It's that time of year. You're getting twitchy, anxious, and generally restless. Expectations are high. No, not from the in-laws coming to town for the holidays. Your local ski hills are opening up and with each new storm creeping ever closer to that 100% trails and lifts status. What better way to annoy your family while eating breakfast, or your co-workers during that boring meeting than to constantly monitor snow conditions from your iPhone? Well, I've gone to great lengths to annoy as many of my friends and family as possible over the past few weeks reviewing ski related iPhone applications. This review focuses on apps that provide snow conditions and resort information.
The Contenders:
- REI
- The North Face
- Skireport.com
I'll cut to the chase and save everyone some time - don't waste time with the REI and North Face options. Here's why. I rate the North Face as better than REI due to its overview page (as seen in a previous blog entry on this site). However, both are slow to load and rely on loading web pages that are not formatted for a mobile device within the app. App developers, puleeeeaaze stop cutting corners by loading a URL when I click a button in your app! Examples of the programming faux pas are links to web cams, maps, and resort info. I'll also note that the REI app has a slick, if not pointless, interface when switching between your favorite resorts.
The clear winner is the skireport.com application. Here are some highlights that set it apart:
- It automatically loads resorts based on your GPS location; and does so very quickly.
- Loads data for the resort overview very quickly.
- Has a nice "PowderPoints" button for those dreamers that want to get depressed by how much it snows in the Pacific Northwest compared to Colorado and New Mexico, boo.
- Possibly the best use of community capabilities - the ability to read and post first hand reports right from the resort overview page (until someone starts spamming everyone, so far so good).
- Nice 4 day weather overview.
- Web cam shots load within the application, and quickly I must say.
Potential gripes about skireport.com? Not many. You could say it's missing maps and other general information about the resort. But you can get the general information from Google or Bing and there are some really good resort and/or topo map applications that do a much better job than loading the onthesnow.com web page within the app. All in all, it provides enough information to keep me happy. And does so with a snappy, pleasant interface.
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