[vinmontRD]

I rarely post a rant, but I'm totally fed up with one app in particular, and hope that my post might save somebody else the same disappointment I've had...

I'm a frequent commuter, taking the train from Princeton Junction, NJ to NYC. I've searched for a good transit schedule app for my route (NJ Transit - northeast corridor). While there's a highly rated one that carries $15/year subscription price, I was hoping for one with a flat purchase price -- and wound up trying "iTransitBuddy", which I found via Appworld where it appeared highly rated.

Well..reality doesn't match they hype...

The app is slow and not especially well thought out. When selecting a schedule, you must (naturally) select a start and end station -- but apparently the software isn't smart enough to make use of the same list of stations to present as choices, and seems to have to reach out over the 'net each time to fetch the entire list -- so it takes several seconds to show the start station choices, and then the same amount of time to fetch the end list.

Once fetched, the list is ok, although it would be nice to be able to have alternate formats, e.g., letting you focus on a portion of the schedule that's relevant to your commute.

Finally, you have the option to save your route to "favorites". After the annoyance in setting up my route, I was relieved to see that -- so I started by saving my routes TO and FROM work. I verified the saved favorites worked, and closed the app. Next time I fired it up, the Favorites list was empty. I replicated this bug several times, checked for updates, and verified that the I'm running the latest. MAJOR fail on this point.

The train schedules only change perhaps twice a year -- so a well designed schedule app should be able to check the version, or publication date, before forcing you to download an update. The schedules you use should be cacheable on your handheld device -- and you should have the option to have them re-downloaded when a new one is available. But iTransitBuddy doesn't store or cache anything. You can ONLY use it when you have a good signal -- making it about as useful -- but less friendly, than going to NJ Transit's only mobile web site. If I'm in a place with no signal, I cannot see the train schedule. This is positively dopey, and takes away yet more value that could have been in the app.

All in all, between not saving my favorites, and not caching schedules, and downloading the same station list repeatedly for both start and end stations, this app is truly unusable.

I've written to the vendor twice at the specified support email address -- and in a week, I've had no reply whatsoever.

A total waste of time and money.