ScottDickson.net

Several friends have recently purchased an iPhone. Being their resident l33t geek, they often ask what iPhone applications I would recommend. To answer everyone’s questions efficiently, I thought I’d show people what apps are on my iPhone. 

I think showing what apps I use is probably more informative than just recommending an app. I think sometimes people recommend apps that they don’t really use. There was a recent story out that said in effect, why people download a lot of apps, most times they use them only once or twice. I am kind of weird about things getting crufty and so I will readily delete an app that I don’t use. If it’s on my iPhone I use it. If they app sucks, then it will get deleted off my iPhone in short order. 

For brevity’s sake, I probably won’t comment much on the apps that come with the iPhone. 

First up, The Weather Channel app (starting at top left, row 2, column 3). This is probably the best weather app out there. You can easily view, current conditions, the hourly, 36 hour and 10 day forecasts. You can also view severe weather alerts & weather maps. I don’t really use the weather video because I can get much more information faster from reading than watching a video.

Now for my favorite app, Evernote (row 3, column 3). One of the biggest annoyances with the iPhone is that while it came with a Notes application, you can’t sync the notes with your Mac other than to email them to yourself. Evernote solves this problem. You create an Evernote account on their website, you can also download a Mac of Windows client and then you can create notes, clip web pages, etc. Once you sync the note you can view it from your iPhone, desktop client or the web. I like it so well I upgraded from the free account to the paid account. It’s definitely worth the $45 per year for me. I can take shopping lists, to do lists, meeting notes, etc. with me wherever I go. This is a must have application. Did I mention that I like this app a lot?

The next icon to the right of Evernote is not really an app but a link to the ESV Bible’s mobile website. Very handy in that I have access to the full ESV text, devotions, etc. from my iPhone wherever I am. 

The Google app (row 4, column 1) is pretty handy. I don’t use the voice search but the text search makes it supper easy to Google something without having to launch Safari, navigate to Google, etc. It also has handy links to all of Google’s mobile/iPhone optimized web applications. 

The Facebook app (row 4, column 2) works pretty well for those who use Facebook. You can change your status, comment on others status feeds, upload and comment of photos, chat, send and read messages from your Inbox, accept friend requests, etc. The only thing you really can’t do is view, post, administer Facebook Groups. 

Twitter is all the rage for microblogging. Twitterific (row 4, column 3) is a pretty capable client to view and post tweets. The only downside is there is no way to follow someone mentioned in someone else’s tweet without launching Safari. Also since the iPhone still doesn’t support cut and paste you can’t cut and paste a URL into a tweet which is a major portion of what people use Twitter for. To deal with these annoyances, I just mark a tweet as a favorite and then go back to Twitter on my MacBook and handle these issues later with a more capable client. 

Pandora is a streaming Internet radio service. There is a huge variety of styles and artists and it uses a pretty neat engine to create custom playlists  based on artists, styles etc. The Pandora app (row 1, column 2) lets you listen to your Pandora stations on you iPhone. It works well and sounds good if you are on Wi-Fi or 3G network. I haven’t tried it on the EVDO network though. The only downside is that unlike the iPod application native to the iPhone you can’t listen to Pandora while using another iPhone application. Like most other iPhone apps, Pandora doesn’t multitask. 

The Public Radio app (row 1, column 3) lets you stream NPR radio stations. I love NPR’s news programs and have trouble getting NPR on the radio as the nearest NPR station is in Austin about 60 miles away. Like the Pandora app, it works well on Wi-Fi or 3G and it doesn’t allow multitasking with other iPhone apps. 

I just got the Amazon Kindle app (row 2, column 3) on my iPhone this morning. I love it so far. I’ve been using Stanza to read e-books on my iPhone for a while. The Kindle app has the advantage of Amazon’s huge Kindle e-book store. I downloaded the ESV Bible Kindle book (free!, btw) and a Philip K. Dick book. I’ll start reading them soon. 

My only gripe so far is that the page turning interface is different than Stanza’s, a swipe vs. a tap and it might take a bit to get used to the difference. I’ve seen people griping that unlike the Kindle you can’t subscribe to newspapers, blogs and magazines. You also have to use Safari to purchase books rather than doing it through the client. I don’t really see this as a problem as I read all those on the web using Safari. I mainly want to read books wherever I am with my iPhone. 

The Stanza app (row 2, column 4) is great for reading e-books. It has online access to many of Project Gutenberg’s books as well as several other publishers. Stanza has a companion desktop app. The best part of that is that you can open a file on the desktop client, and then download it onto the iPhone. The desktop client supports a boatload of formats, TXT, PDF, etc. I get lots of free books, stories, etc. as PDF’s and all of Project Gutenberg’s books are not available using the iPhone client so this makes it easy to get these onto my iPhone. 

The USA Today app (row 3, column 1) is great. The interface is probably one of the best of any iPhone app’s and it has the ability to share stories by SMS, email or Twitter (using Twitterific). The Twitter part really makes this app stand out. 

The AP Mobile News app (row 3, column 2) works well, The interface isn’t as good as the USA Today app though and while you can share stories via SMS or email it doesn’t have Twitter support. 

I love to read Wikipedia. It’s probably because when I was a kid I’d take a different encyclopedia to bed every night and fall asleep reading. I can spend lots of time reading random articles. The Wikipanion app (row 3, column 4) is a great client for accessing Wikipedia. 

The NY Times app (row 4, column 1) just got updated. It’s a good thing too because the first version was pretty slow to update the news stories. Hopefully, this version will work better. I do enjoy reading some of the national and international news articles on the “old gray lady”. I just updated this app to the new version so I can’t really comment on how well it will work. So far you can only share stories via email. No SMS or Twitter. The old version was so slow it got deleted off my iPhone. 

The BBC Reader app (row 4, column 2) is another one I just got. It seems also a bit slow to download news stories but supposedly it allows off line access. This would account for the slow updating. When you click on a story link it takes you to what appears to be the BBC webpage for that story. You have to use the pinch/un-pinch gesture to zoom in to where the text is readable, at least if you have middle-aged eyesight like me. Another downer is there is no app native way to share stories other than by going to the story web page and using the tiny link at the bottom of the page. 

Apple’s Remote app (row 4, column 3) doesn’t come on the iPhone but it should. If you use iTunes on your desktop computer the Remote app can control your iTunes over the network. Slick, works great and no real downside other than when your iPhone goes to sleep (and/or locks) the Remote app takes a bit to find the network, connect to iTunes and get back to where you were. 

The WordPress app (row 4, column4) works really well to post to your WordPress blog. It’s full featured and very capable. I can’t imagine that you want to type a long blog post with an iPhone though. I host my own installation of WordPress on my own server space and it works for my blog. I also assume it would work equally well if your blog was hosted by WordPress too. 

You’ll notice that I keep most of my game apps hidden over here on the third page. 

The iChess app (row 1, column 1) plays a good game of chess. The interface is good and it’s pretty full featured. There is a long splash screen that points you to the paid version. It’s not too annoying but it is a bit disconcerting at first. 

reMovem Free is a completely mindless game app (row 1, column 2). It’s a fun timewasting game but there is little challenge involved. Not a real criticism of the app but more if the way you play the game. Good for killing a few minutes while waiting in line in the post office, where you really don’t want a big investment in brain power like a serious game of iChess.

The Sol Free app (row 1, column 3) is great. If you can spend hours playing the solitaire game on your PC then this one is for you. It works well and has a variety of games. If I wasn’t so cheap I might even pay for the paid version. 

The Sudoko app (row 1, column 4) works well. I don’t play that often as I’m not often in the mood for the time investment any game of Sudoku requires. My only gripe is that it’s not as easy to write the typical Sudoku pencil notes that most people use as part of their Sudoku strategy. You have to click the Note button first then the number to insert the note or else pressing the number key puts that number in the cell. I can’t imagine another way to do this on a iPhone app so I will cut the developer some slack. Not every game out there is designed with a computer in mind. 

The DigiLite app (row 2, column 1) is an electronic drum machine. You can play a pretty full featured drum kit (two tom toms, kick & snare drums as well crash, ride and high hat cymbals). The sounds are great. However, you’re not going to sound like Neil Peart mainly due to the challenge of playing a great drum solo by tapping buttons on a small screen. You can get a great rim shot out of it though. Perfect for those boring meetings, just turn the speaker up really loud so everyone can hear. It also has a record/play feature so you get put a really good riff loop together. However, when you exit the app your loop goes away. 

The YPmobile app (row 2, column 2) is a client to search the Yellow Pages. It works well and is location aware. When you first start the app it asks you for permission to use your location. If you grant it, when you type for example “restaurants” it will search for restaurants near where you are. You can even click the location and it will open up that location in the iPhone’s map application. Not bad for when you are in an unfamiliar city. 

The User Guide (row 2, column 3) is just a bookmark to Apple’s online iPhone User Guide. Since the iPhone doesn’t come with a manual this is handy for those few features that aren’t intuitive. I do find that the longer I use my iPhone the less I find myself going to the User Guide. 

Last but not least is the Google Earth app ( row 2, column 4). I first had some concerns about installing it. While I find Google Earth’s desktop application works well, it is a bit machine intensive. The iPhone app is pretty network intensive too. It’s probably best to use it only on Wi-Fi. I haven’t tried it on 3G and can only imagine that EVDO would be excruciating. It’s probably really close to being deleted from my iPhone in that I find the iPhone’s native Maps app works really well for those times I need a quick fast map. 

I hope that this list helps you to find some interesting and useful iPhone apps. 

Peace, 

Scott D

Tagged: iPhone