If you are considering on taking a late night trip to Taco Bell, but you just can’t decide on what to order, simply take your iPhone with you, because there is now an application that can make that ridiculously difficult decision for you.
The new application titled Taco Bell Why Pay More! Shaker will randomly choose three value menu items for you based on the amount of money you have in your pocket. Simply fire up the application and enter a dollar amount, once you have done that, shake your iPhone or iPod touch. A slot machine-like display will randomly choose three value menu items. If you don’t want one of the three items, simply flick it away and another will be randomly chosen. The application will also display how much change you will have left over after your three, cost-efficient purchases, excluding tax of course.
If you decided to try out the application when you weren’t actually near a Taco Bell, have no fear, because the application also has a link to a store locator, which will help you find the nearest Taco Bell.
Taco Bell Why Pay More! Shaker is available at the App Store for free.
taco bell is my guilty pleasure. although i love dining at fine restaurants, sometimes a burrito supreme is just what the doctor ordered.
that said, i just wrote a scathing review of this app on itunes. here’s an excerpt:
…I figured I’d launch the app and within a tap or two, the app would use the GPS to show me the stores.
But, um, NO.
First, you can’t locate a store without *first* entering a dollar amount, representing the amount of money you have to spend. Then, the “Find Store” button actually takes you *out* of the app, launching Safari, where you’re taken to a web page for locating a store. But here’s the clincher: You have to manually enter your location — either your zip code or your street, city, and state, before it finds a store!
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
Hey, Taco Bell, The iPhone has a built-in GPS!!! You just took a process that could have been completed in 2 taps and turned it into one that requires a MININUM of 9, or as many as 30 or 40, if the user doesn’t know the zip code of his current location!
I realize it’s a free app, but whose idea was it to *force* us to enter a dollar amount before locating a store? Did it not occur to TB that people might just want to locate a store without needing the cutesy “what can I get for a dollar” stuff? And then, to include a “store locator” that fails to take advantage of the GPS — one of the features that makes the iPhone such a smart device in the first place.
I hate to be crass, but all I can say about this is “Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.”