Don’t waste your money
Response from developer
Hi, Thank you for your review and sorry for your bad experience. Just to confirm: Tapping the +/- rotates the Egyptian Calendar dial in very small increments of just 1 degree so may be hard to notice; the bottom slider controls the speed of rotation and vertical slider pans the device upwards and downwards. If these controls are unresponsive can I kindly suggest you reboot your phone and try again? If not, then please request a refund from Apple. There are many reviews on this app and none of them state that these controls are not working. Thank you.
Thank you
Response from developer
Thank you Sir
Great Programme
Response from developer
Hi Ontman, thank you for your feedback. We have noticed that on some iOS devices the markings on the mechanism appear greyish rather than black which may explain the reason you found it a bit difficult to read the inscriptions. In order to rectify this, all you do is pinch to zoom in which will enable the vertical panning slider on the left of the screen. As soon as you swipe up or down on this slider, the grey inscriptions change to the corrected black inscriptions and thus improving legibility. We will also release an update to rectify this and also improve the app taking into account your valued feedback above. Many thanks.
Awesome but...
Response from developer
Jurassicjordan, many thanks for your valued feedback. The problem is that only one build can be created to accommodate all iOS hardware and as we try to update the simulation, add detail and functions which closely represent the original mechanism, the very first devices such as the ipad and ipad 2 struggle to work. This is why we included a notice on the App description page that it may not work on iPad 2 devices and below. The next update will include the rotating planets and although it may require slightly more processing power to run, we will make the upmost to try and make it work on older ipad devices.
Explodenate!
Some thoughts:
1) render the faces of the teeth in slightly different colors. If you zoom in then the white just makes it really hard to see.
2) the ability to "explode" the device - stretch all the parts (or the major components) out in the direction of the axis of rotation - would be helpful to see inside it.
3) there are multiple dials, it would be great if one could click on a single dial (or toggle an option or something) and make transparent all the other parts of the mechanism. So a user could see and understand just the gears that drive (say) the Olympic Games pointer and make all the other parts translucent. If a differential is in use then coloring each path differently would help. The "visible body" app does this well.
4) rotation about all axes would be helpful.
5) some way to see the operation of the pin and slot gear that handles the lunar inequality would be useful.
6) A big ask but a tutorial or guide to give the user an understanding about how each part works would complete this. The "4D" app for explaining the tesseract is excellent for this.
No planets
Response from developer
Hi Richterking Sorry to hear this was disappointing but rest assured this is work in progress and will be incorporated via updates. The mechanism is still an impressive device even if it did not include these.
Pretty cool
Nicely executed.
Response from developer
Hi BaltimoreDave, thank you for your feedback. Description, functionality, origin and historical background can now be found on our website: antikytheramechanism.com
Honor due for achievement
A very much larger intended audience does not read or understand Greek or the Cyrillic alphabet. This is a real problem for widespread adoption of this app.
It deserves to have an appropriate translation into English, perhaps as an alternative choice available to the user. Keeping it in the original, although initially praiseworthy, is eventually a form of intellectual snobbism.
Also an apologia or accessible explanation of the various dials and faces is very necessary. It should not have to be accessed by going to a web page or consulting an academic site. A touch button could make this available from the front screen.
Beautiful to look at , but no dialogue is possible with this pretty app, and since it does not 'speak' to me, I must say she is dumb. Visual conversation with her would be so much more satisfying, otherwise she resembles the eye candy of the rich and famous, the inaccessible 0.01% .
Bill Murphy
Response from developer
Hi Bill Thank you for your great feedback which has been heeded upon. With a sequence of updates there have been some adjustments. Most inscriptions on the mechanism are now in English, with the original text found on the website: antikytheramechanism.com. Information regarding the mechanism is quite vast and cannot fit within an app so it is all on the website. Hope this addresses the points in your review.
