An absolutely essential app; please keep updating!
I use this app on a daily basis as I go through my classical texts because I really like to be familiar with the geography of the text I am reading. The ability to search for a specific location and have the app zoom in on the map where that location is is priceless. Please, please continue updating this app for the newer Apple software releases!
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5 Star Content, 3 Star App
The app needs a more intuitive may to navigate between the maps, it’s basically a confusingly organized PDF of insanely valuable maps. Ultimately the content is so valuable that I’m still very grateful they’ve released this as an app.
No longer supported?
The maps are excellent, and the price is very good compared to the book, but the gazetteer no longer works, and there doesn’t seem to be any support. Not a good look for a major academic publisher...
Gazetteer does not work
The alphabetic listing of sites no longer shows up, and the search function causes the app to crash and close. For the price, I expected some upkeep of the app.
Fantastic Maps
Would look even better if there was an Apple TV version
Reinstall App - gazetteer problems solved
On latest largest size iPad Pro, IOS 11 fully up to date - Gazetteer, though updated to latest version, still displayed no content. Problem solved by delete and re-install. Now Gazetteer displays fine.
Disappointing
After using the search function the app crashes often. Not always, but five times in the past thirty minutes. Regardless of how much money was spent making this atlas twenty years ago, it is an overpriced app today. One can just look up locations on Wikipedia. Coverage in the Cyclades is very poor. Many islands have only their name--not much help. Little maps in the Blue Guide have much more detail. The search function is quite particular about spelling. Different transliterations of Greek spellings will not give you any results. I read the instructions and am still not clear on the "compass" icon. Had there been a trial version or 'lite' version, I would never have purchased this. If you already know where a city was you can usually find it in this atlas. If not it is less certain. 1:1,000,000 and 1:500,000 maps are not that useful. Overall a very disappointing experience. Perhaps if I bought a new iPad this app wouldn't crash so much, but iOS 10 is what I use. I can't buy a new iPad every year just because a lame atlas app crashes frequently. In 2018 the technology for seamless scrolling from one raster nautical chart to the next exists and can be found in iPad apps in this price range. Smooth transitions from chart to chart and smoother zooming would add a lot to this app. Perhaps this atlas would be better done as a vector chart. I would not recommend this app.
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Gazetteer still not working
Updated if iOS 11 & the gazetteer is *still* not working...
Must be reinstalled
From time to time. Asside this bug, is an excellent reference work.
Requires periodic re-installation
The search/gazetteer function mysteriously malfunctions after a while. The only solution I've found is to delete and reinstall the app. Of course, you lose your search history etc. iOS 10/iPad Air and mini. This was also an issue on ios7, clearly an application bug. That aside, this is an excellent resource
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It WAS great
This was such a useful tool until the search function stopped working. Without the gazetteer, this is no longer worth getting. So sad!
Finally works in iOS 8!
The May 27 update finally fixed it! Now it is a great app, and worth every penny. Highly recommended.
Nice idea poorly done
Zooming all the way out of a map gives a white screen. Poorly designed for the touch screen. The font is "stupid" small and not adjustable. Ridiculously over priced. Don't care what the hard copy costs. I WASTED $20 on this! Sad.
Seriously Flawed
App keeps crashing. Cannot navigate any of the introduction without the app closing. Should be an easy fix but I'd advise others to wait until they address this bug.
Useful resource, but it keeps crashing
This app has some wonderful maps that will be very helpful in my research and as a general reference for my work. My main issue is that the app keeps crashing about three pages into the introduction. I can search for places and use the maps fine, but I also want to be able to actually use the introduction of the book as well. It would also be great if they could include some bibliographic references.
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Amazing Resource...But Keeps Crashing
I'll want to give you five stars for what this thing is, which is an essential reference atlas for any classicist or for anyone with a passion for ancient history. It's truly brilliant, and we should applaud Princeton for publishing such a work at such an affordable price.
Unfortunately, I am obliged to give it one star because, as with other reviewers, the app keeps crashing about 3 pages into the ebook function. And that is the complete opposite of brilliant. I'm running the latest OS on an IPad2. Please fix this, Princeton. I want to read about what I'm looking at!
Unfortunately, I am obliged to give it one star because, as with other reviewers, the app keeps crashing about 3 pages into the ebook function. And that is the complete opposite of brilliant. I'm running the latest OS on an IPad2. Please fix this, Princeton. I want to read about what I'm looking at!
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Crashes in iOS8
The app crashes after viewing about 3 pages of the written text (not the maps)
Good overall, but two problems.
The first problem is a minor one: searching a place can finding the relevant map is somewhat slow. I don’t mean there are a number of steps involved in that, rather it takes a bit for the iPad to “think” its way through your search and find the correct maps.
The second problem is a major one: if you search a place, and that search yields the first map (“1 Internum Mare”) as a result, tapping that result will ALWAYS bring you to map 1a, instead of map 1. This is a major problem, since map 1a is a relatively minor map (“Fortunatae Insulae”) when compared to map 1 (a map of the entire Mediterranean and its shores; your standard map of the ancient world).
Other than those two complaints, this is a great app and very convenient to boot. It is much easier to have this atlas with me than to carry the large print edition around. The price may be steep for your average app, but the maps and information contained are worth the price.
The second problem is a major one: if you search a place, and that search yields the first map (“1 Internum Mare”) as a result, tapping that result will ALWAYS bring you to map 1a, instead of map 1. This is a major problem, since map 1a is a relatively minor map (“Fortunatae Insulae”) when compared to map 1 (a map of the entire Mediterranean and its shores; your standard map of the ancient world).
Other than those two complaints, this is a great app and very convenient to boot. It is much easier to have this atlas with me than to carry the large print edition around. The price may be steep for your average app, but the maps and information contained are worth the price.
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Best ancient atlas
This atlas is fantastic and worth every penny of the £13.99 it costs, especially considering the price of the actual physical atlas is around £300!
Among the functions available are a search for any ancient location. You can also see the modern countries superimposed on the main screen map if you wish.
Among the functions available are a search for any ancient location. You can also see the modern countries superimposed on the main screen map if you wish.
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An excellent book-not well translated into software.
The Barrington Atlas is a classic book. It is a spectacular atlas of the ancient Classical world and a reference that shows things you can't get easily (or sometimes at all) elsewhere.
The idea of having this big and expensive book turned into a portable and affordable e-book was a fine one. Making knowledge more available is a good thing.
But Princeton and the developers here are not presenting this as an e-book, they've offered it as an application in iOS. This looks like another potentially good idea: imagine if the artificial boundaries imposed by the need for pagination in a physical book could be gone, if the zoom function could actually take you in close (at least to major cities and important historical sites); if you could put two sections of the map into custom windows and juxtapose them (or at least toggle back and forth between them); and so on. The only limitations on what could have been done were the imagination and budget of the developers.
Unfortunately, those limitations appear to have been considerable. What we are presented with is more or less an e-book translation of the physical book, blocked from being able to be displayed on a desktop Mac, where some of its limitations could be tempered by the greater display size of the desktop, by being presented as an app instead of as an e-book.
Had Princeton chosen to do so, it could have enhanced the contents of this book with the many resources available to iOS app developers. Applications like the spectacular realizations of The Waste Land and Shakespeare Sonnets point towards what is possible. Within the framework of the Barrington maps, all sorts of information about the physical universe depicted in them would have been possible, including more on topography, climate, perhaps even expanded maps of the major cities: Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Thessalonica, the Greek City-States, etc. It should be possible, for example, to take a virtual trip across the Via Egnatia and "see" the physical features of the landscape and the population centers along the way (this would not necessarily have had to be an animation, the information could have been in words, story-boards, other image-types, etc.)
The point of the original Barrington was to enable its users to have a reliable guide to the places and physical settings of long ago. Within the limits of its time's technology, it did a fine job of this. Our time's technology is well past that of the book's creation and it is a shame that so little of it had a hand in this new rendering.
The original content of the book is faithfully delivered here, although with inexplicably limited zooming and equally inexplicably awkward page-to-page navigation (if you expand a page to look at it, you must go back to the default zoom before you can page forward), and at a fair price. We should be grateful for that.
On the other hand, as with so much in Classical History, it seems that there were great opportunities presented that were ignored.
If you are a scholar or a student of this period, this is a resource that you should have. It's good for what it is but a mere shadow of what it could have been.
The idea of having this big and expensive book turned into a portable and affordable e-book was a fine one. Making knowledge more available is a good thing.
But Princeton and the developers here are not presenting this as an e-book, they've offered it as an application in iOS. This looks like another potentially good idea: imagine if the artificial boundaries imposed by the need for pagination in a physical book could be gone, if the zoom function could actually take you in close (at least to major cities and important historical sites); if you could put two sections of the map into custom windows and juxtapose them (or at least toggle back and forth between them); and so on. The only limitations on what could have been done were the imagination and budget of the developers.
Unfortunately, those limitations appear to have been considerable. What we are presented with is more or less an e-book translation of the physical book, blocked from being able to be displayed on a desktop Mac, where some of its limitations could be tempered by the greater display size of the desktop, by being presented as an app instead of as an e-book.
Had Princeton chosen to do so, it could have enhanced the contents of this book with the many resources available to iOS app developers. Applications like the spectacular realizations of The Waste Land and Shakespeare Sonnets point towards what is possible. Within the framework of the Barrington maps, all sorts of information about the physical universe depicted in them would have been possible, including more on topography, climate, perhaps even expanded maps of the major cities: Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Thessalonica, the Greek City-States, etc. It should be possible, for example, to take a virtual trip across the Via Egnatia and "see" the physical features of the landscape and the population centers along the way (this would not necessarily have had to be an animation, the information could have been in words, story-boards, other image-types, etc.)
The point of the original Barrington was to enable its users to have a reliable guide to the places and physical settings of long ago. Within the limits of its time's technology, it did a fine job of this. Our time's technology is well past that of the book's creation and it is a shame that so little of it had a hand in this new rendering.
The original content of the book is faithfully delivered here, although with inexplicably limited zooming and equally inexplicably awkward page-to-page navigation (if you expand a page to look at it, you must go back to the default zoom before you can page forward), and at a fair price. We should be grateful for that.
On the other hand, as with so much in Classical History, it seems that there were great opportunities presented that were ignored.
If you are a scholar or a student of this period, this is a resource that you should have. It's good for what it is but a mere shadow of what it could have been.
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