You know what they say about old habits? They die hard. In the case of a Mac user with an iPad, it’s the Mac app habit which is slowly dying of neglect, while I keep adding apps to the iPad.
That’s not an uncommon change in habits these days, but here’s one switch that went the other direction. At night we’ll sit around watching television with iPad firmly in hand. Besides Flipboard and Mail and Safari, one iPad app gets plenty of use. Wikibot.
The why and the how of using a Wikipedia app on an iPad are obvious. Convenience. And, well, more convenience. So, I decided to bring Wikibot to the Mac. It costs a dollar more but the interface makes for a more usable and familiar experience than vanilla Wikipedia in Safari.
Wikibot has over half a dozen features that make it a better experience than Wikipedia in a browser window.
First, it syncs up nicely with Wikibot on iPhone and iPad (read later, display options, folders, bookmarks, and history). Font size can be adjusted for better viewing.
Articles can be saved as bookmarks within Wikibot (doesn’t require additional handling as it would in Safari). The Read-it-Later Queue means articles are downloaded and stored on your Mac for later reader, even if there’s no internet connection.
Wikibot allows searching even within an article, and it supports offline caching of articles and images for when your Mac is not connected to the internet (download the entire Wikipedia corpus to your Mac).
All these reader friendly options make the Wikibot Wikipedia experience worthy, and the developer kept the Mac version’s price tag closer to the iOS versions for iPhone and iPad.
There’s no trial before you buy option, but the price is acceptable if you use Wikipedia regularly.