TideTrac for iPhone and iPad
TideTrac ($1.99) is a universal iPhone and iPad app that allows you to track the tides just about anywhere along the costal United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. This app is perfectly suited for anyone that needs tide prediction for boating, sailing, surfing, and even fishing. Though TideTrac is quick to point out with their disclaimer that you should NOT use this data for navigational purposes, or any serious use that may result in personal injury or property damage.
TideTrac looks great on the iPhone and as you would expect with the larger screen size the user interface for the iPad is much nicer. The iPhone app still does a good job of giving you the same information on the small screen, but I was surprised that the lunar phase calendar is missing. They’ve already implemented it in the iPad version so it shouldn’t be a difficult addition to the iPhone and would add value over other lunar calendar apps, especially to fishermen.
TideTrac uses your internet connection to get location data from Google Maps and from tide stations across the United States. I could be wrong, but I think they’re using the NOAA’s ODIN (Observational Data Interaction Navigation) tide data. Once you’ve picked a station TideTrac can predict the tides for that location for the rest of the year, even offline, however you cannot change your station without internet access. To help solve this online/offline problem TideTrac allows you to easily add multiple tide stations to your favorites list and store data from all of them for offline use.
One big difference between TideTrac and other tidal prediction apps is the rich user interface. TideTrac excels at creating a very nicely laid out app with all data readily at your fingertips in a clean and concise way. Many of the other apps, especially the free ones, use the same data in a very unimaginative standard iOS interface.
Right now TideTrac is available in the US AppStore for $1.99 (50% off), a perfect price in my opinion. Owners of multiple iOS devices will be very happy to have both iPhone and iPad versions with only one purchase. However, TideTrac’s everyday price of $3.99 might be a bit much for users that only have one device.
TideTrac is a great tide prediction app with a fantastic interface featuring several different views for daily, weekly and monthly data as well as the ability to save your favorite stations for offline use.
The tide app is so beneficial for sailing and surfing activities.