Over a year ago, I stumbled upon a new interactive way of viewing the Bible and related resources called Glo Bible. It was fascinating. The software focused on user-experience and connecting the reader with media like virtual tours of the Holy Land and online video related to biblical topics. The interface was also highly visual. The books of the bible were all laid out in a table side-by-side. It was great.

Then I saw that it was only available for Windows. Major let down. This tends to happen in the American evangelical Christian community. Windows is favored over Mac OS because of the generational divide. Younger evangelicals are much more likely to use Mac OS than those of the Baby Boom generation—who still sit atop most of the leadership boards of evangelical groups in the US who make decisions like for which computing platform should their software be developed. As more and more Gen-X and Gen-Y leaders rise in the US, this will change and Bible software will get developed for Mac OS much sooner in the product's life-cycle.

Additionally, at that time, iOS (then iPhone OS) had recently redefined computing entirely and the iPad was the hottest new computing device (possibly ever). So naturally, I thought this software would be amazing on the iPad. Immediately I searched their FAQs for the inevitable "When is it coming to Mac?" and "When is it coming to the iPad?" questions. Their answers were 'soon.' So I've waited, and now they're here.

In this brief write-up, I'll be reviewing the Mac OS desktop software and the iOS app for iPhone. I do not have an iPad (a sad story). What follows are what I view to be the software's strengths and weaknesses. Then I will give my overall opinion of the title in conclusion.

Strengths

1) Touch Interactivity and Visual UI

Glo Bible was built with interactivity as a top priority. At every stage of the user experience, there are fun and easy-to-use interactive features. And Glo Bible's UI is highly conducive to the touch interface of iOS.

The primary UI metaphor is one of side-by-side cards that is very similar to the tabbed browsing experience found in mobile Safari for iOS and on WebOS devices. Each new card is called a "session," and it can be anything from a Bible search, to a piece of media, to a journal entry. You can smoothly and easily swipe through all your sessions, represented by cards, or you can remove them by tapping the "X" in the upper right-hand corner of each card.

In the Bible "Lens", which is the section of software for searching, notating, and reading the Bible, I love that you can pinch-zoom on the books of the Bible and zoom-in on a particular chapter. I've wanted this in a Bible software title since the pinch-zoom feature first came on the scene (in iOS, by the way). I also love that you can highlight a verse, and also add a note associated with it on-the-fly.

2) Rich Media

Along with the visual UI and touch interactivity, Glo Bible also prioritizes connecting readers/users with media associated with the Text. Glo Bible has a wide selection of photos, historic paintings, maps, videos, and panoramic virtual tours. I found the photography and virtual tours most appealing.

Weaknesses

1) Stability

The Mac OS version of Glo Bible is still beta, and for good reason. It does occasionally crash. For example, it crashed for me in the first five minutes of use.

2) Search Stinks!

As an avid BibleGateway.com user, I expected a comparable search experience in Glo Bible. With BibleGateway.com, I can type in a word of phrase and the system will return all the occurrences of that word or phrase within the search guidelines I determine. Not so with Glo Bible. I attempted several search queries and none of them was terribly successful. But the two search attempts pictured in the slideshow were particularly frustrating. "Lake of Fire" and "Prince of Peace" returned no results within the entire Bible. I sincerely hope this lack of performances is remedied in a future update released soon.

3) Pop-up Ad and Limited Access for Lite Users

Glo Bible has both a "Lite" (free) version and a paid "Premium" version like a lot of software titles these days. And since the authors obviously want users to upgrade, access to the best features are limited to the premium edition. However, I do think that Glo Bible goes overboard in the way they communicate the opportunity to upgrade. Essentially, clicking on anything besides the Bible "Lens" in the Lite version of the software results in a full-page ad for the premium edition filling the screen. The first and second time this happened, I wasn't too annoyed. But after after a while someone like me might decide never to buy the premium version out of spite for the obnoxiousness of the advertisement strategy.

Additionally, the Lite versions seemed a little too "lite". Glo Bible is sure to include examples of each type of media to whet your appetite, but that's all you get. I think Glo Bible could have thrown poor seminarians like me a slightly bigger bone and included the topical "Lens" or more access to media in the free edition.

4) Terrible Choosing of Online Video Resources

All my complaints about Glo Bible up to this one have been mostly trivial—with the possible exception of the very disappointing search capabilities. In the grand scheme of things, they are minor complains on what is otherwise a stunning software title. However, this complaint has far-reaching implications.

Glo Bible connects users to online video content relevant to a particular topic. This is a brilliant idea. I liked the concept a lot. Until I saw the content it chose. The online video results for a search on the topic of "hell" returned four videos. (Not very many to choose from). Out of the four videos, two were by Mark Driscoll. Now, I don't know who is in charge of making the determination of which videos will be indexed in Glo Bible's topic search results, but whoever that person is, he or she should be fired.

In a similar exercise, an online article was listed as an additional resource on the topic of "peace" that was clearly biased against the traditional peace position of the Christian church. This was as disheartening as it was predictable.

Conclusion

All in all, Glo Bible represents a quantum leap forward for the ways by which the Bible and biblical study software is organized and displayed. Glo Bible's visual UI is stunning and user-friendly. Glo Bible also goes to great lengths to surround users with additional resources to intensify and broaden the readers experience of the Text. For these advances and features, Glo Bible should be celebrated.

Conversely, Glo Bible's search capability was far less than satisfactory, and its purchase model further perpetuates the increasingly common drastic divide between the content provided in "Lite" and "Premium" editions. Glo Bible for Mac needs work in the area of stability but this to be expected in a beta release. However, my most severe criticism of Glo Bible is its inordinate bias for Fundamentalist content providers in their choosing of online video resources and articles.

I would highly recommend the free "Lite" version of Glo Bible as a causual Bible-reading and studying tool. But whether you should spend the $49 to upgrade is a decision I couldn't personally justify. If one of you out there does drop the cash and has a significantly different user-experience using the premium edition, let me know.