Reef Fishes of East Indies V1 4+

Low value and falsely advertised !

Low value and falsely advertised ! For 36$, making this the most expensive fish id on the appstore, I was expecting much much more.

I wish to express my utmost respect to the authors for their work and dedication on their research and published books which are excellent, I never could afford the money and the weight restrictions but I had the chance to use them on many occasions for reference. I was very excited when I read the books would become an app ! However I question their judgement on approving the false claims that are made to sell this app.

In business and science the worst sin is lying. It clearly state on many reviews, article, the Appstore and on the website that it contains " EVERY KNOWN SPECIES, COMPILED BY THE WORLD’S TOP EXPERTS " ! Really... It has to be a joke right ? Claiming to know every species known and being the world's top expert is just lame, how can you seriously back that up, c'mon on !

I went and bought this app naively having faith in this claim, noticing the price and the authors reputation. I had trust, I was so wrong... After 20 minutes of using this app, I already found 5 species not present, reef species, not pelagic, from the Indo Pacific region.

Another false claim is that it contains 3000 hi def pictures ! Most are soft and many are very out of focus and grainy, probably from cropping so much. The quality of most of the pictures are average at best and in no way take advantage of the Retina display !

It also claims it's the only one of it's kind, no internet needed... False again, Helmut Debelius: Indian Ocean & Red Sea Fish Guide and the Audubon fish guides don't need a connection and work similarly at a fraction of the price and have many more useful options and infos.

However I strongly hope their claim on giving the proceeds from this app to go to Indonesia’s marine conservation program is not another false one...

Now my review...

Most of the species info is limited to physical description and location. The families do have more info but it's all over the place, cramped and hard to read.

The search and results are name and text only, ok if you already know what you're looking for, extremely tedious if you're looking for a species you saw on your last dive and not sure what family it's part of... An app at that price should include many more search parameters such as shape, color, size etc.

What's up with the 3 separate volumes ? I can understand paper books needing several volumes for trim, but an app having 3 volumes that are useless on their own. I can understand separating cartilaginous and bony fishes but where's the logic behind having volume 1 (cartilaginous and some bony fishes) , volume 2 and 3 having the rest of the bony fishes. Marketing gimmick gone very bad... Maybe Apple size restrictions, what do I know, but still in the digital age, this could have been done in a much better way.

There are however many positives, not exclusive, but useful functions like sharing, favorites and notes and amazing info, maps and anatomy you'll find on the left sidebar

There is a function I have not seen in fish id apps, it's the pencil drawing function, you would probably annotate or circle things you'd want to point out on a pic, however I have yet to find it's usefulness...

To summarize, many false claims aside, this is a nice overpriced fish id app with very limited search options, no more, no less... Too bad, I really expected these two very respected authors to sponsor a long awaited incredible reef fish app...