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Wow, you only need to take a look at Apple’s new Travel App interface on their website to see that the display on their iPad is simply gorgeous – from a subjective point of view, admittedly!
The silvery white-rimmed edge of the iPad complements the deep blue of the globe. This latest travel app is not just stunning to look at but the apps aren’t half bad too - if somewhat mixed!
In short, this travel app covers top destinations to visit, great restaurants, flight time schedules, National Geographic maps, and then its complemented with partners like TripAdvisor, Kayak HD, Hotels.com, Yelp, Urbanspoon, and more.
Apples Flight track Pro
Price: $9.99
With the ability to look at maps and zoom right in (even when offline), in Version 4.4.1 various crashes and bugs have been fixed and customer reviews indicate that its additional updates have improved, with flight time scheduling being more on the ball. It still lacks comprehensive coverage for all flight data on a given date.
50 Places of a Lifetime – National Geographic
Price: $1.99
This add-on app may cost you $1.99, but what’s great about the app store is this: like Amazon, only those who have bought the item can give a review. In this case, the reviews are mixed.
On the one hand it’s described as difficult to use with commentary years out of date, but for audio quality and its aesthetic beauty it makes a nice gift for some with and from this aspect it does generate warmer reviews.
National Geographic Maps
Price: $1.99
National Geographic's maps app, on the other hand, comes highly rated. With HD maps, canyons, islands, and glaciers all exquisitely laid out. Their detail of paths and tracks for navigation have improved but it is still not perfect.
There some bugs still in this app and it doesn’t appear to be the GPS which is out but the app itself is failing to sync. Check the latest user reviews for more info.
Urbanspoon for iPad
Price: Free
This app gets four stars from 260 ratings so it’s pretty decent.
For restaurant searches this comes in as one of the top apps and its free!
You get to search restaurants by neighborhood, spin if you want, compare ratings reviews, and you get offline access to data stored. It is available to US, Canadian, Australian and UK citizens who live in metro areas.
Yelp
Price: Free
Designed for both iPhone and iPad, Yelp is available in 10 languages and its latest version averages a 3.5 start rating from 177.
Most of us are familiar with Yelp so to summarize its latest updates for version 5.8.0, what’s new is you get to instantly poke one of your friends restaurant check-ins and let them know of your favorite dish. It’s also now available to the people of Norway and you get to write longer tips.
Open Table for iPad
Price: Free
The recent upgrade of OpenTable includes some bug fixes but it still has one major flaw in its design. Should you stray from the restaurant you were booking through to another app and then go back, the app can’t handle this multitasking, which you have to start afresh.
Aside from this somewhat frustrating element it does receive good reviews and many users use it as their exclusive restaurant-booking tool.
TripAdvisor
Price: Free
What’s new in version 6.1 is full support for new iPad and retina screens, more Facebook features, and some minor bug fixes.
To be fair the reviews aren’t that glowing, with a number of users asking for the older version to be rolled back as it’s now mandatory that 6.1 be the only working app.
For restaurant and hotel owners in certain cities, listings are majorly inaccurate. It still gets 4 stars out of five from 1600+ ratings, so depending on your city, you may have better luck.