If you are a traveler or desire to keep track of your vehicular mileage and trip status, Miles is a good option for details. With the tax conscious business traveler in mind, FFWD argues Miles will keep track of the necessary information for tax deduction purposes. The beautiful aesthetics contrast with the fact that boring old taxes are the reason for its creation.
With wood grain and chrome dials leading the graphic charge, it is no doubt Miles is a visual masterpiece. The knobs, buttons, and text scream beauty and attention to detail. Even the FFWD website dedicated to Miles is a visual stunt. The start screen dial begins telling the visual story. The load screen shows a snap shot of your current vehicle miles, year, and month on a speedometer.
Logging a trip is where things get a bit hairy. As you can see, there are many options, description, destination, date, start miles, duration, end miles, and departure. The stars at the top and middle are there to assign familiar locations and routes. Home, for example can be stored for quick retrieval. However, only six blanks are given for favorites. Another frustrating miss calculation is the lack of a previous and next button for the keyboard, the iOS equivalent of “tab.” When completing the new trip form, the user must tap each individual field to populate the information.
The departure location is automatically considered the last arrival position, but this is editable, in the event the logged trips are not consecutive. I also wish the app would automatically calculate the mileage between two exact locations on a map. Which reminds me, there is no map functionality in this log, preventing the user from looking up the desired addresses…or using a GPS location pin to set the arrival and departure marks. Thus, the user is left to manually plug in the locations or use existing address markers in the AddressBook.app contact list.
Once all the details are listed, tap the plus sign for Business, Personal, or Private categories. Once the trip is logged, there are several additional screens giving detailed information about the total trips. The Miles Logbook shows all previous trips, in order, with relevant information. However, this screen does not allow users to delete previous trips or show a total mileage number. Tapping individual trips does include more pertinent information, like average speed.
The statics tab will bring up a detailed view of past trips. This screen will give a week, month, three month or one year snap shots of previous trips. Total miles are listed with dates and the charts can be sorted by business, work, private, or all three categories.
At $19.99 for both iPhone and iPad this is an extremely expensive, yet elegant trip calculator. No, it is not universal, requiring a $40 buy-in for both devices, but they will not sync with iCloud – so don’t bother. Without GPS coordinates or map integration, this is a hefty price to pay for a number tracker.
The app would almost be worth $3 or $4 if it had much more functionality. However, dressing up a calculator with fancy graphics does not make the functionality any higher. Sure, there is a long list of features listed on the Mile website, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty, it is a pretty empty app, considering the high price tag. I gave Miles a 4.5/5 for a great functioning app. But at the $20, I would expect a lot more bells and whistles. Great app, good score, but it is not recommended.
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