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

And here’s why: They’re not just about the music, stupid.

Well, not anymore, anyway. Big Steve’s infamous sound-byte about why the iPod would never play video was proven false almost as soon as it was uttered. Since then, the iPod has transmogrified itself into a full-fledged portable computer. I think the response has been fairly unanimous in praise for the new format and capabilities. The App store is doing well and developers are enthusiastic. The NDA has been felled.

It’d be foolish to think that Apple was going to just stand around offering music players forever. If that were the case, the iPod would indeed be a passing fad. But as a portable computer, I see it only becoming more popular, and there’s no-one offering any serious competition to the iPhone and iPod touch devices, except maybe Blackberry. Though in my experience, they don’t really compare. The apps are often clunky, each one looking like it’s living in a completely different OS. They feel… Java-ey. The Nokias, though I hear good things, can’t provide the same multimedia experience of the iPods. Apple’s token drive-based iPod, once the flag-ship device, only has a single configuration now, and I can only imagine it’s going to be replaced altogether by flash-based devices within a year or two.

Woz’ prediction of the iPod fading from popularity would certainly be true if they’d stuck to the music, like they’d threatened to do over two years ago. But the platform is evolving and over the next few years, I’d be very surprised if the term “iPod” didn’t become synonymous with svelte, multi-media-capable, networked tablet computers. They’re from the future!

Bleszinki told the website that there are no plans for a PC version. “Here’s the problem right now,” he said, “the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software.”

via TVG

I can speculate about the real reasons Epic would do this, like, millions of dollars from Microsoft to keep it on the console only. To actually come out and say that the smart people who can build a gamer PC and have the wherewithal to do it will just pirate your game is pretty insulting. Way to drive another nail into the coffin of PC gaming!

I’ve babbled about how DRM is bad for consumers and bad for the world before. I think it’s important to keep in mind that when one person/business/entity holds all the keys to entry, it stifles innovation. Apple has built themselves a tidy little walled-garden and if they’re not careful with how they tend it, they’re going to find a lot of unhappy … garden gnomes.

On a related topic, I listened to a great podcast about copyright this week when I saw it mentioned on Michael Geist’s blog. Well-worth listening to.

Who Owns Ideas?

(Grab it soon before it disappears)

I will post john’s comment here, in it’s entirety, unadulterated:

too may people are ruining the music and film industry due to the lack of respect for artists’ work. Their penny pinching. Being able to pick up a CD every once in a while to support your favorite artists would not have such an impact on your wallets and if you can’t afford to buy then you shouldn’t be burning period because if your able to burn music so easily on a nice shiny computer, you certainly had the money for that computer now, didn’t you? Taking music online from burn sites ruins everyone from artists to companies to vendors who sell the products, think twice before being so cheap and wondering if you should pick up a disc or two. God forbid you buy a CD or DVD because you question yourself, “hmm i can burn this online”. Is it really worth the time and patience as well as the crap quality you get off these burn sites? If you knew anything about quality and sound, 98% of these burn sites quality is for crap and even sounds worst when you play it on a quality sound system.

For some reason, I feel this post is deserving of a direct reply. Lifted up into 2008 in a front-page blog article. My reply:

Fair-enough, John. I do buy music. Probably more than your average internet user because I like to support the artists and encourage good music. It’s the Right Thing To Do.

But I also download music, and I believe it is our right to do so in the same way that I can make a copy of a disc that I bought to share with a friend. Or to combine songs into a “mixed tape” to make a compilation and juxtapose different pieces in new contexts. I will defend my right to do so as long as I am able.

I think copyright reforms like Bill C-61 in Canada are evil and are caving in to largely American-owned music and movie industry pressures by a conservative government. These measures don’t protect the artists, they attempt to protect the flailing businesses who are too slow or ignorant to adapt to the changing world they are now in. They are removing the rights of citizens in favor of appeasing a small group of businesses with a lot of money. They also turn the very people who should be their best customers into criminals, rather than trying to find a way to turn downloading into a profitable new form of business. I think Apple has proven that people will pay for downloads if they’re convenient enough. Amazon, Rhapsody and others have followed-suit.

Many sites that offer content for download offer it at comparative
or better quality than commercial online retailers. Many offer FLAC
encodings which are bit-perfect copies of CDs with no loss of quality.
Many of the people who download these types of encodings probably know
more about sound quality than you do.

The internet could be (and probably is) the music and movie industries’ greatest source of marketing, whether they’re willing to realize and admit it or not. I would also encourage you and others to make use of services like Pandora and Last.FM. Legitimate, industry-driven operations providing excellent content online free of charge. To say that people are ruining these businesses by illegally downloading content is placing the blame on people rather than questioning whether or not the music and movie industries themselves are responsible for their own hardships.

Have you never downloaded anything, John? Would you like for your DVD-R/W drive to continue to function as a device you control, rather than something that is locked down with hardware restrictions preventing you from writing the bits you have chosen to write on it? Do you care that the speakers you use now should continue to be able to play back the music you “own” or have in your possession? Would you feel it was alright if suddenly all of the audio equipment in your residence refused to play content that didn’t carry a special key saying it was legal and safe? Would you mind if the government and businesses kept a log of everything you played back on those systems to make sure you weren’t committing a crime?

Download responsibly. If you like something you find, go out and buy it. Better yet, write about it online and encourage others to discover it for themselves. Be a good citizen. Support local music. Stand up for your rights.

For the past five years or so, the Shure E3 headphones (now called SCL3) had been my sound delivery weapon of choice for serious business. Developed for stage use, they quickly became popularized for portable audio for their excellent 30db attenuation of outside sound and crisp sound quality. Some criticized them for less than impressive bass performance, perhaps with good reason. But the super-detailed middle and high ranges more than made up for it for me. The phones were updated about a year after I bought mine, becoming the E3Cs and available for the first time in white to appeal to the white headset crowd. Later they were joined with the E4s to round out the line and give people an option between the E3s and the really pricey E5s. This is somewhat surprising considering these are considered professional equipment for performing musicians, but obviously, people were buying them in enough quantity for Shure to notice and shift their marketing to accomodate.

These types of ‘phones are not without their drawbacks though. Inserting them into your ears required a bit of fiddling to get them in right. The cables were also meant to be worn behind the head which often meant some fairly ridiculous contortions if you were trying to put them on in a confined space, like, say, an airplane seat or a small shower stall. (What? Don’t you listen to music in the shower?) Also, the small yellow foam sleeves (or “foamies” as I like to call them) could be uncomfortable for prolonged listening. The various silicone ear pieces never worked for me, in any of the available sizes. Walking around while wearing them can create a “booming” effect as your feet hit the ground, channeling the shockwaves up to your ears through bone conductivity. You can hear yourself breathing with them on. Talking to people (even though you can’t really hear them) is also really difficult and kind of disorienting.

Still, despite all these strange oddities, I really like them. A lot.

Enter the SE530s. I’ve been eyeing these as replacements to the “E” line of earphones since they were introduced. As a more consumer-friendly set of in-ear monitors, they lack some of the harshness of the E3s which could be, if possible, a little too detailed. The SE530s are also a three-driver design with a separate tweeter and two separate bass drivers. The difference really comes through on music with strong bass-lines and dynamic drums like the National’s album “Boxer”. The bass sounds smooth and doesn’t get overwhelmed by the surrounding drums in quieter tracks like “Start a War”. The mid and upper range detail is still there too, but it seems better blended than with the E3s. The SE530s produce a smooth, buttery sound that will envelop you in music.

Another great improvement is in the new foam sleeves. The new ones are a back foam that is apparently washable which should greatly extend their lifetime. I used to go through the yellow foamies at the rate of a pair every couple of weeks, more if I was using them heavily. I’ve had the same pair of foamies on the SE530s since I bought them and they’re still in great shape. Protip: You should wipe ‘em off periodically with a non-alcohol based anti-bacterial gel.

Other items included in the box are 3 foot and 9 inch extension cables, a full set of ear pieces in varying shapes and sizes, an airplane adapter and a 1/4″ conversion plug. The phones roll up into an included oval carrying case. Shure does not disappoint with build quality and accessories in the box and retailing for the price of a top-end iPod, you better believe the box they come in is real metal. The earphones’ cables are also really nice, with a supple feel.

Speaking of cables, I just acquired and tested-out the Shure MPA music phone adapter which comes with a “voice port” microphone for use with my iPhone. The first call was deemed a success. The little command button even works as a play/pause or answer call button.

So, would I recommend these for everybody? No, I probably wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have bought them myself if it weren’t for the ridiculous deal I found on eBay (seriously, if you’re looking for a pair, check it out). If you’re a discerning audiophile, or just someone who loves music and looking for a compact, portable listening experience that can block out a lot of external noise, then these might be right for you.

Wifi, camera, gps and easy synching with my macs were the main selling features for me. The typing is a little awkward still, but I’m getting better at it. This post is written on my phone while sitting in my backyard listening to the symphony of lawnmowers chewing through wet grass. The current selection of available apps is a tad weak, but I expect they’ll improve over time.

So far, my experience has been positive. I plan on posting some reviews of my favorite apps shortly.

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