“Amish Life” App Review

The Amish Life app is really quite well made. Some may ask you, as you walk down the street eagerly exploring each corner of this fascinating software, one of a number of questions. You may hear things such as, “Why did someone make an app for Amish people?,” “Why not just use Wikipedia to learn about Amish culture?,” or “Why are you using technology in our Amish community, please stop,” as you meet passersby. Wittiness aside, all of these statements actually do have good answers. I had the same questions when I first encountered an Amish app. But despite its name, Amish Life is not an app for the Mennonites of America—instead, it is a surprisingly well-made and useful tool for learning about some of the communities of the USA, as well as the lifestyle on the whole. 

Amish Life provides a fairly rudimentary user interface which provides users with two identical sets of tools for two different Amish communities: the Ohio Valley and Michiana areas. Selecting either option will present the user six options, mostly providing different informational articles: “The Guide,” “Area Info,” “FAQ,” “Amish Facts,” “POI,” and “Events.” These buttons, though poorly textured, provide useful information as their names describe, with the exception of “POI” and “Events.” POI opens an in-app map with several locations of interest marked on it, and the Events button provides information, but it’s outdated, providing only an events calendar from 2016. The developer of this app clearly made it to provide visitors to the Ohio Valley and Michiana communities a sort of virtual brochure, and it does a good job of this. To the everyday user, though, it’s probably not worth spending the storage space when a Google search will achieve the same results (unless you know you’ll be visiting an Amish community, and won’t have Internet access).