Faith 2.0, Gadget Hacks, Mobile
Review: iMissal for iPhone and iPod Touch
Not to be confused with “iMissle”, the portable thermonuclear warhead launcher for the iPhone, iMissal, from Cantcha Inc. (www.cantcha.com) is the iPhone’s first digital Sunday Missal.
Cheese and crackers! What’s a Missal?!? That’s what I often heard as a youth minister working with Catholic teens. A Missal is, according to Wikipedia, a liturgical book containing all instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of Mass throughout the year. Plain and simple, it lets you follow the Mass from beginning to end including the Mass readings and all the text of the prayers said in the Order of the Mass. It’s a tradition that goes way back to at least 1570. So how does iMissal work as a Missal in the digital age? Read on to find out.
Overall, iMissal does its job well. The calendar is very easy to read and each day in the Liturgical calendar is marked with special icons to indicate whether the day is a Holy Day of Obligation, a Solemnity, a Major Feast, or whatever. The icons are not intuitive so you have to go check the About tab at the bottom to figure out what they need. I’m not so sure about the color scheme, either. It’s legible, but not exactly eye candy. I also found the transition from month to month to be a little glitchy. Maybe it was just my iPhone.
If you want to read the day’s Mass readings, tap on the little ‘Read’ button and you get the readings. The text was easy to read, and there are buttons for increasing and decreasing the font. I kept finding myself trying to pinch the text larger, but that doesn’t work.
Following the Mass is easy enough. Just tap on ‘Mass’ at the bottom and you can follow along. I took it with me to Mass this morning and it was very accurate. Here is where the app shines. According to their website:
The liturgical texts provided in iMissal are used with the permission of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and the International Committee on English in the Liturgy. They are the official texts approved for use in the dioceses of the United States by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The Mass prayers were precise and the Readings were identical to those being read aloud. I really enjoyed following along and visually absorbing the Readings. Speaking of the Readings, one annoying interface glitch is that you are forced to go back to the Calendar and then tap ‘Read’ to get to the readings. It would have been better to have some kind of tappable link within the Order of the Mass. Another thing I didn’t like was that you can’t increase the size of the text in the Order of the Mass. Note that you do NOT need a connection to get to the Liturgical Calendar or use the Order of the Mass. Just put your phone in airplane mode like I know you’re already doing before Mass. Right?
There are two other features of iMissal: a daily scripture and a reference of common prayers. I honestly don’t know if I’ll use either. There doesn’t seem to be any coherence to the selection of the daily scripture and the listing of prayers available is much smaller than another iPhone app called ‘Let Us Pray’, which I also have installed.
So to sum it up, iMissal is a fantastic digital Missal that I hope to use more often. Because it uses the official texts, I know I can follow along at any mass in the United States. I’m not entirely enthusiastic about the color selection and the inability to get to the Readings during the Order of the Mass is a bit annoying. Beyond that, and a couple of minor UI glitches that I’m sure will be ironed out, I found iMissal to be very useful and well worth the price.
Below are some related links to this topic:
- iConfess iPhone App – Assisting Catholics in the Sacrament of Reconciliation
- Advent App for the iPod Touch & Apple iPhone
- Scripture, Reflections & Prayer
29 Mar 2009 Javier
“I’m not so sure about the color scheme, either. It’s legible, but not exactly eye candy.”
The color scheme chosen was chosen as such to match the official Liturgical Color of each Season. For instance, Ordinary time is Green, Christmas is White. These are the official church colors and they were chosen to match what was assumed most people would relate most with. Otherwise, we would have picked different colors :-) But we didn’t want people telling us “Hey, ordinary time is supposed to be Green.”
The next update should have an equal number of Prayers to the other application that was referred to in this review.
We will look into making some of your suggestions in the next update. There were some bugs in Apple’s SDK which prevented us from doing some of your suggestions, we actually tried.
Thanks for reviewing our application. It is very much appreciated.
Thanks for the updates. As far as the color schemes, thanks for clarifying the rationale, though I would still argue that the overall look could have been more iphone-like, still using the colors of the liturgical seasons. Then again, I’m not a graphical designer, so Josh may have a more educated opinion.
Any comments on the question about the Extraordinary form of the Mass?
Officially it is the “USA edition: Sundays 1998, Weekdays 2002 – based on the NAB translation”. This is what you will typically find used in Mass in the US. This is the most recent version from the CCD and ICEL and is used with permission.
There is no Latin version currently offered in the application.
We are currently considering adding in Spanish and possibly the Canadian edition, if demand warrants.
I have used the application for months now and have found the readings to match exactly what is being used in Mass.
In regards to the color scheme we could discuss it at lengths but ultimately it becomes a subjective one… Actually, we designed the calendar to behave very iPhone like. It looks and behaves much like the native phone calendar, albeit a different color scheme.
So far the comments on the app have been very favorable and we are happy that people have found the application useful.
Thanks and God Bless
I know that the PSP changed display colors with the environmental seasons (winter, spring, summer & fall), so my friend would keep changing the date so that it would always be blue. It was always the wrong date & time, but he got the blue that he liked : )
Thanks for the replies here-
I would like to suggest and strongly encourage adding in Latin Support for both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form of the Mass – The texts for the Extraordinary form are public domain and so are the English Douay Rheims Equivalent.
This would not only allow for a wider market for the application but would also help to promote Pope Benedict XVI’s Liturgical vision and direction, as laid out in part by his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum
Thanks
God Bless
Chris
I came looking for precisely that.
Good start though!