This week we look at a beautiful radio streaming app with Snowtape and Opera Mini, the first popular alternative web browser for the iPhone.
Snowtape
There's plenty of radio apps on the App Store, with two separate categories dominating search results. The biggest selling are usually apps such as the Today Network, providing a (usually) poorly made ad-supported user experience. Because they're free and because developers are most likely instructed to slap logos in every spare corner of the screen, they give users a functional but hardly enjoyable way to stream radio. Then there are the all-in-one apps such as Snowtape, which take a large selection of online stations and give them all the same interface.
Again, there are many of these available for your iPhone. Unfortunately, they all possess downright awful user interfaces, with hideous buttons and sliders and menus taking up a significant portion of the screen. Snowtape is the first (and possibly only) radio app I've seen that is an absolute pleasure to use. Falling in to the second category I discussed above, Snowtape is an iPhone optimised version of its Mac counterpart of the same name. Sporting the same range of stations, tagging and a lovely way to listen and record (music sharing was initially announced but due to a disagreement with Apple's review team the feature was taken away for the first release) the music played on those stations, I was impressed with the look of this app right from the moment I downloaded it.
Like most things in life however, Snowtape has a few caveats that might be enough to put you off the app, at least for now. The biggest of which - a huge letdown for me personally - was the disappointing scope of radio networks to choose from. I couldn't find many Australian stations to listen to in any genre. Even other countries had a limited selection so I was able to find very few of my favourites. The app is largely dominated by European networks.*Of course, your enjoyment depends on your individual tastes but I advise you to try and find a list of supported stations before you download the app (I wasn't able to locate any at the time of review, but I'm sure there must be one available on the Snowtape site or somewhere online).
Do I regret purchasing Snowtape? No, I most certainly do not. I really, truly hope that more stations are added as time goes by, or perhaps the possibility to add your own stations via stream URL, a feature available in other mobile and desktop apps. I would have requested the ability to open streams in Safari so that they could be listened to in the background, but after Friday's multitasking announcement as part of OS 4.0, there's no need anymore. To summarise, I love almost everything about Snowtape except the range of stations, and with luck that is only a temporary complaint.
Version reviewed: 1.0
Price: $2.49
Developer: Vemedio
Designed for: iPhone & iPod touch
Compatibility: iPhone OS running 3.1 or later
Size: 1.2MB
Category: Music
App Store
Opera Mini Web browser
Apple approved Opera Mini for iPhone this morning. It may have taken a little longer than the usual approval process, but this was after all a so-called "controversial" decision. Most of us (including myself) were surprised when it showed up on the App Store just a few hours ago, and with only a few hours to give the app a test drive, I have now realised how wrong I was - Opera Mini is totally useless.
Opera Mini advertises speed as it's most notable advantage over other browsers (on the desktop scene too). The app doesn't take advantage of WebKit, which is used by Mobile Safari (and for that matter, all other iPhone browsers on the App Store except Opera), the Android browser, Mac & PC Safari and Google Chrome. Instead, Opera Mini uses it's own technology for downloading and rendering webpages. The good news is that sites load faster - notably faster than with Mobile Safari, which is a pretty snappy browser. The bad news is that sites render slower - notably slower than with Mobile Safari, and even when websites are completely finished loading up they look much worse.
To give you a sense of just how different the internet looks inside the Opera app, I've taken two screenshot comparisons. The first shows MacTalk in it's full glory. Curious to see how well Opera Mini could handle the non-mobile-optimised site, I was disheartened by the results. While the site loaded up fairly quickly, you can see that the titles of each post are much clearer in Safari. From the screenshot, I can make out that the first article on MacTalk's home page is called 'How To Run Windows on your Mac' whereas in Opera Mini I've got absolutely no idea. Quite simply, the site looks nothing like what it should.
You could argue that MacTalk is quite a (for want of a better phrase) 'graphics-intensive' site though, and that I should perhaps test it with another page. Google Reader was the next site I looked at, and what makes this RSS syndicator interesting is that it has both a mobile and iPhone-optimised version of the site. Mobile Safari shows the clean, almost attractive iPhone version while Opera Mini displays the far less appealing mobile site. With that inability to show the much better iPhone version, I really see no justification for this to be used as a primary web browser on the iPhone. To go back to my first point, the decision to allow Opera Mini onto the App Store was dead simple because this alternative browser poses no real threat to Safari (despite using a different underlying engine), which is all that Apple cares about.
Version reviewed: 5.0
Price: Free
Developer: Opera Software ASA
Designed for: iPhone & iPod touch
Compatibility: iPhone OS running 2.2.1 or later
Size: 1.0MB
Category: Productivity
App Store
iPhone App Reviews - Snowtape, Opera Mini