The iPhone Mom

I found iColoring Book Lite to be confusing. My four year old uses it and seems to enjoy it well enough but when I play around with it I just don’t get it. You start by choosing a coloring page. It’s probably not saying much but I have trouble getting the pages to open up. It only seems to work for me some of the time – what am I missing? Once you have a coloring page opened you can choose from the colored pencils at the bottom of the screen. Swipe your finger along the screen and you’ll see more colors. At the top of the screen you can choose the pencil icon which will let you color wherever you want. Or you can choose the pencil with a bucket. This keeps you coloring “in the lines’”. That’s the one feature I liked about this app. I’d suggest tapping the teeny-tiny question mark on the lower right of the main screen so you can pay a visit to the help section. I probably should have read it more closely because to me this app just seems too complicated for little kids.

Price when Reviewed: Free

See the app at iTunes

Seller: PockeySoft, Inc.

I was hopeful about the UP app because I love Pixar movies. We look forward to a new one each summer and it’s always great to go to a family movie without worrying about what kind of explaining we’ll have to do on the car ride home. My husband and son have seen UP and loved it and I’m planning on taking my girls in the next couple of weeks. But I was really disappointed in the Up app. It just seemed so pointless to me, as if someone decided the movie needed an app for promotional reasons and they just threw it together.

The whole point of the game is to pop as many balloons as you can in forty-five seconds. You do this by tapping on the balloons with your finger. This gets old quickly and your finger gets tired. That’s it, no levels to pass, nothing but a high score to earn and then attempt to beat over and over. Now I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I don’t know if popping balloons is a key plot element, but it seems silly to me that a game about popping balloons goes with a movie where balloons are needed to make a house fly. I’d think that popping balloons would be a catastrophe in this case.

More entertaining than the game are some of the extras that come with the app. You can watch the movie trailer and additional videos or read character biographies. You can also save wallpapers from the movie to your photo album and then put them on your iPhone. But all of that isn’t enough to make me recommend the UP app.

Price when Reviewed: Free

See the app at iTunes

Seller: Disney

The Howcast app is made up of “how to” videos that can also be found on www.howcast.com. I don’t have a problem with the idea behind the app but I do have a big problem with the adult content found in a large number of the videos. I could find no way to filter the apps by content or category. So a racy video might be mixed into the same list as a video explaining how to make french fries. Personally, I think I’d rather stick with a good old google search than take the chance that my kids will get into this app and learn “how to” about things I’d rather they not know. If the folks at Howcast can set up a parental control or a filter of some sort I might be willing to check this one out again, but for now, it’s off my phone.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Available at iTunes

Seller: Howcast Media

I know this app has fantastic reviews on the iTunes store and it looks like it has the potential to be completely addicting…but can I just say that it DRIVES ME CRAZY. My four year likes this one and the only song he ever chooses is the “Tap Tap Domination” song. If I am driving and hear “I got the high score, I got the high score, I wanna play more” one more time he is going to lose mom’s phone privileges for life. Now that I’ve got my review done Tap Tap Revenge 2 is gone from my iPhone.

I don’t think this is a game for little kids (which I don’t believe was the intent in the first place). The music choices are for older folks as are the free ads that show up on the bottom of the screen. I know there is a kids setting under difficulty but I didn’t see any Wiggles songs or even a High School Musical tune…I think the only thing that makes it a kids setting is the number of notes they have to tap.

If you’re a super cool mom who doesn’t mind your kids rocking out then you might be okay with this one. I’m unfortunately not one of those moms and I readily admit I’m failing to see the genius behind Tap Tap Revenge. What can I say, we’re probably the only house in town without Guitar Hero too. If you do get this app and you have little ones, I’d watch them as there’s the potential to visit some questionable sites via the ads. I’ll probably incur the wrath of Tap Tap fans everywhere when I tag it “Don’t Bother” but it’s how I feel about this app for my family.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Available at iTunes

Seller: Gogo Apps, Inc./Tapulous

Please. A mom who needs a massage is going to need something more heavy duty than this app. I don’t think the vibrating fixture on an iPhone could even touch the knots in my shoulders from scrubbing too many toilets. I tried it and am deleting it off my phone.

Seller: Dataplex, Inc.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Click here to see the app at the iTunes store