PeakFinder

I rarely write app reviews because so many apps of a geographical nature are very close to being awesome, but tend to be overpriced, lacking in some basic and obvious feature, or have some major glitch. I’m frequently disappointed, but don’t want to discourage developers. In designing a home, this app has succeeded where a dozen other highly technical apps have failed, to give me quick information about features on the landscape, their general appearance and orientation. The camera is intuitive and the function to adjust the position of the features to match the camera view very easy to use. Not only is this useful in a practical sense, it is fun, and I find myself opening it up all the time to better understand my landscape. Please don’t change the essence of this app! It is great as it is.

Today I went hiking here in Colorado. As I often do, I opened PeakFinder to figure out what peaks are which. Ordinarily, this was a frustrating process, because when I hold my iPhone 7 vertically, the compass doesn't work, and it was hard to look back and forth to match the outlines with the view. Today, WOW, augmented reality! I can see the view _and_ the info all together, right on the iPhone! Suddenly, it was easy to align the peaks to the view on the screen, and voilà! In seconds we identified each of the twenty peaks we could see, even the distant ones that were barely visible behind the others. We all were dazzled! Each of the five people on the trip said they'd be buying PeakFinder. If you love mountains, check it out. Even if you're not sure, I hope you get to see it in action some day. If you do, I'm certain you'll be buying it, too.

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My friend bought a peak finder app for her Droid based smart phone and I was so impressed with it that I had to get one for my iPhone. Sadly the one she has is not made for the iOS software. So I got this one. Two major flaws I’ve noticed: -It’s often inaccurate and you have to line it up manually. This requires you to match up their line drawing with the mountain range you are trying to place. This can be a little ambiguous and has left me feeling less than confident in knowing for certain which peak is which. -Second major flaw, you can’t just snap a photo of the peaks and their names, you have to do a screen shot. That requires pushing the power button and home button simultaneously. Doing that requires two hands and readjusting one’s position. I can’t simply pull my phone out quickly, point and shoot. I have to stop, make sure I have two hands available and then do a screen shot, which is a bit trickier for me to pull off while trying to hold the phone up and hold it steady. My excitement for this app disappeared quickly after purchase. I’d actually like to return it if that was a possibility.

Really shows off the synergy between GPS, a camera, accelerometers, gyroscopes and an amazing database. I use it whenever I’m on vacation and take pictures in the mountains: just take a screenshot of the app looking at the same area you’re taking pictures of and you have a perfect record later on of what you were looking at. I add it to all my vacation albums. And everybody you show it to is just amazed at how well it works. A couple of minutes after I show them, they’re downloading it.

So much attention to detail, from the fluid movement of the view, to the artistic sketch style of the display, and now with AR! It is humbling to think of all the calculations and sensing that’s going on behind this beautiful interface. They say technology advances by increasing the number of things we can do without thinking about it. PeakFinder has definitely advanced technology. It’s an app worth seeing, even if you’ve never wondered “What’s the name of that lump?”