Edibles – You Are Joking, Right?

By
On August 19, 2008

I have the good fortune to be married to someone who is an excellent cook. Trained by the Natural Gourmet in Manhattan, she not only prepares amazing food, but she prepares amazing food that is incredibly healthy. I share this not to brag (although I do think she is amazong on many levels- this just one) but because, thanks to her, I have never needed to think about my diet or count points. When I needed to lose weight a few years ago and went on South Beach, she proceeded to guide me and do all the food prep and I needed. Thanks to her, tracking my food intake is not an issue.

For those who don’t have a culinary expert as a spouse (or is one) iPhone applications like Edibles could be a huge benefit. COULD BE but, in this case, IS NOT. Why?  Because for an app designed to be "a food journal for tracking a specific value related to whatever diet you are doing" this is a joke or, at least, should not have been released. In its current form, for any diet that requires nutritional information, it is a complete waste of $6.

The words that give it away appear the first time you start the app (and never apper again)-

Edibles currently ships with an empty food database but you can easily enter your foods into the database as you go. Simple touch the "+" button in the upper right corner to add a new food. We hope to ship a pre-populated database in a future revision.

So let’s walk through this-

"Empty food database"– great, so I spent $6 to get help tracking food but I need to know the values of the food I eat for it to be of use. Isn’t that why I bought it?

"Easily enter"– easy for you maybe but I have no clue about the nutritional content of foods. Again, isn’t that why I bought the app in the first place?

"We hope to ship a pre-populated database in a future revision."– if it is, as you wrote  second ago,  so "easy to enter" the data, why would it be necessary to ship a pre-populated database? And what kind of nonsense is "We hope to…" for an app that cost $6??
I would have a different response if this were free…it isn’t.

 

Forgive me folks but this is a joke that doesn’t even deserve a full review.

FAIL.