iOS App lacks features, syncing does not work well

This will be a mostly negative review, so let me cover some of the good things about this app first: the scoring system is pretty cool. The app will stop showing you certain cards when you get a high score on that card. Card score is increased by checking the "Known" checkbox on a card. You can set the app to decrease your score after a certain amount of time (I set mine for 2 weeks), so that the cards that were "known" will reappear later on to make sure you still remember them. In addition, I like that you can attach images or audio clips to note cards.

If you plan to only use this app on your mac, it will probably serve you decently, especially if you dont need to use it for science classes. But it is like most other flashcard apps in that it has no support for sub or superscript, which makes chemistry, algebra (or any science notes) a bit of a chore to create. ax^2 +bx +c isnt a very attractive way to represent the quadratic equation, but thats all you can do with the text editor in this program. It gets even worse when you try to enter in things like the quadratic formula: x=(-b ± √(b^2 -4ac)/2a

You can get around this problem though by putting a picture of the quadratic formula into the flash card (if you use wolframalpha.com, you can drag and drop the formula from there, since it outputs all of its equations as pictures). At least until you try to view the flash card on the iOS app, where (bewilderingly) attached images do not work.

But back to the text editor: its too small. Its like entering everything into a tiny web form, unless you use the "Inspector" feature, which gives you a little bit more space to type in, but even then, its still too small because it blows the text size up.

There is one more iOS related grievance I want to mention before moving on: the Mac to iOS syncing. Instead of using iCloud etc, this app uses a manual syncing option that requires the iOS device be on the same wifi network, and that it have the iOS iFlash app open. For some reason, the syncing does not work over my schools campus wide wifi. Its lucky that I live off campus and have wifi at my house, otherwise I would have never been able to sync my card decks.

Ive also noticed that over the past week, the app crashes at least once a day. It looks like the crashes have something to do with sleep mode (15" rMBP with OSX 10.8.2). This, combined with the barebones iOS app, spotty syncing, seemingly infrequent updates (the iOS version looks like it hasnt been updated in well over a year) and limited input options make this app appear a bit amateur. I know app development is tough work, especially for solo/small teams, so I hate to leave negative reviews like this, but that doesnt make my concerns any less valid or important. Definitely use this apps trial version (available on the developers website: loopware.com) before you buy, and make sure it will work for you.

Ericadia about iFlash