Fodor's city apps

…are on sale for $3.99 for a limited time at the iTunes store. Apps for Rome, London, Paris, San Francisco, and NYC. Learn more here.

Comments

[Alan B]

Do these Fodor app's support the GPS function of the iPhone? Take the wrong turn, it is very easy to get LOST in London, Paris or Rome, very old cities that are hardly on a regular grid system. I did for my trip to Europe recently download Cities2Go, which promised that it would work with the iPhone GPS. While it worked well as a trial in my medium-sized California city, the program was a total bust as far as working with the GPS in any of seven or eight European locations.

The map program that comes with the iPhone depends on an Internet connection to download a map for the area, which is problematic unless one is within range of a Wi-Fi connection, or a wireless 3G link (that can be very expensive in Europe!) My quick reading of these Fodor apps is that they do NOT support GPS. If they did, they'd easily be worth twice the current cost. What Fodor's should consider is a master program, that would then link to these more discrete apps.

There is, by the way, a Knopf series of small books with fold-out maps, showing major attractions for each city, called Mapguides, 5 oz. each. I have used the one for London, very handy, costs about $10, and recently purchased for our longer trips next year the versions for Washington, DC and Paris. Low-tech...but portable and reliable.

[Traveler75]

The main purpose of Fodor's apps is NOT to help you navigate through the city like you'd use any old subway map though I read it has those locations too. Its importance & usefulness lie in its ability to locate nearby attractions (restaurants, museums, etc) with unique, easy-to-use filters such as cuisine and neighborhood to name a few, and furthermore provide Fodor's current & well-researched reviews. It also has very practical and useful features such as adding your own field notes. You can also use the "Fodor's Choice" filter to get their top recommended picks.

To dismiss it as a dysfunctional navigator is to be ignorant of the concept and true usefulness of this app.

[MikeG]

A customer review on iTunes says that the iPhone's own GPS works fine in conjunction with Fodor's offline maps.

[Alan B]

"To dismiss it as a dysfunctional navigator is to be ignorant of the concept and true usefulness of this app."

Actually my comment pertained to a DIFFERENT map app.

<<A customer review on iTunes says that the iPhone's own GPS works fine in conjunction with Fodor's offline maps. >>

If that's the case, great; I'll get the Fodor app for Paris, a city with particularly irregular streets.