When I first took the plunge and got a mobile phone, all those years ago, it wasn't for the promise of being constantly in touch, that was one of the reasons I delayed for as long as I did (though now, with Facebook, instant messaging, Twitter, etc., it does seem a rather quaint attitude), but for the ability to get football scores on the move. I used to work Saturdays, Sundays and a few late nights in those days so the times I was unable to be in a position to see matches were legion. The promise of being able to keep in touch with what was going on at all times was the major factor in my decision to get a phone. And it was a cheap, fairly rubbish phone, even by the standards of the day, but it did its job.
Fast forward to today and with my cutting edge Iphone I still find the ability to keep in touch with the football essential. Although my working hours now enable me to see pretty much every game I desire and be in front of Sky Sports News most Saturdays there are still times when I am cut off from normal footballing duty and require a little help from my phone - when at a wedding for the Everton-Man Utd this season my phone was surreptitiously in my lap throughout the service, for instance (from the disapproving stares I received I'm not convinced it was surreptitious enough, but the service was really overlong, honest).
So, how have things changed in the intervening years? How does my Iphone's big, colourful touchscreen and fancy football apps compare to my old black and white tiny screened aesthetic nightmare of yesteryear? Well, I have two football apps on my Iphone, Ifooty and EPL Livecast (App Store links) and the first thing to say is that they both suffer from a similar problem, namely, that during the times when the app would be at its most useful - say 3 till 5 on a Saturday - they suffer from intermittent service. I'm no tech wizard but I assume that the problem is the servers become too busy when a lot of people access the app at the same time, or whatever. This is a major problem, obviously, because when there's no football on I don't really need the app. The result is that often I'll simply open Safari and check the scores on the BBC website direct. At times when the game is on the TV and I simply can't get to a TV the apps become useful again, less pressure so they work and you can watch the match unfold via text commentary, not entirely satisfactory its true, but better than missing out altogether. Again, this is something that could be done via Safari, but the auto-refresh and overall ease of use makes the apps preferable. I think one of the problems is that the apps work better with a Wi-Fi connection and yet, if I'm near Wi-fi I'm probably near a TV and so the scores can be got there. On a Saturday afternoon in the pub, they may well offer free Wi-fi, but they also probably have Soccer Saturday on the TV so I don't need the app. In the places where the app would come into its own a Wi-fi connection is generally unavailable and you have to rely on the network signal, which means the app fails to work well. There's no real answer to this dilemma I guess.
To the individual applications themselves and the major problem with Ifooty is the way one selects the matches. Instead of having all the matches and their scores on the same page you have to go to one of the teams involved in the match you want to know the score of and tap on it, which takes you to the option page, from which you tap "Match Live", which takes you to the match updates. This is OK for the TV games - only one match on so you don't have to switch much. It becomes tiresome on a Saturday afternoon when you're trying to keep up with several games - and made worse by the aforementioned habit of the app failing due to busyness. The text commentary is taken from the BBC, and the BBC commentaries tend to be a little too dry in their descriptions. Frankly, for TV games I tend to just go to The Guardian website and read their text commentaries, which give a more personal and involved view of the games. The app also provides news from the BBC team page, a league table (which is a good feature, an easily accessible league table on a phone is a great argument resolver). The app also used to give all your team's fixtures but this feature has been disabled due to a copyright claim by the Premier League (which I find a strange attitude- surely they'd rather you knew the fixtures so you could watch the games?) and so now just provides a link to the BBC website fixtures. This app has the fact that it's free going for it, and for that price its good to have on your Iphone. Also an update is promised soon with some new features so it'll be intersting to see where it goes.
The other app, EPL Livecast, is currently £2.39 in the app store (it was on sale when I got it) and is certainly better than the free alternative. Of course, as the name suggests, it suffers from it's featuring just the one competition, but it being the main competition it is useful most weeks. This app is easier to get scores than Ifooty, it's main screen shows all the matches on that particular day, so all the scores can be seen at once. You can then tap the match you want for further details which takes you to a text commentary. I'm not sure who provides this commentary for the app, but it's slightly better than the BBC version. You can also view the team on the pitch, a timeline of the game, and stats for the game, which update throughout, which is very useful. When it works this app is the best of the two. Of course if you're a supporter of a team outside of the top flight it becomes a less useful (Ifooty offers all the English leagues). And when your team is involved in a game in a different competition it's not so good (again Ifooty provides your teams games whatever the competition).
Is this better than the olden days with the tiny black and white screen? Undoubtedly yes, everything always used to take ages to load back then anyway so it was always a frustrating experience and the information on offer is now a lot better and a lot easier to find. The difference is that with a wealth of instant information now available any delay is seen as a delay too long. But the wealth of information that these apps offer on the go more than make up for the techinical difficulties the apps experience. And the possibility of future updates continuing to iron out data issues means that the apps can only get better.
Having said that I am increasingly using Twitter for the purpose of keeping up to date. The Iphone has a range of Twitter apps, both free and paid, which update with speed. This has become a very useful way to stay in touch with everything that is going on when one is away from "normal" means of communication. Breaking news to football scores are all available within seconds of the events happening, and from a range of voices, making Twitter my number source of information on the go, the shortness of the messages means that there is never a problem updating even without a Wi-Fi connection.
Overall then, the football apps are a useful addition to any Iphone, especially Ifooty, being free, but there are other means of getting instant information which are possibly better. The range of other information available via the apps means that they still have a use, even if there could still be improvements in the reliabilty of the service.
Fast forward to today and with my cutting edge Iphone I still find the ability to keep in touch with the football essential. Although my working hours now enable me to see pretty much every game I desire and be in front of Sky Sports News most Saturdays there are still times when I am cut off from normal footballing duty and require a little help from my phone - when at a wedding for the Everton-Man Utd this season my phone was surreptitiously in my lap throughout the service, for instance (from the disapproving stares I received I'm not convinced it was surreptitious enough, but the service was really overlong, honest).
So, how have things changed in the intervening years? How does my Iphone's big, colourful touchscreen and fancy football apps compare to my old black and white tiny screened aesthetic nightmare of yesteryear? Well, I have two football apps on my Iphone, Ifooty and EPL Livecast (App Store links) and the first thing to say is that they both suffer from a similar problem, namely, that during the times when the app would be at its most useful - say 3 till 5 on a Saturday - they suffer from intermittent service. I'm no tech wizard but I assume that the problem is the servers become too busy when a lot of people access the app at the same time, or whatever. This is a major problem, obviously, because when there's no football on I don't really need the app. The result is that often I'll simply open Safari and check the scores on the BBC website direct. At times when the game is on the TV and I simply can't get to a TV the apps become useful again, less pressure so they work and you can watch the match unfold via text commentary, not entirely satisfactory its true, but better than missing out altogether. Again, this is something that could be done via Safari, but the auto-refresh and overall ease of use makes the apps preferable. I think one of the problems is that the apps work better with a Wi-Fi connection and yet, if I'm near Wi-fi I'm probably near a TV and so the scores can be got there. On a Saturday afternoon in the pub, they may well offer free Wi-fi, but they also probably have Soccer Saturday on the TV so I don't need the app. In the places where the app would come into its own a Wi-fi connection is generally unavailable and you have to rely on the network signal, which means the app fails to work well. There's no real answer to this dilemma I guess.
To the individual applications themselves and the major problem with Ifooty is the way one selects the matches. Instead of having all the matches and their scores on the same page you have to go to one of the teams involved in the match you want to know the score of and tap on it, which takes you to the option page, from which you tap "Match Live", which takes you to the match updates. This is OK for the TV games - only one match on so you don't have to switch much. It becomes tiresome on a Saturday afternoon when you're trying to keep up with several games - and made worse by the aforementioned habit of the app failing due to busyness. The text commentary is taken from the BBC, and the BBC commentaries tend to be a little too dry in their descriptions. Frankly, for TV games I tend to just go to The Guardian website and read their text commentaries, which give a more personal and involved view of the games. The app also provides news from the BBC team page, a league table (which is a good feature, an easily accessible league table on a phone is a great argument resolver). The app also used to give all your team's fixtures but this feature has been disabled due to a copyright claim by the Premier League (which I find a strange attitude- surely they'd rather you knew the fixtures so you could watch the games?) and so now just provides a link to the BBC website fixtures. This app has the fact that it's free going for it, and for that price its good to have on your Iphone. Also an update is promised soon with some new features so it'll be intersting to see where it goes.
The other app, EPL Livecast, is currently £2.39 in the app store (it was on sale when I got it) and is certainly better than the free alternative. Of course, as the name suggests, it suffers from it's featuring just the one competition, but it being the main competition it is useful most weeks. This app is easier to get scores than Ifooty, it's main screen shows all the matches on that particular day, so all the scores can be seen at once. You can then tap the match you want for further details which takes you to a text commentary. I'm not sure who provides this commentary for the app, but it's slightly better than the BBC version. You can also view the team on the pitch, a timeline of the game, and stats for the game, which update throughout, which is very useful. When it works this app is the best of the two. Of course if you're a supporter of a team outside of the top flight it becomes a less useful (Ifooty offers all the English leagues). And when your team is involved in a game in a different competition it's not so good (again Ifooty provides your teams games whatever the competition).
Is this better than the olden days with the tiny black and white screen? Undoubtedly yes, everything always used to take ages to load back then anyway so it was always a frustrating experience and the information on offer is now a lot better and a lot easier to find. The difference is that with a wealth of instant information now available any delay is seen as a delay too long. But the wealth of information that these apps offer on the go more than make up for the techinical difficulties the apps experience. And the possibility of future updates continuing to iron out data issues means that the apps can only get better.
Having said that I am increasingly using Twitter for the purpose of keeping up to date. The Iphone has a range of Twitter apps, both free and paid, which update with speed. This has become a very useful way to stay in touch with everything that is going on when one is away from "normal" means of communication. Breaking news to football scores are all available within seconds of the events happening, and from a range of voices, making Twitter my number source of information on the go, the shortness of the messages means that there is never a problem updating even without a Wi-Fi connection.
Overall then, the football apps are a useful addition to any Iphone, especially Ifooty, being free, but there are other means of getting instant information which are possibly better. The range of other information available via the apps means that they still have a use, even if there could still be improvements in the reliabilty of the service.
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