Blogs My Five Best iPhone Apps

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/02/18/5-best-iphone-apps/

 

Sorry, I draw the line here. The blog's got to go.

 

QuadCamera seems like a good idea, but personally i would never trust the iPhone camera to give me anything other than a blur. the ONLY app i use camera with is Darkroom (formally Steadcam) free and takes sharper photos.

Instapaper seems like a fantastic app. thanks.

Fieldrunner is the best. the new weapons in the latest update are fantastic! love the flame. alternative tower defence games are: 7 Cities, Creepers and Zombie attack

Mew Mew Tower seems good. but i personally prefer TowerBloxx. i used to have a similar game (exactly same buildings) on my Java enabled Sony Ericsson.

the blogs are good. i'd love more iPhone related stuff. really don't understand the hostility against Apple.

 

Good Blog - but is there a real need for so many links?

Anyway...

The main problem I personally have with Smartphones is...What's the point?

I know, I know - this is Bit-tech, there doesn't have to be a point to technology. But where are we really going with them?

Alright, so they're a little more useful than USB rocket launchers, I'll give you that.
The list above, which contains five top applications only contains one useful one ("Trains", in case you hadn't guessed) and that's no longer available.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but who needs smartphone applications to take four pictures and animate them? Sure, it's good for a laugh down the pub - once - but after that all your mates have seen it and are bored with it too.

I have all the things I need from a phone in my 5 year old Nokia 6230i - It makes calls and texts, has a camera (for taken drunken pictures of the word "Win" made from peanuts at a party), calculator and calendar.
It even does email on the go. Oh, it also deos MMS without a seperate App.

What more do we need? Most of us have a netbook or laptop that we carry with us - document editing can be done on these, not on a fiddly 3-inch screen with Pocket Word.

That's the other thing as well - the ridiculous price of the contracts that go to subsidise these phones (if you buy them off-network, you're looking at more than my PC cost). My phone is on a £15/month contract, which comes with something like 200 minutes and 400 texts, which I've never gone over. The desire to grab the latest phone and get a £35/month contract for 18 months to pay for the phone just hasn't been there for me. What would I really be paying the extra £20 for? The ability to play Tower Defence games at home or at work? Oh wait - I have a PC for that.

Sorry for the long post - I just don't get the whole Smartphone business.

 

point is to use it as an all-in-one device??

eg. phone + texting + mail checking + music player + gaming + web browser + quick document viewing + a memory tool (eg, tag items with camera, write lists) + emergency memory stick (AirShare app).

the iPhone (can't say for other devices) is a jack of all trade, master of none device. does everything, imagine you taking: PSP + netbook + Sony walkman + your camera phone. (don't forget the chargers)

it's just one device that does everything, but not exception at anything.

 

Fair enough, but would you use all those devices if your phone didn't have them? Would you have a big bag of devices?

TBH, that's probably a lot of the reason why I don't see the appeal - My PSP sits in a drawer (or gets used to VNC to my HTPC), I don't need to take a laptop anywhere (everywhere I go has a PC I can use), and I don't listen to music, even in the car (LBC Cheesecake).

Let me make this clear - this isn't an attack on smartphone users - I'm genuinely interested

 

not accusing you of any forms of attacks

i do agree that one usually only carries a camera phone. but smartphones just makes it less likely for you to be in "ah, if only i had bring that" moment.

 

I use myrail lite, has live departure / arrivals information and was free last time i checked .

 

Cool, I'll have to check that out - was rather annoyed when I had written the blog, had put it into the CMS and then couldn't find any links to the Trains app as it had been cancelled (weirdly appropriate, tho... )

As for why do we need smartphones... It's a tricky question, because people who ask that tend very much to have their minds made up already. Personally, what I love about the iphone (although this is true, I suspect of Android phones and the new Nokia ones) is just how much like a computer it is. You can play music while browsing the web, the web on the phone looks like the web on your PC, you can take photos and email them, check RSS feeds, load a game if you get bored of doing your email etc.

I think I'm one of those people who likes using technology and I'm quite prepared to use it before there's an obvious use for it - I've used RSS for years, and arguably, it's only really come into its own now I've got the iPhone, because I can check out what feeds I've got to read whenever I have a spare minute. I got into Twitter before I knew anyone else on it, just because it looked interesting. Now my friends and colleagues have caught up, and it's both interesting and useful. I can, however, see why people hate Twitter, can't be arsed with RSS and don't find smartphones all that appealing.

 

Big up the iPhone

I love my iPhone, its a great little tool, and can do practically everything.
I've had smartphones and pocketpc's in the past, but there is always problems with them, and it always seemed to crash. iPhone just work, and do it well.

Nice write up Alex, I've downloaded a couple of the apps.

 

Hmm. One app I use a lot more than I thought I would is Shazam. If you hate not knowing what a song is...this is the app for you. I was surprised at just how well it works.

 

For me, upgrading to an iPhone was as big a leap as when I first got a mobile phone. Having the whole internet in your pocket (to use a sickening Apple cliche) more or less wherever I am is just... brilliant. But to have it work so flawlessly AND be a complete joy to use is something else.

Bear in mind that the phone I had previously was an HTC Winmob affair, which matched the iPhone in terms of features pretty well. I'm sure there are other decent phones now with all-you-can-eat data packages which would impress me as much, this opinion is not limited to iPhone fanboyism (I'm really liking the look of the Palm Pre as it happens)

I don't think I would use half of the features of the iphone if it was horrible to use, so for me there's definitely an element of just enjoying using of a shiny gadget as well!

 

Oh yeah, and I meant to say - Fieldrunners is superb. It's just a very good interface for an already addictive game. This would be perfect for a long train journey, although I wouldn't advise you sit down and play it at home - you'll lose entire evenings...

 

Spot on - my fiancee played it for about 8 hours straight on boxing day!

 

That is one way to work off the christmas lunch

 

myRail lite is the train app that has gone. An Apple legal wrangle forced the programmers to remove it from download, probably never to be seen again. i have avoided upgrading my phone in case I lose my copy...

 

you won't loose it as long as you have the IPA file in iTunes or have it on your phone, one sync will have it both on your phone and on iTune, no matter what.

also, you can just backup the IPA file if you value it so much.

 

Thanks for the hint wuyanxu. Though I never really trust what iTunes is actually doing on my PC with my iPhone. Recently I upgraded my Girlfriends iPhone and all my apps appeared on her phone although iTunes was logged in on her account.

 

I jailbroke my iPhone and MyrailLite still made the transition, and appeared on the freshly-jailbroken phone. I would imagine you'll be fine.

 

Doubt my phone is quite a smartphone (6500c), but damned if I'm doing without a decent mobile browser ever again. Next phone will likely be a smartphone-proper if only for the tendency towards larger screens, more storage, and a better interface. Not an iPhone though. Nokia probably, and the new Toshiba looks interesting at a glance.

Quite agree mobile office apps are of dubious use, but moblogging & having Wikipedia anywhere justifies them alone, in my opinion

As for whether you'd carry every component item around if you didn't have your phone? No, I wouldn't - sort of the point for me, actually. I don't carry a bag if I can avoid it, and hate full pockets. A blurry camera shot is fine by me if all I need do is document something, every photo needn't be art - I often use it just for snapping addresses off envelopes, or ads from the paper, to save having to write it out and save the scrap of paper. And my DS is played at home, but rarely carried out - "portable" to me just means "anywhere in the house".

I do carry a seperate MP3 player, though - I'm too picky about my audio.