ShowTool SM

It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t seem stable enough for live use. Just trying to set up a show, I encountered a number of bugs. For example, after a while adding scenes, they stopped appearing in the list. Clicking around a while and going out and back in they finally showed up, but by that time I’d entered the scenes out of order. Clicking “Sort/Delete” did nothing - it looked like the mode changed, but there were no sort or delete controls. Trying several times, going out and back in, I finally got it to work, although sometimes weird things happened. Trying to check a prop and save it from the all props view kept crashing the app. I also think that improvements could be made to make this easier to use. For example, if a prop is used in more than one scene, it has to be entered multiple times. It would be nice to be able to enter it once and track it through the scenes. For now I think I’ll continue to use Evernote for my checklists. I’m sorry that I spent money on this.

Makes things more confusing then helpful.. You're better off with pen and a paper.

This app is pretty basic, although it does help a bit. I'd really like to see support for set, light, sound and costume notes, allowing you to create your whole rehearsal report as you go. It's a good start, though!

I found this to be a waste of money. Lots of glitches.

I hate to say it but this app doesn't do much that is useful. I'm a stage manager, and was hoping that for $5 I would get an app that would at least do what the descriptions says it does. However the props list doesn't even have a field to type in the name of a prop. It's the same as the spike mark list but that doesn't even have a place to input measurements to make a spike chart. It does have a working stop watch, I'll give it that, but so does the iPhone's clock app. Overall, not worth $5. Can I have my money back?

This app has some potential to be really useful but... I can't ever get it to allow me to edit the "other" field so that's annoying. The interface is a bit clunky - if you click on the item in the list view it brings up a blank page - you have to click on the arrow to the right of the item to get back into the text area. I'd love it if there were separate lists for props, check list, and marks - right now when I pull up the check list page it shows all the props. Kinda lame. The photos above show a "check mode" but I don't seem to have that on my iPad. The timers are nice. All in all, it could be a good idea but it is buggy and needs work. Definitely not worth the $5 I shelled out for it.

While ShowTool SM has some interesting features, it feels more like an "extra" than an essential for Stage Managers. The props list is nice, but how about a place to organize those? Support for custom rehearsal report logs, a notes feature, attendance support, or multiple (save-able) checklists would also be appreciated. The export feature for the Props list feels very bare-bones; an updated interface to include rich text formatting when sending this lists could eliminate that. Overall, it is a decent app for $0.99 or $1.99... but as it is currently set at a price of $4.99, the bar is set high, and as of right now, ShowTool SM fails to deliver.

Version 1.0.1 already has several great features that will be even better with tweaking. For instance, I really like that I can e-mail myself run times. But is there a way to reset the times without resetting the labels? If I want to record individual scenes or scene shifts, I don't want to lose 5-10 seconds typing in the names for each section. Looking forward to testing the rest of the tools.