Overview
Countdown is an app that counts down the time remaining until an event that you program into it. (Sorry MSNBC fans, it’s in no way affiliated with Keith Oberman’s show.) It also works in reverse, like a count… up? You can input a date that has already passed, and the app will tell you exactly how much time has passed since then. This is a great way to make people feel old. For instance, did you know that it’s been 17 years, two months and 28 days since Nirvana’s Nevermind was released? Time flies…
Features
When creating an event, you can select a photo from the app's gallery to customize that event. And if you're someone who likes to make things a little more personal, then you can import a photo from your iPhone's photo library.
You can also arrange the events in order you want. After you press the edit button, you use the little bar button beside the event to slide them around. Pretty sweet.
You can decide how you want your time units displayed. Your options are years, months, days, hours, minutes or several combination of those units. The app doesn't break time down into seconds. But that's kind of overkill anyway. Good for them to show restraint.
Breakdown
The Good:
I'm HORRIBLE at remembering dates. I'm not even kidding. I can celebrate someone's birthday then the next day forget what day it was. This app could come in handy for reminding me of those kind of events, (though I could just download a birthday app of some sort, but everything reminds us of birthdays now, like Facebook, Myspace, etc).
I like the fact that it can countdown AND count upwards. I'm not really terribly concerned with how much time is left before next year's big sports draft. But I have always wondered how many minutes have passed since I was born. And now I know that I've been alive for over 15 million minutes! Hmm... this might be another one of those apps that's going to make me question the choices I've made in my life... I'll get to think about how many million of those minutes I wasted. Great. Now I'm depressed. Dakota Fanning has achieved so much more in only seven millions minutes!
The Bad:
There aren’t really many bad things I can say. I guess a reminder/alert feature would be a nice addition. There are a lot of apps, like the calendar that comes with the phone, that will give you an alert when an even was coming up. That’s all I’m asking for. Just a little alert. A little chime. A little something…
Verdict
While I can’t necessarily call this a very useful app, I can say it’s a fun app. Well, it’s fun if you derive enjoyment from knowing how much time is between now and another particular point in time. I don’t know if there’s really much practical use to this, since there are many better calendar/note apps available, (like Todo), but… this one can tells me it's been 25 years, 10 months and 21 days since the Raiders last won a Superbowl. Huh? It also says that it's been five years, 10 months and 25 days since they last even made the playoffs. Get over it, Bree. The Raiders suck. This app, on the other hand, does not.
