Globe for iPad app review: a nice geography app

Introduction

A lot of reference apps in the App Store are based around text, words, dictionaries or other books. I was surprised to find a geography app in the reference section of the App Store, and was even more surprised when I opened it. Globe for iPad by Alan Smith is a simple but efficient app where you can look up different countries in the world and simply see them on a globe. The apps functionality stops here, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a helpful app to get for free on the iPad.

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How does it work?

Using the app is simple: you can use your fingers to move around the globe and look around the world, trying to find the country you’re looking for. If you want to zoom in, simply pinch to zoom and you can see the map in more detail. If you can’t find the country you’re looking for on the map, simply go to the search function and select the country you’re looking for from the drop down list that becomes visible then. When you pick a country, the app automatically zooms in on the country you selected, making it easy to find any country in the world without any hassle.

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Other Functions

The app lacks any other functions. If you’re connected to the Internet, you can click on a country to open up the Wikipedia page in your browser to allow you to read and learn more about the country you want. This is where the functionality ends. It would be nice if the developer would add some more fun functions to the app, such as a quiz, or maybe even just some pictures of flags per country.

Another great option would be if you can change the map to different views, such as a map with the mountains on there or what the world looked like in the past. After you simply have checked the app out there isn’t much more to do anymore. Making the Wikipedia information available offline would also be an option to make the app more valuable for people, and make sure that they will not remove it from their device as soon as they’ve seen the functionality. 

 

Pros and Cons

Pros

• A very clear map, with basic functionality
• A great search function with alphabetic listings

 

Cons

• No other functionality
• Only one view
• No reason to keep this on your iPad

 

Conclusion

Globe for iPad is a great little app if you just need a globe with the geographical locations and borders. Any other functionality is missing, and it will be very likely that you will delete this free app from your device as soon as you have seen it. I really hope the developer would add more functionality to the app, as there is a lot of potential for a free app like this. The app is only available for iPad and is just over 1 MB in size.