The Measuring App for the Imprecise / Paranoid

• Category: Utility
• Developer: Andrew Knodt
• Version: 1.0.2
• Cost: $0.99
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G
• Download URL

This app is as simple as it gets: it does one thing and one thing only - measures the distance between two locations. The app uses the iPhone’s built-in GPS system to drive the measurement - turn on the GPS, press “start” at location A, run down the block, press “stop” and you get the distance between the two.

Because the distance relies on the accuracy of the GPS signal,which greatly depends on the strength of the signal you are picking up, the accuracy of the measurement is highly variable. The app tells you right in it’s super simplistic interface what it thinks the accuracy is - for me it averaged around +/- 17 meters The funny thing at the app store the screen shot shows an accuracy of +/- 400 meters! These days that level of accuracy (or inaccuracy) is not even acceptable when measuring the cicumference of the Earth! Come to think of it - if you tried to do measure the Earth’s circumference with this app - you’d probably get zero (well, zero +/- 400m. Of course!)

Tape Measure really should have been a free app. The app’s functionality is pretty basic, the interface is first year (first month?) comp sci project simple, and it doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to do with accuracy. So at $0.99 why did I buy it? One simple feature - it shows you your GPS location. In the last 6 months my local news has been filled with stories of hikers lost for days, as well as plane, helicopter and boat crashes. I’ve sold my mountain bike, only hike the standard stuff, never been in a propeller plane, and hate boats; nevertheless I keep wondering what I’d do if I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. I’m guessing knowing my GPS coordinates can’t be a bad thing, right?

How it Measures

With it’s extremely limited feature set, and pretty impractical level of accuracy, even $0.99 seems steep compared to the host of free apps out there.

App Review Score: 1.0 out of 5

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