My top five favorite iPhone/iPod apps

I’ve had my iPhone 3G for awhile now. When I first got it, I wanted to do a review of some of my favorite apps. Months passed. Summer turned to fall. There was still no review. But then, how could there be? I was still learning the territory, and there’s a lot to learn. iTunes for all its strengths and considerable weaknesses, is kind of a pain to use to find applications worth trying out. It’s slow. Recently, I discovered AppShopper which has greatly-improved my ability to find useful applications. There’s also 148Apps which lists and reviews the top 148(?) applications and was recently mentioned on LifeHacker.

Before I get into the meaty reviews, I should note that I haven’t paid for any iPhone apps yet. It’s not because I’m too cheap to pay 99¢ for a piece of software (honest!), I just haven’t found too many apps that I’d really consider necessary enough to pay for. There is one particular piece of software which I would love to buy, but haven’t yet because the developers haven’t released the final version of the desktop software yet. This is OmniFocus by the Omni Group which I use every day on my desktop but won’t trust the required beta software enough to make the jump to 1.1. C’mon guys, ship that sucker so I can give you some more money!

I think it’s also worth noting that the web, that much-maligned initial platform for application release easily fills the gaps left by software, and in many cases, makes stand-alone apps unecessary. I’ve played with Exposure (iTunes link) by Connected Flow and strongly-considered paying for it, but with flickr’s recently-updated mobile site, the need for an external app is a lot less. Gtalk is another excellent example of a web application on the iPhone. There are many others I have on my homescreen.

Twittelator (iTunes) (free for Lite version, $4.99 for Pro)
by Stone Design Corp.

My favorite of the twitter clients, I’ve been a happy user of the lite version since my iPhone’s first week. It’s not without its quirks — location tweets are rarely on the mark though it’s not clear if that’s due to the GPS hardware in the iPhone itself or a software flaw. Hitting the “star” to mark a tweet as a favorite is hard to hit precisely, as is the reply button. It also includes TwitPic integration for sending pictures when you’re out and about, but the pictures often get oriented incorrectly, a problem I think is linked to the camera and accelerometers because I’ve seen it in other apps as well. If you’re not a twitter user, this is probably not that interesting to you. If you are, check it out.

Shazam (iTunes) (Free!)
by Shazam Entertainment Ltd.

Ever been in a bar or restaurant and heard something on the sound system and you and your friends couldn’t identify it? Now you can! Tap the “tag now” button and hold your iPhone up to a speaker and wait for a few seconds for it to listen to it. It’ll buzz when finished, briefly communicate with Shazam’s system and then tell you what you’re listening to. Honest. Excessive background noise confuses it occasionally, but the few times I’ve used it, I’ve had pretty good luck. Once identified, you have the option to buy the tune in iTunes (!), view related YouTube content (!!) or share the tag with your friends who might want to remember what it was too. Sharing sends an email with information like, “I’ve just used Shazam on my iPhone to identify Leif Erikson by Interpol. I thought you might like this track” including some useful links. Great fun, useful and cool.

AIM (iTunes) (Free!)
by AOL

There’s a real dearth of iPhone/iPod messenger apps, probably because of the lack of push support. AIM is pretty much a direct iChat clone for the iPhone. Works well, and if you leave it running in the background, you get buzzes or notifications when you receive a new message. Great for chatting with your friends when you’re on the road. I’d love to see a port of Adium/Pidgin to the iPhone, but don’t think that’ll happen for awhile. Maybe by the time Apple releases clipboard support. (Snide clipboard joke required for any and all discussion of iPhone applications. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on.)

Fring (iTunes) (Free!)
by fringland Ltd.

Speaking of messenger applications, I discovered Fring this week and gave it a quick whirl. I haven’t even tried the instant messenger applications yet, mostly because they’re implemented through a back-end service and I don’t usually like giving out my passwords to other companies. Especially ones that have 3 different EULAs for various terms of service – one for privacy, one for the terms of use and one for their license. I haven’t read them all yet, so that’s why I haven’t tried using the instant messenger parts. What I have read in their privacy page looks pretty innocuous and is there to inform the user that their IDs and information may be exchanged with the third parties running the services (e.g., Microsoft for MSN).

So why is this thing in my top five if I haven’t even used it fully? Because it includes Voice over IP support. That’s right, you can connect to Skype or another SIP network and use it for voice communications. With Skype-out credits (or a SIP connection) you can even dial out to land-lines. I tested this on our asterisk system at work and was able to talk to a colleague. Sound quality was adequate with only a bit of VoIP warble and latency. Definitely usable. If you’ve got wifi access, you’ve got unlimited voice minutes no matter where you are in the world.

Last.fm (iTunes) (Free!)
by Last.fm

If you’re reading this, chances are you like music. Do you wish iTunes had included streaming radio support into the iPod part of your phone? I know I do. So I was pretty pleased when I discovered Last.fm’s application. It lets you stream recommended tracks, tracks from your library or start a new station based on an artist, tag or user. You also have a somewhat limited view of your profile including your friends and recently played tracks. I’ve been enjoying Last.fm’s service more and more recently and started scrobbling my iTunes and iPod playback and building an online collection. It’s an interesting view into my own catalogue and has provided me with a few decent recommendations. Plus it’s fun.

Last.fm isn’t the only option for online streaming to an iPod/iPhone though. Pandora (available in the States) will hopefully  make it through their somewhat troubled recent months (and come to Canada). I also found an app called fStream which will play mms:// streams to your ‘pod. I don’t really have any good mms:// streams so I haven’t played with it much. If you have any good streams to recommend, please drop ‘em in the comments.

Big Endean
This is by no means a comprehensive list of available applications. I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface here. Considering the app store is … less than 6 months old, there are a TON of great apps out there and an enthusiastic and talented developer community. It’s really a huge accomplishment and Apple deserves lots of kudos for it. There have been some growing pains, but I’m hoping the worst of it’s behind us. I’ll post a follow-up with some of the other useful apps I’ve found in the near future. peece.

Currently listening to Changes Are No Good by The Stills from the album Logic Will Break Your Heart