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Whiz Takes The Anxiety Out of Public Transit
I love New York. Despite living in Ohio — O-H! — my wife and I make the journey to NYC a few times a year. The…
I love New York. Despite living in Ohio — O-H! — my wife and I make the journey to NYC a few times a year. The thing that always seems to stress me out in the Big Apple, as well as many other major cities, is the public transportation. They always seem to be different with their own idiosyncrasies, colors, schedules, payment methods, and more. To help deal with this, I started trying Whiz.
Whiz supports more than 150 cities around the world and makes it easy to hop on the train or bus whether you’re there for a weekend or each and every day. Jump into Whiz and put in your destination and a whole host of methods of travel will appear, complete with the travel time, cost, and more.
Once you choose your method of traveling, you can track your ride in real-time. See the subway train arriving, where its previous stops were, and where it’s headed. Especially early on in my times in New York, I was always worried about getting off on the wrong stop. Whiz mitigates these fears by sending you updates as you go, sending you a notification just before it’s time to get off. If there is a delay, you’ll get a notification for that too.
Possibly one of the coolest new features is the ability to see your destination before you get there. Using the new Look Around feature of Apple Maps, you can see the stop from street level ahead of your arrival, giving you a good idea of what to expect and reducing that anxiety. This is just one of several features that arrived with iOS 16. Whiz also now supports Shortcuts for generating journeys and Lock Screen widgets.
The Whiz app has a pleasant UI that makes its confusing topic easy to understand. It has an off-white background with white boxes that the content lives in. Maps are inset on the top giving a sense of depth to the app. Its primary color is a vivid pink that is used for its own iconography and links. Beyond the app’s color, it has matching colors and icons for the trains and buses it tracks. The F train in New York on the way to Dumbo has a subway icon on an orange background.
This app is incredibly polished and continuously has been updated with new features, which seems impossible as it is so feature rich. Another iOS 16 feature that stands out is support for Shared with You. If someone messages you their ride, it will show in a dedicated Shared with You section of the app to make it easier to track whenever you visit the Whiz app. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check on flights back out to New York. It’s been a hot second and all this subway talk has me yearning to go back.
But enough about other people's apps.
