iHal – Review

Our rating:

By: International Language Machines Ltd.

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2010-02-26

Developer:

Price: 9.99

User Rating:

Loading...

I’ve been playing around with iHal for a bit, and I have to say that I really don’t see the point.  The program basically communicates via the Internet with an artificial intelligence set up somewhere remote.  Supposedly it would learn from the conversation and customize responses to you.

Sadly, it works as well as a similar program I encountered in my childhood at various science museums.  That is to say, not very well.  The program didn’t seem to vary it’s responses to my texts and continued to call me "mommy".  I think the programmers are very limited in whatever responses they programmed into iHal.

Obviously, the program takes its name from the ubiquitous computer from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and its sequels.  To its advantage, it does have various voices to read back the text that appears.  They are deep male, normal male, deep female and normal female.  You also can set what type of voice you have from the same four choices.  Given the variety of human voices out there, the choices seem limited.

By the way, the price for this is $9.99.  Yes, you read that correctly.  $9.99.  It’s categorized as a utility, but I don’t get any utility from this program.  If I had a choice between $10 on this or Chinatown Wars, there would be no choice.

This program’s design is based on the Hal computer frmo the movies, and we know how he turned out at the end (hint: homicidal).  Avoid this program at all costs.