Over 40 Magnifier I almost decided not to review Over 40 Magnifier, simply because of its rather insulting name. I may be over 40 but my eyeballs haven’t given up the ghost just yet. Nonetheless, this simple little app has still proven to be very useful and has taken up permanent residence on my iPhone. My eyesight is respectable enough, but I …
My camera roll is filled with snaps of serial numbers and back of pack cooking instructions*, payback for my youthful sins of setting 5pt text into tiny boxes on the sides of assorted product packaging.
*6pt black text on a blood red background? Are they mad, we only used to do that for 'photocopy prevention' back in the days when a printed hash table was required to unlock the software.
Because if you've made it to fourty without needing glasses there's a whole bunch of friends and family who can't wait to get the digs in for all those times you may have joked about their eyewear in the past, I can totally relate to the authors opinion that he doesn't need glasses yet, just a handy app or maybe longer arms.
Everyone over 50 has presbyopia. In general my eyesight is excellent but as I approach 50 I do struggle sometimes to read very small text in poor light or if it's red on black. I do not need glasses other than about 5 minutes a month so spending hundreds of pounds on them would be a stupid waste of money.
I don't own a magnifying glass and if I did, it wouldn't help with poor light. Even if I had one of the those illuminated ones, it would weight three times what my phone (which I never stray more than a metre from unless I'm in the shower and even then it's only about 2m) weighs so I'd hardly want to carry that around.
Taking a picture and magnifying it is a shag and far less convenient than an app like this which provides a blown-up illuminated live picture.
I have a similar app on my SGS2 (UltraMagnifier) and, while I have only used it about five times, it has been invaluable on those occasions and would be worth every penny of £1.49.
I was short-sighted as a kid, wore glasses, then contact lenses. As I aged, one contact lens was weakened so I could read with one eye and see long with the other. Then I got my eyes lasered to the same prescription. So I could still read without specs up to 60 (in good light). But I've finally crumbled and had to pick up a cheap pair of reading glasses for low-light reading. Having one eye for reading, the other for long works - really. But you need to find out which is your dominant eye if you use contacts (or get laser treatment).
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