iPhone – Apps Ahoy! (Part 1)
Posted on Wednesday, Aug 26, 2009
One of the best things about using an Apple iPhone is the plethora of cool and useful apps available to extend and enhance your iPhone experience. I’ve only been an iPhone user for about a month, but I’ve already become somewhat obsessed with apps. But which apps should you use? Which are awesome and which are useless? To help you puzzle out what is wheat and what is chaff, here’s a list of every app I have installed on my iPhone (excluding games, as I’ll be posting about games this Friday). Part 1 is the first half of my apps – come back tomorrow to see the rest in Part 2.
Note – I have only included apps that are available in the iTunes App Store. Apps that require jailbreaking to install have been left off of this list. Prices for apps are current as of 8/26/2009.
Camera Genius ($0.99) – The iPhone has a pretty good camera for a phone. But it could be a LOT better. This app adds some great features, such as a timer, guides (for composition), and stabilization. It has a feature where the picture can be taken by someone saying “Cheese!”, but I haven’t found that to be super useful yet. Overall, a solid app and I recommend it if you use your iPhone’s camera more than once a month. [Install Camera Genius]
foursquare (free) – Location-based apps are very popular. For some reason, some of us feel the need to share our current location with our friends. I haven’t figured out exactly WHY we like doing this, but I do know that it is fun. Foursquare is different than apps like Loopt or BrightKite in that it takes the location concept further and makes a “game” out of it. Every time you “check in” to a location, you get points. You get “badges” for doing certain things (like checking into the gym a certain amount of times in a week, etc). It’s kind of fun. If you’re not terribly paranoid about this kind of thing, you might get a kick out of it. [Install fourquare]
Google (free) – As a BlackBerry user prior to adopting the iPhone, I’ve always been a fan of Google’s mobile apps. I drink the Google Kool-Aid freely, and am a user of Gmail, Google Voice, and Google Reader. Of course, the Google iPhone app doesn’t help with Google Voice, but it’s a GREAT springboard for Google Reader and Gmail (both of which have awesome HTML5 front-ends that make using them on the iPhone really great). You don’t *need* the app to access these services, but it does make a nice single portal to them. The “voice search” in the app is something that seems, to me, to be more “gee-whiz” than useful, but that summarizes a lot of Google things in general. [Install Google]
Facebook (free) – I think this is one of the most necessary apps to have on your iPhone…if you’re into social networking, that is. The Facebook iPhone app is somewhat useful, although it really has a lot of flaws. A new version of the app (3.0)has been submitted to the app store, but as of today, it still hasn’t been approved. There are a bunch of annoyances in the current app, but it’s still very useful for quick uploads of photos from your phone, or updating your status. The friend feed is sketchy (I don’t see all updates, and often times I’ll see old updates), and it’s difficult to see exactly when someone leaves you new comments on items (for example, it will tell me that someone left a comment on a link that I posted, but I cannot see the comments). The new version looks super awesome, and I plan to write up a full review on it once it is approved. [Install Facebook]
BeeJiveIM ($9.99) – This is my main go-to app for Instant Messaging on the BlackBerry platform, so I was eager to try it out for the iPhone. I don’t do a *lot* of IM-ing on my smartphone, but I do like to have it available when I’m on the commuter train. BeeJive (pronounced “beehive”) is very easy to use, and has several features I really like (for example, I can tie IM contacts to users in my Address Book, which is much nicer). It features push notifications of new IM’s, which is essential for an app like this, but the price tag is a tad steep. If you are a heavy user of IM functionality it might be worth it for you, but there might be better options. Let me know in the comments what you prefer for Instant Messaging. [Install BeeJiveIM]
Remember The Milk (free) – Task management was one of the hallmarks of PDA’s, and it extends to smartphones as well. Carrying your to-do list around with you at all times makes it much more likely that you’ll remember to actually do those things. The nice thing about Remember the Milk is that it works on multiple platforms – you can access your to-do list via the web, and with some hacking, you can even have it show up in your Gmail. By having this app on my iPhone, I can always see what is on my to-do list, and even have badge reminders of upcoming tasks. [Install Remember the Milk]
SimplyTweet ($2.99 with Push, free for lite edition) – I’ve tried a LOT of different Twitter apps, both on the BlackBerry and on the iPhone. SimplyTweet is my definite favorite for the iPhone platform. The biggest win for this app is the push notifications – I love getting a push when I get an @reply or a DM. The “conversation” display mode is neat too – it shows all tweets in a reply stream that is a great way to visualize it. SimplyTweet also has a feature called “saved views”, which works VERY similarly to groups/columns in apps like TweetDeck. It’s been very stable for me and has been my default Twitter app for the past couple of weeks. [Install SimplyTweet]
MLB.com At Bat 2009 ($9.99) – I’m a baseball junkie. This app was a must-have for me, even if most of the time I’m primarily using it just to check the score of the Cubs game. It’s worth the $9.99, however, simply due to that fact that it gets you full MLB Audio, which lets you listen to ANY game, anywhere, live, on your phone. The in-game video highlights is a nice feature, although I’ve not used it yet. If you dig on baseball, this is a must-have app. [Install MLB.com At Bat 2009]
ESPN ScoreCenter (free) – During baseball season, this app hasn’t gotten much use from me, since I rely on the MLB.com app. But now that football is starting off, I’ll get more use from it. I can’t tell you a whole lot about it, since it’s just been sitting on my phone doing nothing, but why wouldn’t you install it if you follow sports? It’s free, right? [Install ESPN ScoreCenter]
Ego ($1.99) – One of the first apps I installed, since I’m neurotic about tracking traffic to my blog. At a glance, this app will tell me the Feedburner, Google Analytics, and PageRank stats of my blog. It also tells me my Twitter follower count. To be honest, I rarely use this app anymore, and it’s a candidate for deletion. [Install Ego]
Kindle (free) – My wife and I own a Kindle e-book reader, so it was natural to add the Kindle iPhone app. Theoretically, this way I can read any Kindle purchases without having the actual Kindle device with me. In practice, I’ve found it more difficult to read using the iPhone than the Kindle, so other than just trying it once, I haven’t gotten a lot of use from this app. [Install Kindle]
Urbanspoon (free) – This app goes in the list of “apps I installed because I saw them on an iPhone commerical”. I think I’d have used this app a lot more when I lived in the city, and ate out more. Truth be told, when it comes to finding a restaurant, I’m still most likely to go to Yelp for a recommendation. The shake feature is nifty, but not really a killer feature. [Install Urbanspoon]
SparkPeople (free) – I’ve been working for a while on losing weight, and I use the website SparkPeople to track my calories and workouts. The free iPhone app allows you to track your calories and do quick lookups on nutritional information for certain foods. It’s proven to be essential for me to track what I eat when I’m away from a computer. [Install SparkPeople]
100 Pushups ($1.99) – HundredPushups.com is a program to help improve your fitness by guiding you through a set of pushup workouts to continually improve your strength. This iPhone app makes it very easy to follow the program – each day it will tell you how many pushups for each set, and it will walk you through each one (including a timer for rest periods). Not necessary for the program, but it makes it much easier. [Install 100 Pushups]
Weightbot ($1.99) – There are differing schools of thought on using weight as a barometer of fitness, but it’s clearly an easy to see metric. Weightbot is a very simple app the makes it simple to record your weight up to once a day, and display quick graphs about your weight loss targets. Other apps that I use for fitness (SparkPeople and iFitness) allow me to track my weight as well, but it’s a simple one-click app to do it with Weightbot. Might be a bit pricey for what it does, unless you really like the simplicity of it. [Install Weightbot]
iFitness ($1.99) – This is a new app for me, so I can’t tell you much about it. The main purpose of this app seems to be its database of exercises, and the ability to put them together into a custom workout. The app has images and video displaying how to perform the exercises, and lets you track your workouts. I’ve found the interface for adding workouts, especially cardio, to be a little cumbersome, and very difficult to edit after the fact (if you make a mistake), but I’m not ready to make a definitive judgment on the app just yet. [Install iFitness]
WalletZero (free) – Do you have a lot of “preferred shopper” type cards? Carry a bunch of barcode tags on your keychain for the gym, Jewel, etc? WalletZero is the answer. You simply enter the numbers of the barcode for each tag, and WalletZero will display an image of the barcode, which can then be scanned. This only works where the scanner is a “gun” type, or one you can pass the card over (“swipe” cards won’t work, as you can’t fit the iPhone through the swipe device, obviously). I’ve never really used this, other than to put my Jewel card in it…and scan it one time at the self-checkout, just for fun. But if you have a lot of these types of cards, this could be the app for you. [Install Wallet Zero]
Shopper ($0.99) – I really do like this app, or at least the concept of it. It’s so much easier for me to create a grocery list on my iPhone and then check the items off as they make their way into my cart. It has a feature that allows you to “share” lists with other people, but I haven’t tried doing that with my wife’s iPhone yet. [Install Shopper]
AP Mobile (free) – Are you a news junkie? The AP Mobile app keeps you updated with breaking news (including local) via push notifications. Not every story is a push, which is good, as that would get annoying – but “important” news that is breaking WILL get your attention. [Install AP Mobile]
BuddyFeed ($2.99) – Keeping up with FriendFeed can be tricky on your iPhone. The BuddyFeed app is a little spendy, but it really has made it much easier for me to see what’s going on with my FriendFeed…which, prior to using this app, I always forgot about checking. It certainly makes me more likely to interact with FriendFeed, rather than just reading it every now and again. [Install BuddyFeed]
What apps did I miss? (don’t forget, Part 2 is coming tomorrow) Are there apps that are superior to the ones that I am using? What’s been YOUR experiences with these apps? Let me know in the comments!