Image rights from top: Daniel Gauthier, Tripsy.
Oh Bother is a modern
solution to an old problem:
how do you stop people you
live with from bothering
you when you don’t want to be bothered?
This free app is for anyone who needs to
keep family or flatmates at bay, and with
the IAPs you can unlock different icons
and color schemes.
An app such as this needs to be fast
and simple or it won’t be used, and Oh
Bother is both. Once everybody in your
home has it, they can set their status to
“botherable” or “unbotherable”, which
appear in green or red respectively to
show others your availability at a glance.
Although the worldwide
COVID–19 pandemic sidelined
travel plans for many this
year, the downtime affords
a rare opportunity to plan ahead. And
one of the best ways to chart your next
journey is with a trip planner app.
Tripsy creates travel itineraries you
can share with family and friends, even
storing important documents inside each
trip. If you have existing reservations for
flights, hotels, or car rentals, simply
forward those emails from your iCloud
account to [email protected] and they’ll be
automatically imported. (Other forwarding
addresses can also be configured.)
Oh Bother
Nicer than a “Keep Out!” notice
Free (IAPs) From Daniel Gauthier, ohbother.app
Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 13.0 or later
Tripsy: Travel Planner
Plan your next trip with ease
Free (IAPs) From Rafael Kellermann Streit, tripsy.app
Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 13.0 and watchOS 5.0 or later
GREATEXCELLENTOh Bother is free, but you can tip the developer
if you like it via several in–app purchases.You won’t miss a single activity in Tripsy’s
itinerary view.You can give your status a duration
and provide context, so for example you
might say that you can’t be bothered for
the next hour because you’re on a video
call or having a nap. There are only six
such options, however, and there’s no
custom field for you to add your own.
Status updates are synchronized via
iCloud so you don’t all have to be
connected to the same network.
Oh Bother has one more feature:
notifications. If someone in your
household has set a timed period where
they don’t want to be bothered, you can
get the app to notify you when that time
period is up — at which point you canTo create a new trip, enter start
and end dates, timezone, and even
a background image, which is optional.
Next, add activities from a grid of 21
icons including restaurants, tours, and
places to visit. The convenient Map View
displays an overview of all activities, with
a colorful itinerary of the day ahead.
No destination in mind? Tripsy
includes 14 preconfigured locales like
Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Tokyo,
so you can add a suggested itinerary in
one tap, then tweak it to your liking. It’s
really easy to put together an entire trip
with a user interface so slick that it
almost feels like a native app.presumably burst into their room and
receive a warm welcome.
It’s a very niche app, of course, but Oh
Bother is simple way to communicate that
you don’t want to be communicated with.
THE BOTTOM LINE. An effective
solution to a common issue in shared
accommodation. CARRIE MARSHALLTripsy is free, but limited to a single
trip without a Premium subscription
(from $2.99 per month) which unlocks
many of the best features like sharing,
cloud backup, and flight update alerts.
THE BOTTOM LINE. A fantasic trip
planner with an IAP that should be
mandatory. J.R. BOOKWALTERmaclife.com SEP 2020 55Tough testing, trusted ratings