San Francisco Opera

I was eagerly anticipating using this app, when I first heard of it. I would love to have a one stop location for all of my SF Opera needs. However, the app does not live up to my expectations. It reminds me of the early days of the world wide web, circa 1997. Every company and organization of a certain size had set up a HTML website, but the websites were not very functional. In this case, the app seems like it could be much more, but it needs work.

The app has steadily improved and now I’m training myself to look here first for information on planning my evening at the opera. For example dining options inside the Opera House aren’t available on sfopera.org — or at least I didn’t find them after a 5-min search. But here they are in the app! The dining locations, their descriptions, locations, and menus, and a link to make reservations are all right here. I’ll never want to read blocks of text off my phone, such as the program or the extended program notes. But for handy and useful functions, this app is pretty good!

There is an obvious convenience for having an all-in-one app for SF Opera. The idea is sound. But the UI and overall performance needs work. For example, going to my account info, it uses the colorful background for the centennial. But it renders my account info all but unreadable. Make the pane more opaque. Accessing ticket information is slow and needs to be faster. Hopefully it’ll get better. I’ll give it 4 stars for now, hoping for improvements down the road. But it really is a 3-star.

The idea is a good one. Added value in easy to pre-booking drinks and food will be useful. However unless it is more useful than the website, of no value. Example are automatic addition of tickets to in the Wallet and IOS calendar, and reminders. But worst of all is the failure to say clearly how to decline optional cookies. Privacy is a prerequisite. I have deleted the app. David Ardent Opera Lover

Excited to learn of this new app but it’s not really usable to me. 1) After 10 years of logging in to SFopera with a username (that the org require me to create) this app only uses an email address but does not make an alert nor state why patrons/customers/ppl canNOT use their username which is still used on their website. 2) The news release states one can view the program but even being logged in to the app, one must register with third-party org Encore+ requiring a separate login of who knows what as one has never been required nor asked to sign up for that app and/or company and their privacy policy is nonexistent. When logged in on the SFopera website, one can view the program withou extra gymnastics. 3) Tickets will only be distributed to the app 48 hours prior to performance. SFopera already sent them via email for fall/winter performances. 4) I couldn’t find a version number. Well, the bottom of the Settings page shows 8.00.00 Overall it’s slow too. I’m sure they’ll say they tested the app but with whom is a scratch my head question.