It’s time for iPhone Apps

Filed Under Apple on 2008-07-20, 23:58

Yes, I went out and did it. One and a half hours in line last Wednesday at the San Francisco Apple store on Stockton and I walked out with a 16gb iPhone 3G. So far I’ve been very impressed. It has it’s downsides, things that the Sidekick still does infinitely better, but it does do some things better than the Sidekick. The 3G speeds, integrated GPS, and App Store with tons of apps (500+?) are what finally sold me. I’ll be going into detail more on various aspects in the near future I’m sure, but in the meantime, here are the apps I’ve loaded in the last 4 days:

Pandora: #1 reason to get a 3G iPhone.

Twitterific: When it works, it’s good. Not great, but good. Likes to crash and reboot my phone every now and then

AIM: Blows. Sidekick is far superior.

MySpace/Facebook: Maybe I’ll actually keep in touch with friends when I can log in while in a stall.

Last.fm: Was buggy and not working last time I tried.

WeatherBug: A little more info than the normal Weather App

Movies.app: Was kind of neat to be able to pull up all the info on The Dark Knight, including directions to the theater in less than a minute

Yelp: Have yet to use this even though we use the website all the time. I doubt it’s handy much outside of the Bay Area from what I hear though.

Epocrates Rx: You never know when you might need to look up drug interactions

Remote: Controling iTunes and having album art on the remote is pretty neat, and will be handy for parties, but would be more useful if I had a dedicated iTunes machine and not a laptop I have to hook up to speakers

Exposure: meh.. Flickr access, but it needs work

Google: nice and quick Google searching, quicker than safari

Graffitio: augmented reality ftw! This is straight out of some cyberpunk novel, I just hope more people start using it, and the app gets improved.

Spanish/Mandarin Audio Phrasebook: I could use some freshening up on my foreign languages.

Urbanspoon: Haven’t used this yet, but I know one night we’ll be sitting around saying “Where should we eat dinner?” and I’ll bust this out, watch my girlfriend roll her eyes, and randomly select a place to eat.

Shazam/midomi: Haven’t used either of these yet, but figure they’ll come in handy sometime when I need to identify a song. I will be real curious to see if they’ll be able to pick up on songs in dj mixes that need identifying.

MealSplitter: probably worthless

PayPal: Will definitely come in handy. Another step towards this cyberpunk novel future where physical money starts getting phased out. How long before you can but vending machine snacks in the US with your phone?

TouchTrain: Damn, I’ve got some big fat thumbs.

Loopt/Whrl: I’m really interested in all the location aware apps, need more time to check them out

Tuner: Streaming shoutcast stations? yes please! BassDrive without a computer = awesome

JirboBreak: Figured I needed at least one game for when I’m really really bored

myLite: obligatory (free) flashlight app

Tagged: Apple - Good, Gadgets & Hardware, Geek, iPhone, Sidekick

Comments

View Comments to “It’s time for iPhone Apps”

anoopr on July 21st, 2008 6:34 am

We’re working on it. I promise!
anoopr on July 21st, 2008 9:34 am

We're working on it. I promise!
Dg on July 21st, 2008 11:31 am

I’ll toss in a suggestion for ereader as well. I don’t have a dedicated ebook reader – and I hate long rounds of reading on a laptop – but this app is great. It doesn’t scroll between pages, flips between them instead, which i find to be easier for long texts than scrolling around. Reading blink on it right now.
Dg on July 21st, 2008 2:31 pm

I'll toss in a suggestion for ereader as well. I don't have a dedicated ebook reader – and I hate long rounds of reading on a laptop – but this app is great. It doesn't scroll between pages, flips between them instead, which i find to be easier for long texts than scrolling around. Reading blink on it right now.
victor on July 25th, 2008 1:11 am

PhoneSaber and MoreCowbell!
victor on July 25th, 2008 4:11 am

PhoneSaber and MoreCowbell!
Ed Hunsinger on July 25th, 2008 3:26 pm

anoopr: Glad to hear that! I look forward to new releases.

Dg: any suggestions on where to find iPhone friendly ebooks? I’m also eager to see if anyone comes out with a Comic Book reader so I can do away with my XO Laptop for that purpose.

victor: Yes, I think PhoneSaber is a required install for any geek with an iPhone.
Ed Hunsinger on July 25th, 2008 6:26 pm

anoopr: Glad to hear that! I look forward to new releases.

Dg: any suggestions on where to find iPhone friendly ebooks? I'm also eager to see if anyone comes out with a Comic Book reader so I can do away with my XO Laptop for that purpose.

victor: Yes, I think PhoneSaber is a required install for any geek with an iPhone.
Dg on July 26th, 2008 12:36 pm

I’ve been getting ebooks from ereader.com at the moment – they claim to be opening up a way to allow adding arbitrary ereader-format ebooks from other stores (and possibly pdfs, as well?).

Also – shozu seems to be a fairly decent, multi-service photo posting app so far.
Dg on July 26th, 2008 3:36 pm

I've been getting ebooks from ereader.com at the moment – they claim to be opening up a way to allow adding arbitrary ereader-format ebooks from other stores (and possibly pdfs, as well?).

Also – shozu seems to be a fairly decent, multi-service photo posting app so far.