Boxcar for iPhone
I have been testing the Boxcar app for iPhone for a few weeks now after reading this post by TechCrunch.
Boxcar is a great idea for an app. It allows you to set up "services" for push notifications to your phone. This includes options for Facebook, Twitter, and email.
The biggest win of Boxcar is that you can set a different sound for these notifications. This helps so that I can tell the differnce between real SMS messages and @replies on Twitter. I love that.
The six SMS sounds on the iPhone suck:
- The best of the worst is the default "Tri-tone" sound. This is obvious because it's the only one that people use. I can sit in a meeting or a gathering and hear that everyone uses this sound for their iPhone SMS alerts.
- Every now and then you hear a brave soul who has switched to "Chime". I'd bet if you talked to them in a week they would have switched back.
- The "Glass" tone makes people's ears bleed.
- Apparently Crusty the Clown works at Apple because the "Horn" sound would be only fitting for someone who works for Ringling Bros circus and appreciates that level of abnoxious.
- The "Bell" reminds me of ships coming into port at Fisherman's Wharf and is really too much for a message that says: "I'm on my way".
- Don't even get me started on the "Electronic" sound that makes me want to burn things, starting with your phone if you use this sound.
And that's it. Those are your choices, a whopping 6 of them; 5 of which are not really choices at all. Even my old Windows Mobile Samsung Blackjack had dozens out of the box (to be fair, some of them were lame too) and it had the ability to add your own sound from any .mp3 file on earth.
Yes, I know you can jailbreak your phone and "stick it to the man" and put anything you want on your phone with Cydia etc etc. Fine, come talk to me when then next update hits and you have to use the Crusty the Clown "Horn" sound because your hacks are hacked.
The biggest fail of Boxcar is that their interface sucks, and the setup is torture. I experienced this myself when trying to set up Twitter @replies notification over, and over, and over. I somehow lucked out on the 10th try and now it works great. Too bad it was so painful.
Another fail is that they charge by service. The app is free to download and includes your first service. I chose Twitter @replies as my first service so I haven't paid for anything yet. Any additional service will cost $1.99 and come with a long list of upgrade and password frustrations from what I have read in the feedback comments on iTunes. If I have learned anything from iPhone apps, the best thing to do is to give away a free version that people cant live without and then charge for a full version that is worth it. The nickel-and-dime model that Boxcar is using just pisses people off. I'd rather pay more for a fully functioning app than $1.99 for bits and pieces that may or may not work when I change my password or update my phone OS, only to be charged again.
Overall, I'm happy with the free part of Boxcar (now that it's working) but I think that Apple needs to do something about its lame SMS sounds and customization options. They should also do something better with the push-notification feature. Yay, you have it ...now what?
Try Boxcar for yourself here: http://boxcar.io/
I saw this commercial the other day. I thought it was the perfect end to an iPhone complaint post today
