iRun ... Cadence

On October 27th I commented about a cadence to Mrs Cindie.  I downloaded the app to check it out shortly after that.  I didn't expect it would work much for me ... So here is my evaluation Mrs Cindie.

I was confused a little at first how to use it.  I didn't find the interface very user friendly.  Some other functionality has a twitter button although I am not quite sure what that does since I don't use Twitter myself.  I still don't know how to get back to home screen and the icons are not intuitive as far as their function.

But I did figure out that you have to choose between streaming music or your Ipod music.  When you use the app the first time it will require several minutes to scan your entire music library.  The music BPM is analysed then songs are organized by BPM.  I'd say 2/3 my library had no BPM found but considering I have over 2000 songs that still leaves 600+ songs for which the app did find a BPM.   Once that's done you can select you BPM using the slider and music starts playing.  The slider is actually a cool feature I love it.  Here is a snapshot of the slider:

The first time I used the app to play my music I was running a 6 miler.  I selected 160 and went with it.  I was surprised at the selection of songs ... Metallica, Josh Groban, Eminen, Nicki Minaj to name a few.  As wild as the line up was the music flowed really good with my run and I was impressed.  I tried different beat settings on subsequent runs.  I even did a run where I changed the BPM in the middle of the run.  The app created a new playlist immediately ... 

I streamed music the next run.  I selected 160 bpm.  The app gives you only one channel choice.  I was surprised it took a few minutes for the stream to start.  Once it did start it played only house music, which is fine but I like variety so I switched back to the music on my iPhone.  There is a genre filter you can use to limit the genre from which the music is selected, same genres as on your iTunes.  

So poor GUI, great functionality.  For a couple of bucks I say it's worth giving it a shot.  It will taker the thinking out of selecting your music so that you can concentrate and the more important "running stuff" !!