iPhone App: Pocket Cocktails

October 28th,
2008

Posted by Doug
under Books, iPhone

I found another worthy entrant into the iPhone cocktail app sweepstakes: Pocket Cocktails, by Robert Maran and Deidra Jones. (Direct link to iTunes App Store here) Pocket Cocktails is a local App (like Cocktails), rather than a web app (an iPhone-formatted web page). It runs $4.99, which seems pretty middle of the road for Apps like this. If you are looking for a way to keep some mixological reference material always at hand, Pocket Cocktails is well worth evaluating.
The basic look is very Atomic Cocktail era, evoking Mercury Astronauts, mini skirts, and the Mambo. And it evokes them very well. The makers of this software come from the book publishing world, and it shows in the very professional and appealing design. The highlight of Pocket Cocktails is the beautiful, full-screen photo for each drink entry in the database. I was amazed at the quality of photos, and asked the author Robert Maran the source. He told me that he and his in-house photographer did all the pictures. I wanted to know if he used water or the real stuff and he said,

…we used real liquor and ingredients for EVERY drink; it’s completely authentic.
In fact we had about 50 liquor bottles that were 95% full at the end of the shoot. For some of the eclectic recipe ingredients we just needed one or two ounces from these bottles.

I feel certain that any number of us would be happy to help him with this terrible inventory problem!

The recipes (and original photography) largely come from a book previously published by Maran, Maran Illustrated Bartending. Maran Illustrated is a series of books similar in variety and format to the Dummies and Idiots series, covering subjects from Knitting, to Yoga, to Vista, with the added benefit of not carrying around a book declaring yourself to be an idiot or dummy. Unlike most Idiot and Dummy books, these are glossy, full-color jobs. Bartending is aimed at home or craft, rather than commercial, bartending, and would make a fine foundation-level book for the home bar library. (One quibble: Robert, please don’t tell me you really shake drinks as described in the book. It’s is just so very wrong!)

Warning: The following, possibly NSFW, video is from the demented
folks at 42° Below Vodka. I present it for contrast
with the stiff, boring shake proposed by Robert in his book.

I’m sorry to subject you to that. Let’s get back to Pocket Cocktails and some specific features.
The App is laid out like all good iPhone software, in that it is laid out… like all other good iPhone software. The menu bar across the bottom of the screen gets you anywhere in the App from anywhere. You can browse the entire database in similar fashion to the iPhone phonebook, or browse by category. In either case, there is a thumbnail photo beside each drink in the list. You can also easily search by name or ingredient. The search function is live, so you see your selections narrow as you type. This is a lot more handy than you might think at first. The database contains a little over 300 entries, which is good, but smaller than most competitors. There is no Pegu here, so feel free to be utterly outraged by that.
Each entry has three pages. When you select a drink, the first page that opens is the photo page, so you can see what you are making. A pop-up menu near the bottom of the screen than allows you to toggle back and forth between the picture, the ingredient page, and the recipe page. This can be a little klunky, flipping back and forth between ingredients and mixing instructions, but it makes the text much more readable. There aren’t too many 11 ingredient, 9 step Tiki concoctions in here, so the back and forth usually won’t matter. In fact, Tiki drinks seem to get a little short shrift in all the drink apps I’ve looked at. I’d get upset about that, but I think I’ll let Trader Tiki and Dr. Bamboo call down the gods’ wrath themselves if they want to. Maran plans to add drinks to the database with future updates, and are looking for suggestions.
Every cocktail App needs a random drink feature, and every such App needs a gimmick. Pocket Cocktails combines the two, with the Shaker. Choose Random from the menu and give your iPhone a shake. As the phone goes to a random drink, a female voice utters a cutesy phrase, or you hear the sound of ice in a shaker. It is fun and creative, but I’d personally rather just have a bunch of ice shaking noises.
Technically, the software is very well written. The App is fast and responsive, and I really like the live search feature. Pocket Cocktails is the only cocktail database I’ve seen with it. The browser list works very well, but I’ll grouse that you need to be a little precise with your fingertip in activating an individual recipe from the list. There is a lot of white space in each entry that does not seem to be a live link, leaving you tapping with no immediate result. This may be intentional, as it makes browsing a little easier if your fingers are… um… unsteady. The software doesn’t have any bookmarking, or other method of marking your favorites. For those of with a mind like a steel sieve, this is a lack.
To sum up, Pocket Cocktails is a solid, smooth-running cocktail resource for the iPhone. Its database is smaller than some, but free of duplicates or total bullsh*t recipes. Its search function is the best overall that I’ve run across. And the pictures are absolutely gorgeous. The whole project has the warm feel of a labor of love. I am definitely keeping this App on my phone.

Here’s a list of the other posts here about Apple iPhone software:

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iPhone Cocktail Directories

July 19th,
2008

Posted by Doug
under iPhone, Pegus

Happy iPhone Day, Mk. II! (A day late)
OK, I had planned for this post to go up yesterday, on the day Maggi and I, along with a certain number of others, picked up our new G3 iPhones. I thought the Apple Store employees did a great job, but the coming of the iPocalypse cost me the time I had intended to spend finishing this post. At any rate, here it is!
(Updated. I intend to update this post and bump it each time someone tells me about a new directory, rather than doing new posts.)

In honor of the refresh of the Greatest Device In Human History (your mileage may vary), I thought I’d do a quick review of the cocktail databases out there that are formatted for use with your iPhone. I’ve found four so far, of various quality. If you know of any others, please let me know!
Note: All of these are websites. The App Store does not appear to have a cocktail database. Yet.

We shall start with the iPhone version of Your Next Drink. This iPhone front end has an admirably sparse design, which suffers from a single, serious/minor flaw: The Search button is placed in the header, and I had completely written this review before I noticed it even had a search feature! The parent site, Your Next Drink (Droogle.ca) is pretty cool, and I had not seen it before. It looks to be a potential serious challenger for cocktaildb.com and I’ll look into it more later. But the iPhone site is a little underfeatured. You can get a listing of the top rated cocktails, in one massive alphabetical list, which isn’t very helpful. Or you can get a random cocktail recipe or random shot (this option is inexplicably recommended). There are no ads on the main page.
Bottom Line: Useful, with what appears to be a pretty substantial database behind it. The design is a little hinky, and not very visually interesting. On the upside, YND has three, count ‘em, three entries for the Pegu, so it gets a basic thumbs up around here, just for that!

Online Bartender, by Amir Meshkin is the iPhone front end from Shots on Us. First off, it uses some very spiffy iPhone-esque animation and design features. The menus animate as they load in, and the feel of navigation shows that Amir is probably an Apple guy. The search feature is right up top and works nicely. The browse function is what is most iPhone-like, but demonstrates that a slick GUI is not necessarily useful. You first choose a base spirit from the list on the front page, a list with some odd choices. I was unaware that Absolute Citron deserves equal billing with Vodka, Gin, Rum, and Scotch. Once you choose your first, you are than provided with a multi-page list (with lots of inexplicable duplications) of a second ingredient. After that, you are given a list of cocktails that you can make with these items. It all looks great, but works clumsily. There is a block of Google Ads at the bottom. They don’t appear unless you scroll down. The parent site, Shots On Us, uses the same browsing methodology.
Bottom Line: I want to reward a site that obviously puts so much into making their iPhone Safari front end look so much like a standalone app. But it just doesn’t work very well. The database does include a good Pegu recipe, so I want you to at least check it out!

Pocket Bar-Mobile is almost a demo of how to make a web app on the iPhone. The owner, Vishal Seth, is a programmer. He boght an iPhone and wanted to try out the developer technology. He must be a cocktailian, since he chose to make an iPhone-delivered database of drinks. The search function is clean and well placed. I don’t know where his database of drinks comes from, but it is pretty good sized. He gives you a list of most popular drinks, and most popular searches. A little fun can be had with the latter…. There are no ads, but he does give a paypal addy for donations.
Bottom Line: The database seems a bit thin and wonky. It includes drinks like the Red Headed Slut, but not the Aviation. Oh, and no Pegu! Get with the program, Vishal!
The last drinks reference is the Cocktails portion of iPhone Plaza, a suite of little web apps for the iPhone.
The app looks OK. There is an effort made to include some graphics elements to dress it up, and it has a bold appearance. There is no direct search function, which holds this one back. It does have a lot of options and specialty lists, such as low-calorie drinks, a random drink function, and uniquely on this list, a section on Wine. The drinks database seems reasonably extensive, but has some squirrelly entries (see what they have to say about the Corpse Reviver.) The bottom of every page has ads, and there is a donate button as well.
Bottom Line: There is lots of other stuff for the iPhone (of varying utility) here to use–lots of functions within the cocktail portion as well. As I said, there is extra effort to make things look graphically interesting, but did they have to make it look like a Windows ’95-era application? Oh, and no Pegu! (I did use the included submission form to hopefully correct this.)

One final note, thanks to the various fellow cocktail bloggers, whose superior photography skills I ripped off to make the graphic at the top of this post. A cookie to the first person who can tell me all the blogs involved!
UPDATE: Jimmy, over at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour, points out that he has updated his Daily Cocktail feature to look, feel, and work iPhoney. I usually ignore daily, random cocktail features, for two reasons. Personally, I am kind of a coward about new cocktails. I just don’t have the guts to take a breath and mix up something the Fates have decided would be good for me. And most daily or random drink functions simply pop out one recipe from a giant database, leaving a lot of variability in type, quality, source, etc. Jimmy’s does a bit more, by doing less. He apparently hand-picks his recipes, and I respect his judgement. (So should you.) Further, he adds a bit of actual content by providing a link to something interesting written out here on the web about each drink.
Bottom Line: It looks and works well on the iPhone, and unlike most of these sites, looks good on a regular browser too. Very limited content, but that content is extremely strong. No adds, only a link to Jimmy’s place. Oh, and no Pegu yet!

Here’s a list of the other posts here about Apple iPhone software:

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iPhone App From CocktailDB: Cocktails

July 13th,
2008

Posted by Doug
under iPhone

My last post detailed the iPhone-formatted web drink directories that I could find. I mentioned that no one had yet come up with a native iPhone App, but that I anticipated on real soon now. Fortunately, Jay from Oh Gosh! (possessor of the planets best URL) left me a comment that The Future Is Now.
icon
Behold Cocktails, the iPhone native App from CocktailDB. I can’t believe that I missed this when writing my first post. Sorry, Ted and Martin! In my defense, you don’t have a link to this App anywhere that I can find on your main site! I did look.
Let me say right up front that this is a great piece of software. Of the stuff I’ve looked at and downloaded so far from the App Store, the $9.99 for Cocktails is the best value. Only WeatherBug seems more indispensable to me so far, and it’s free. Further, Cocktails excels over its Web App cocktail competitors in a variety of ways.
First, being a native App is very valuable here. Whether you are on a Beach, a Boat, or in a Basement Bar, you will often not have an available wireless or cell connection when you want to mix up a batch of Bahama Mamas. Cocktails stores its database on the phone. They can also add a lot of features that would be impractical with a compressed iPhone web interface, or even a full-blown web interface for that matter. Finally, things are a lot faster and more responsive with a local App. Incidentally, none of these advantages would matter is the App wasn’t technically well-designed and written. Ian Baird of Skorpiostech has done a bang up job with Cocktails. Thanks Ian.
Next, let’s talk about some of the interface advantages Cocktails has over some or all of the Web Apps I detailed yesterday. First, the interface is completely iPhone-like, not a facsimile. The search box and browse functions look and feel and work just like the iPhone Phonebook. The menubar on the bottom looks just like iTunes. I don’t know whether this is all a product of Our Maximum Leader Steve Jobs’ iPhone SDK, or whether Ian is the kind of programmer who both understands the value of Apple’s Human User Interface Guidelines, and has the skill to use them. My guess is a lot of both. And as I said before, the features Cocktails implements with that interface are very nice. I particularly like the Favorites function. When you want to mark a recipe as a favorite, you simply tap the star at the bottom. A dark star watermark appears in the parchment-like background behind the recipe. Furthermore, a yellow star appears in the drink directory under the icon for any favorite drink, so it pops out to your attention nicely if you are browsing. Of course, there is also a separate Favorites list to browse as well. It’s gee-whiz kewl and understated at the same time. Very cocktailian.
Lastly I ought to say something about content. Most of what I’m going to write here are quibbles or questions. That is because we are talking about CocktailDB’s entire database here. If you are experienced with the online cocktail world, those words should be enough. If you are just getting into things, then you just need to understand that CocktailDB is the Gold Standard of web cocktail references. CocktailDB’s database is huge, easy to use, and 98% crap-free. (No Screaming Red Orgasms here.) It is well organized, and the iPhone version is, if anything, even easier to use than the online full website. The only glaring area of omission is that there is no Tiki category, plenty of Tiki drinks, but no way to search for the genre. Also, Cocktails has no recipe submission function. Finally, I see nothing about how, where, or when the locally stored database can and will be updated. I’m assuming this won’t be too hard, if they are committed to the project. So go out and buy a copy for your iPhone. We should reward good work like this, and it’ll make sure it’s worth their while to keep it up!

Here’s a list of the other posts here about Apple iPhone software:

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