Review: Mobatech Mobile Bartender

Capture20_54_14Review: Mobatech Mobile Bartender
[rating:9]
Cost: $7.95 USD @ the store

So over the last few days, I have had a chance to play with Mobatech’s Mobile Bartender. In a nutshell, this is your one-stop guide to all your favourite drinks! Yes, Canadians add a ‘u’ to many words, such as “favourite”. Anyways…Mobile Bartender comes preloaded with many different drinks so that you won’t be left in a position where you must keep ordering the same drinks over and over again. Mobile Bartender also comes in handy if you are playing bartender for your party! By showing the required ingredients for all of the drinks it contains, one will be able to impress their friends with the abundance of drinks portrayed within the software.

When you first start Mobile Bartender, you are brought to the main menu. From there you select either the drink category you are looking for, or you can go directly to your saved favourites. In addition to choosing from preselected / programmed drinks, one has the ability to also program their own drinks that they may have concocted. When you choose to search by drink, you are brought to a screen where you can either search by the liquor type or by typing the first letter of the specific drink name. As I’m sure you can guess, when you choose to search by liquor, you get a whole list of it. Once you have selected your liquor type, the final screen will list the specific drinks within the drink types selected. When you finally select a drink, a list of the ingredients will appear on the screen. If you choose to search for your liquor by the first letter, a search box will appear for you to type only the first letter and then click next. When you are searching for drop shots, the program allows you to search by specific ingredient or by the first letter. I believe the labelling is a bug because when you search by ingredient, it simply opens up a list of liquors like when looking for a drink. Perhaps a relabelling of the menu is in order to maintain consistency?

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Another cool feature is the ability to program your own drinks. This comes in handy if you are either one to be creative (read: mix drinks), or if you simply come across a drink that is not in the list that you feel it should be! To program your drinks, you select the “add recipe” feature from the main screen. From there, you will be brought to a screen which asks you to select which drink category (Drinks, Shooters, or Drop Shots) you are creating. From there, you will be prompted to select the liquor type (Amaretto, Gin, Rum, Schnapps, Tequila, Vodka, Whiskey, or Other) you will be using. Once you select the alcohol type, you will be asked to give your drink a name. As you can see, I am not very creative when it comes to drink name selection…this probably has something to do with me not drinking much more than Canadian beers or Canadian whiskey. Once your drink has been created, you will be given a friendly confirmation.
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Some of you may be wondering why I only rated this software 9 Stars. The first reason is that nothing in life, or at least the technology world, is perfect. There is always room for improvement. However, with Mobile Bartender, there were a few quirks with the UI that I feel could be slightly improved. The first one is the scrolling. I find the scrolling very hard to control. The program has a similar scroll feel to that of an iPhone. However, even with my scroll speed set to slow, I found that this software has the tendency to over scroll past the intended target. Also, if you keep scrolling past the bottom, you will go back to the top of the list, again making you have to find your place again in the list of all those many delicious drinks. The other quirk, although very minor, is what I believe to be the mislabeling of the “search by ingredients” label. Either all sections should label it that or label “search by liquor”. Other than my being nitpicky, I have no issues with the software UI or what the software is trying to achieve!

PROS:

  • Comes with many drinks preloaded.
  • Ability to custom design / program your drinks.
  • Very easy to use UI.

CONS:

  • Scrolling feature should be cleaned up.
  • Prevent over-scrolling.
  • Maintain consistency in categorical labeling (of course, I’m just being nitpicky).
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