Greg In The Desert

Now that the iPhone App store has been fully operational for several months, I have wasted money on many applications that I used once and regret spending money on. However a few applications have made it to my first screen (you an fit 20 including the dock) to stay for a while. Half of them are default Apple applications: Calendar, Notes, Contacts, Calculator, Camera, Safari and Mail with the phone and SMS apps in the dock. Here are the 10 applications which make up the rest. These should all work on the iPod Touch.

• Things ($9.99). A ToDo list is a necessity and it has to sync with my Mac for easy data entry. I checked out OmniFoucs even before there was a iPhone Version ($19.99). I found OmniFocus too complicated where Things is more self explanatory on the iPhone and Mac. Price was also an issue, since I didn’t want to pay a lot of money for an application that I would end up not using. Possible future replacement: Life Balance ($19.99). I used Life Balance on my Palm but it wasn’t out in time for me to try it out. I haven’t looked at the iPhone version too closely but the palm version synced with both Mac and Windows.
• iStockManager (Free). Although I don’t trade stock with great frequency, I do monitor stock prices on a regular basis (as sort of a social activity). Having the ablity to trade stock is a plus however and iStockManager allows trading through Ameritrade. I initially had some problems with the application, it turns out I needed to set up options within my Ameritrade account. Thankfully, iStockManger support was excellent. Previously used: Bloomberg (free). Doesn’t attach to a trading account but does the job of tracking stocks.
• Twinkle (Free). I was a Twinkle user when you could only install apps on jailbroken phones and haven’t tried any other twitter apps. I’m not a frequent twitter-er, so I probably wouldn’t need a power user app.
• NetNewsWire (Free). I was already a user of NetNewsWire on the Mac therefore using the iPhone version was logical. I have hundreds of feeds and check them all day long. There’s a number of improvements that NNW needs, I’m looking forward to a update.
• Gas Cubby ($4.99). I’m a automobile tracking fanatic. I used TealAuto on my PalmOS device and it’s annoyed me not to be able to find a good tracking app on the iPhone. I’ve tried several and recently started using Gas Cubby. So far I like what I’ve seen and will stick with it.
• Delivery Status Touch ($0.99). I’ve used the Delivery Status dashboard widget for some time to track my UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc deliveries and having a iPhone version is nice. The latest version sync with the devlopers servers which makes it easy to enter tracking information from the computer to the phone.
• Klick (Free). Klick is an app for viewing and uploading images on Flickr. I especially like the ability to find pictures uploaded near me, however they don’t update often since most people don’t geotag their photos.
• The Weather Channel (Free). As the first review on the iTunes store says, “Finally a good weather app that isn’t 9.99”. My problem with the other weather apps I’ve tried isn’t that they are $9.99, the problem is they weren’t good and were $9.99.
• Stanza (Free). An extremely well designed ebook reader with a built-in “store” of free, out of copyright books. There’s also a desktop companion for syncing your own ebooks and PDFs.
• Remote (Free). Apple’s remote application for us with iTunes and Apple TV. I use it for both.

Although no games are on my first screen, I can’t help recommend a few that I recently played.

• Touch Physics ($0.99). Although there are desktop versions of this game, it’s new to me and I found it very original and challenging.
• Jelly Car (Free). I’m having a particlualry diffuclt time with this game and yet I cannot stop.
• PAC-MAN Lite (Fr
  ee). When I get good at the free version, I might check out the paid version: PAC-MAN ($5.99).

Have a suggestion for an alternative listed here? Let me know in the comments.

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