TimeOut NY. It's written on paper (I know, so last century...).
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daveyidecks said 9:32PM on 8-04-2009
THIS.
Dave Barnes said 10:31PM on 8-04-2009
I agree with adam.
How about 5 GREAT apps for tourist?
A footnote of 5 apps to avoid.
I don't know how good the Yelp app is, but I do think that Yelp.com is one of the most useful websites for tourists who eat food.
Binja said 9:13AM on 8-05-2009
I second that. I was excited to read this. But it's useless. Y'know, there are good apps too.
Robert said 9:03PM on 8-04-2009
The KICK Map is NOT horrible! The Day/Night button flips between service available during the day, and that available at night. For example, look at the 34th Street-Herald Square station in Day mode, and you'll see B, D, F, and V lines on 6th Avenue, and N, Q, R, and W lines on Broadway. Switch to Night mode, and the B, R, V, and W lines disappear! With the exception of the Bay Ridge portion of the R line, they don't run at all during late nights (generally between Midnight and 6 AM) so they don't need to be displayed on the map. This is an attempt by KICK to represent a system that operates 24 hours a day as a system that operates 24 hours a day.
As for Exit Strategy, I have one word to describe this project: INCOMPLETE. It's good if your travel is entirely within Manhattan, but who does that anymore? Nobody who travels from a New York airport, that's for sure. The two stations that connect with the AirTrain to JFK Airport, Sutphin/Archer and Howard Beach? NOT in Exit Strategy!
App Store commenters support the claim that Exit Strategy is incomplete.
"A lot of stations are missing," writes tutanQnsVlg.
"I was surprised the whole system…isn't included," says Brian/NYC.
"Looking for an exit on the F line past a certain point yields nothing, and the same for the Q," says Atmoosh.
"It doesn't show anything in Queens past Roosevelt Avenue," says cloudthirteen.
"Please change the title to 'Partial Exit Strategy of a Portion of the Subway System,'" writes ErikSax.
"Yesterday when taking the R train, the program showed only one exit at City Hall, which I knew was wrong," says ScrabbleNut.
"I wanted to check on the exits at the Flatbush [Avenue] stop on the 2 line…and found that it covered the line only until Franklin Avenue," says Beach Friend.
Let's say you wanted to travel from Fresh Pond Road (M) to Union Square (L) on a Saturday afternoon. Would the app tell you to board the 4th or the 6th car of the M train for the transfer to the L at Wyckoff Avenue?
My guess is that Exit Strategy has no data for that part of NYC, but I know for a fact the M train doesn't run more than 4 cars on weekends.
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Joe Cabrera said 9:20PM on 8-04-2009
And CityTransit, the Official NYC Maps app: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284444600
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Rob said 9:37PM on 8-04-2009
Just found an app called New York Art, for details about galleries and museums in the city. It uses GPS to find nearby events, it's pretty useful.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=322195848&mt=8
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themapplestore said 10:47PM on 8-04-2009
I'm not too happy about the way you've started to display the RSS feeds, where nothing but the headline shows up. Not only that, but when I click on said headline, it just takes me to tuaw.com!!! I just thought I'd mention it and see if anyone else has this issue.
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Dave said 11:03PM on 8-04-2009
I'm thinking that it's actually a site issue. The articles in the feed aren't showing up on the main page and the date/time is off
Sin Cohen said 7:11AM on 8-05-2009
"Did you know that Virgin Records closed? They didn't."
I laughed so hard.
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max said 7:57AM on 8-05-2009
Instead of 4 lousy apps and 1 good one, it would certainly be much more useful to suggest 5 good apps for the NYC tourist.
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jodi said 12:45PM on 8-05-2009
have you ever made an app? no. probably not. neither have i. i, however, know the makers of sit or squat and i have never had a problem with that app. the fact that it's funded by charmin, well...how the hell do you think people make money? get a clue dumbass.
the sit or squat app will locate toilets that people, like you, have rated. YOU go out and if you've had a memorable bathroom experience, YOU rate it. the folks at sit or squat also have a program for people who love to rate and will pay you to go out to take picts and rate bathrooms.
sit or squat is based on community. be a lover, not a fighter.
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