First Look At Panic's Status Board App For iPad
April 10, 2013
Panic has officially launched their new Status Board for iPad. The app is largely based on an internal program that Panic employees have been using for three years. Here is a brief look at the app that first grabbed headlines earlier this week.
At its core, Status Board is a one-stop location where users can check email, weather, the latest news, social networks, and more. For more advanced users, Status Board can also act as a way to display tables, charts, and what Panic calls Do-It-Yourself panels.
It is clear that Panic wanted to make the Status Board experience as beautiful as possible. This is obvious the first time the app is started and a digital instruction manual pops up. This serves as a launch pad of sorts for new users, and includes a short question-and-answer section that is used to populate the Status Board.
You can further customize your board by clicking on the app’s Settings button at the top left of the screen. Changing the look and content of your board is as simple as moving your finger around.
Don’t want the calendar at the top? No problem, move it somewhere else. Really don’t care to see your latest tweets? Drag the Twitter box towards the bottom of the screen, and watch the feed go away.
Through our brief tests, we can safely conclude that Status Board works pretty well, and setting it up is a breeze. It isn't perfect, however.
One criticism worth mentioning is the migration between portrait and landscape mode. Boxes of information that look great in one format, for example, sometimes look absolutely terrible in the other. More troublesome: parts of the information are sometimes cut off completely as you move between modes.
At $9.99, Status Board probably isn’t for the casual iPad user. Still, it could fast become a great resource for organizations that need to see real time information in one centralized location. As proof that Panic is committed to the business market, they are making an external display option available as an in-app purchase. For an additional $9.99, users are able to display their Status Board on a television or monitor via an HDMI adapter and cable, or an Apple TV. A free and basic AirPlay mirroring option will be released in a future app update.
We’re still digging around Status Board, so please don’t consider this a full review. Once we have more to say about Panic's latest project, we’ll certainly let you know.
In the meantime, Status Board is available in the App Store.
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