Safari Animals HD for iPad

At a glance

Pros

Cons

Our Verdict

Safari Animals HD is a $1 app that developer Weswog’s Creations aims at kids. The app features 26 full-screen animal photos, one for each letter of the alphabet.

On each screen, you can tap the letter to hear it pronounced, and to hear the name of the animal (“‘I’ is for ‘iguana’”). Tap the sound icon, and you can hear that animal’s sound. Tap anywhere else, and you’ll advance to the next animal and letter.

Dial C for Cheetah: Full-screen animal photos represent 26 letters of the alphabet in Safari Animals HD. Some image feature a sound icon so your kids can hear the noise that animal makes.

For some animals, like the numbat, there’s no sound icon to tap on. In my house, we make up our own sounds for those animals. (The Numbat, according to the Friedman family, says “Wah! Wah!”)

For a kid-focused app, though, Safari Animals HD is sorely lacking, and doesn’t measure up to other ABC-centric iPad apps. The app doesn’t paginate bidirectionally, so if you skip too quickly past the Yak, you’ll need to tap 25 more times to get back to it. And since it’s way too easy for young ones to unintentionally tap the large Menu button that adorns each page, you’ll find yourself starting over with the blasted Antelope way too often.

[Frequent Macworld contributor Lex Friedman is the world’s foremost expert on the noise the numbat makes.]