Appiphilia: Taxicab confessions of an iPhone user

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Last Friday, a routine business trip turned into a series of false starts. A flight from Tampa to Burbank landed me instead in San Diego. Getting back to Glendale sans car required a train and a little experiment.

I was stuck at Union Station, waiting for the Metrolink home with much more time than patience. I made it as far as the bagel joint when I decided it was time to summon a taxi using my iPhone -- not by placing a regular call, but by firing up the Taxi Magic app.

Taxi Magic (Free)
What it is: an app that turns your iPhone into a hand-held taxi hailer.

What sizzles: With only a few taps, the app started to search for cab companies in the area. A number of them were linked to the wireless booking system. (Some aren’t but allow you to tap to dial them through your phone.)

Before I finished a bagel half, I had ordered a cab to my location, which was determined by the phone via GPS. (That’s quite convenient when you don’t really know exactly where you are.) By tapping the refresh button in the app, I could see when the request had been assigned, how far away the taxi was and the cab number.

I didn’t realized that there was an actual taxi line right outside the door of the bagel joint -- until I stepped out to meet the one I had summoned. But it worked!

Once you hop in and get on your way, you can set up the app to pay and tip electronically by credit card. (Or you could be proactive and do that ahead of time.) Within about five seconds of tapping ‘send,’ a bleep sounded on the cabby’s console indicating the payment had been received.

And a few hours later, an electronic receipt dropped into my inbox.

What fizzles: The driver seemed to take a little longer than a couple of miles should. But then again, this is L.A, and I was standing in glare-shot of the taxi line. When I called the cab company, I couldn’t see the address of the place I know only as Union Station, so the operator couldn’t see my booking. The driver showed up a minute later.

Bottom line: Save the waving for New York. This is ultimately, a more civilized way to hail -- and pay for -- a cab.

-- Michelle Maltais

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