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Join us as, with suitably sparkly wine in hand, we run through the best Wine Navigator reviews of 2011.
...a brain?
It was a vintage year for Wine Navigator. We added loads of new wines and food matches, a funky new design to the app and even a free version for all those that wanted a sip before tasting the whole thing.
We also introduced Wine Navigator Online — all that info from the app in website form (for free) and Wild & Rare — the place where Francis will be writing about his travels to unusual wine destinations. (“Wild” because it involves avoiding Hezbollah, “Rare” because no other bugger would do it just for a glass of wine).
We’ve also been blessed with some wonderful reviews (good and bad) so, for the sake of shameless self publicity, here are some of our favourites from the pile:
Jeremy Rix wrote this:
“Wine easy” *****
Very happy to have a quick and easy way to match wine to food, and suggestions for wines that I might like, based on what I know I do like. Keeps things nice and simple and cuts out all the wine BS.
There is a lot of BS in the wine world (a notable percentage probably coming from our Twitter account) but the worst of it comes from those darn ‘wine educators’. The whole point of Wine Navigator is to help us simple folk enjoy a glass of wine and some food with no pretension and certainly none of that pesky ‘educating’; we all had enough of school in our teens, we don’t need it again. That said, you clearly can’t please all the people all the time…
DEF246 spewed this:
“Am I missing something? *
I bought this wine app on the back of all the good reviews and feel completely conned. All it does is give you a generic description of types of wine and what goes with what type of food. There is nothing whatsoever about specific vintages or vineyards. So if you think all Australian Shiraz’s taste the same then you might find this app useful, otherwise save your money.
Terrible though it is that this user felt conned (and remember that you can get a refund, dear reader, through iTunes) we’re not entirely sure why DEF246 (either a droid from Star Wars or it’s not their real name) thought the app would do all that they ask. The screenshots wouldn’t suggest anything other than a simple interface and the description text, if they’re able to read, doesn’t mention vintages. Their review is probably our favourite though since this…
“All it does is give you a generic description of types of wine and what goes with what type of food.”
…is exactly what we think most people want from a wine app.
Tempting though it is to go through the hundreds of wines in the database, list all the vintages of each and decide what goes with what, we had to settle for something a little more generic in order to release the app this century.
We also had some useful feature requests…
Pablo Regueira uttered this:
“Not as expected, no search function” **
Don’t worry Pablo, it’s coming…
Thecliffes offered up this:
“I like it” ****
Simple and easy to use. Could be enhanced if they linked up to a review site to tell you if a specific wine was good or bad. […] IN my opinion this is the most useful wine app on iTunes.
A great suggestion and review – “the most useful wine app on iTunes”. Shucks, you’re making us blush. Reviews for specific wines? We’ll see what we can do…
The ones that please us the most are when we realise we’ve done a pretty good job at giving someone what they want.
Bleurgh penned this little gem:
“Nice” ****
Nice interface and a great comparator between different wines, similar wines, wines that go with certain meals and food types. Very useful for a complete ignoramous like me!
And that’s the app in a nutshell. It’s an app for those that wouldn’t normally think about wine matches (or even just a handy guide for those that do).
The last word I’ll leave to adamlynk who typed this svelte beauty of a review:
“Brilliant” *****
This app is superb. It really helps me find wines I would never have thought of before. I use it all the time. A real keeper.
And that’s exactly what we want to do. We’re all used to seeing Blossom Hill, Hardy’s etc. on the shelves of our supermarkets but there’s another 80% of the wine section – you know, the bit not on special offer – filled with exciting new wines you owe it to yourself to try. Granted, you’ll have to negotiate your way around poncy foreign labels here and there, but there’s a world of wine out there waiting to be enjoyed and, if our little app can help you explore a bit, that makes it all worthwhile.
Have a great 2012 and a warm thank you to all our users!
Pause/Record/Flatulate
I’ve always loved editing. The way a story can be told an infinite number of ways, how the power of music can change the mood in a scene completely, how 1/24th of a second can make a difference between a good and a bad edit… it’s all magic.
When I got my first camcorder in the early ’90s I did what any aspiring editor would do: make animations with tortured Lego pieces, Star Wars characters, Boglins and a flatulance-heavy narrative. The only way to do it back then was to press the record button quickly on and off to record a frame; move the hapless Lego man closer to the Boglin’s mouth and press record on and off again. Hardly Wallace and Gromit, but everyone has to start somewhere.
Editing these masterpieces was another challenge, involving an expensive VHS recorder and heavy use of record and pause buttons. It worked though, it was magical, and my parents still watch these tapes with misty-eyed nostalgia. Thankfully I didn’t record over them with late-night films from Channel 4.
Debt
The expensive old days. (Image taken from Wide Open Camera)
Fast forwarding about a decade, I started working and proceeded to spend all spare money (and more) on technological goodies previously unreachable to me. I bought my first Mac and a digital camcorder. Editing was still haphazard though. Luckily for me (and my credit rating) Apple then released Final Cut Pro.
It has the dubious honour of being my first toe in the water of debt since I maxed out a credit card to buy it (yes, all £800 of it – I’ve always been one to actually buy software). It didn’t take long to start editing everything I possibly could – a holiday to Florida (the video was aptly called “Debt”), wedding videos (which can be great when done well) and the finest corporate videos ever made (in my opinion) for the company I was then working for.
However, there reached a point where I was filming far more than I was editing. Editing still took ages and just getting the video off the tape was soul destroying (any gap between scenes would create a break in the timecode and create badly synced audio). FCP ended up rarely used and I continued to amass MiniDV tapes that remain unedited pieces of nostalgia.
Video Killed The Radio Star
If you ask “What’s the best camera?” the oft-repeated answer is “The one you have with you“.
The same is true for video. These days everything is available on the Internet the moment it’s been seen by someone (usually in rough, unedited form). People blog using whatever media they can get their hands on. Millions of wannabe video journalists blog on YouTube (usually about Justin Bieber) and make cringingly embarrassing videos of themselves in the hope they’ll be shared and linked-to around the world. We’re too busy to edit, and certainly too busy to “log and capture” scenes from camcorder tapes.
These people probably don’t want even want to edit (I wish they would in many cases) – they just want to add a fade, a tacky title and maybe their lovingly-crafted ‘logo’ at the end. iMovie and the like are perfect for this.
Then there’s me. When I edit something I want to tell a story, but I also watch films of David Fincher and The Coen Brothers and love the colour grading, the music and the pacing. That’s the kind of stuff I want to add to my mini epics and that’s what FCP delivered.
FCP was embraced (eventually) by an enormous amount of professional editors and some amazing films have been edited using it (including those by the Coens and Fincher). It’s also used extensively in the broadcast field where its multi-camera support is apparently very good.
The last release of FCP (version 7) was July 2009; that’s a long, long time ago. What’s changed?
Telling a story is exactly the same. The Shawshank Redemption could feasibly have been edited in iMovie; it wouldn’t change its impact.
What has changed is that we carry around portable HD cameras with us, that indie filmmakers can make a film like Monsters with a tiny crew (and a lot of talent), that hard drive capacity has gotten even bigger and cheaper, all our computers are now 64-bit and we can download apps directly from the App Store without needing to wait for delivery (an impulse buyer’s dream).
X Marks the Spot
Apple have started from scratch and focused on the amateur/indie market with the combined accuracy and tact of a shark with laserbeam fitted to its head.
FCP X is much, much faster than before, importing video is quicker and cleverer, it’s only $300/£180, available immediately to anyone with a Mac and it has a Share to Facebook feature. (The pros love that).
The lack of tact comes from the fact that Apple have removed many of the features professionals need, that they’ve stopped selling the old FCP, that the new version doesn’t import existing projects and that they presented the new software as being the best thing since sliced bread at NAB – a conference for professional broadcasters and editors. What’s worse than hyping all these professionals (who are dying to have a faster, newer version of something they know and love) and then releasing – in their eyes – iMovie Pro.
But, to paraphrase Armageddon – they’ve done it before, they’ll do it again.
Mac OS X started from scratch and threw away established features, as they did with QuickTime and iMovie as well. Apple bought Shake, dropped the price by thousands of dollars and then just dropped the product.
FCP must have been pirated a lot by budding editors like myself. By making it more focused to us, cheaper and available instantly, far more people are going to take the plunge. And Apple are betting on the future of film being led by these young, enthusiastic editors – the kind that make a film like Napolean Dynamite, not the kind that make a film like Eat, Pray, Love (both edited in FCP; I bet Apple would be prouder of the former).
End (I should have edited more)
Apple will, apparently, add in many of the missing ‘pro’ features but for now, FCP X has given me far more inclination to make some new stories – and perhaps I’ll rediscover and edit some of my old tapes, too. And yes, I probably will use the Share to Facebook button.
iPhone fun with PawPaw 