The app looks interesting with a unique UI. It is certainly hitting at the right time for iOS, and considering that the transit directions in the old Google-powered iOS Maps app were never very good, this has the ability to give users an even better experience.
The supported cities seem strange to me, however. In the US, the first two cities you would develop transit directions for would be New York City and Washington, DC, as they are No. 1 and No. 2 in train/subway use in the country and having by far the best transit. After that you would do the second tier of Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. Then you'd look into less transit-friendly cities.
Houston, which is pretty much a giant suburb, is a strange pick to go before more transit dense cities. I do see that the app makers want data in a public GTFS feed. But users won't know what that is. It's up to app and service makers to work with cities, not users. They just want something that works.
I say all of this, because the goal of any app launch should be to maximize user uptake and publicity. Skipping major transit cities like DC and Seattle for launch and instead including Houston, San Diego, etc. seems like a wasted opportunity. Shooting up the iOS most popular charts is the best path to success on iOS and city selection, and thus user availability, would be pretty critical here.
All excellent points. You're right we should have put more thoughts into our city roadmap. We basically looked up US city metro populations and went with that (how terrible, I know). With all the traffic and feedback we get now, it has become clearer which cities should have been prioritized (Miami and San Diego for instance were an absurd waste of time and resources). DC is definitely coming this week, followed shortly by Seattle and LA.
Not sure about Seattle, but I would bet that there would be more users of the app in SF and NY than DC which is probably why the devs chose to prioritize these cities.
The supported cities seem strange to me, however. In the US, the first two cities you would develop transit directions for would be New York City and Washington, DC, as they are No. 1 and No. 2 in train/subway use in the country and having by far the best transit. After that you would do the second tier of Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. Then you'd look into less transit-friendly cities.
Houston, which is pretty much a giant suburb, is a strange pick to go before more transit dense cities. I do see that the app makers want data in a public GTFS feed. But users won't know what that is. It's up to app and service makers to work with cities, not users. They just want something that works.
I say all of this, because the goal of any app launch should be to maximize user uptake and publicity. Skipping major transit cities like DC and Seattle for launch and instead including Houston, San Diego, etc. seems like a wasted opportunity. Shooting up the iOS most popular charts is the best path to success on iOS and city selection, and thus user availability, would be pretty critical here.