Last Updated on: 9th July 2015, 12:56 pm
I was just thinking about how odd it is that we’re 5 days into the Olympics and I have yet to say a word about them here. I’ve been keeping up as best I can, but we’re still functioning on one computer for now so my time for writing quickly on a full keyboard is limited. But this one computer situation does give me a reason to write an Olympic post, so here goes.
My computer, AKA the broken one, is in the living room, AKA where the TV is. This one is in one of the bedrooms, AKA where the TV isn’t. So if I’m wanting to watch Olympics and get anything accomplished, we’re going to have to improvise.
Enter the CBC Olympics app, at least if you’re a Canadian like me.
I was pretty sure when I downloaded it Monday that I was going to wind up pissed off and disappointed. Even though Voiceover comes standard on everything Apple and has for years, so many people still don’t bother developing their apps in a way that works with it. But the CBC Olympics app actually kind of does. It’s one of those things that you’re going to get lost in especially if you really want to heavily use it to get information like results or schedules, but the most important part, AKA the video feeds, are pretty easy to find. They put them right on the home screen before you start wading through everything else, which is nice. It’s also very clear wich one you’re clicking on. Nothing is left untagged and to the imagination as so often happens in video dependent apps. And double tapping the one you want will almost always start your stream with no further rigamarole, though now and then you might have to mash the play button a couple of times to get it going. This seems to only be an issue when server loads are extremely heavy for whatever reason, so most of the time you shouldn’t have to worry about it. I’ve been using the hell out of this thing the last few days via the iPod hooked up to my speakers and it’s working out great. Almost as good as the TV for me since I don’t have to look at it.
It will also, assuming you don’t have the app open, send you push notifications whenever medals are awarded. Especially handy since every damned thing seems to happen while I’m asleep.
So if you need a way to keep tabs on and watch the Olympics, grab it. Expect parts of it to frustrate you, but the streaming feeds are awesome.
Perhaps I should have written that *most* of the video feeds are easy to find. Now and then they’ll hide some of the on demand stuff on you a little, but what’s fresh is pretty much always right there.