Recently I was lamenting the sorry state of my music affairs to my wholly sympathetic spouse...
Me: I like how I have to cancel Sirius but you have an iPod and that Squeezebox thing.
The Wife: I like how I have to gestate two parasites for nine months. Get an iPhone.
Me: I already have a phone, why would I spend $400 we don't have for that stupid gadget?
TW: Because you need to replace that piece of crap Nokia and you could have everything on one device.
Me: Yeah...but...I'd only have 8 or 16 gigs. Your iPod has 120...
TW: How much space do the complete recordings of Iron Maiden really take up?
A few thhings have swung in our favor recently, not the least of which was the fact that insurance is now paying for a healthy chunk of She Who Shall Not Be Named's therapy. Financial semi-solvency is now an actual possibility, which would be a great relief with the impending arrival of two more remorseless leeches bundles of joy.
So I got the iPhone. It is - admittedly - pretty freaking cool, especially compared to my vintage 2002 Nokia that I'm reasonably sure actually passed through the digestive tract of our neighbor's dog. I goofed around some with the apps last night (UrbanSpoon, Stanza, and BBCReader among them), but there are a ton and I'm a busy man (well, there are a ton, anyway). So I put it to you, Ken: what are some of the apps I absolutely need to have (Elisson, I'm looking at you)?
And FYI, the Iron Maiden discography takes up about 300 Mb.
Shazam — listens to music via the microphone and identifies it.
Google Earth — Googles the Earth
Yellow Pages — The King (of phone books) in Yellow
Zippo — for concerts
The Google app is nice — voice recognition searching
Weatherbug gives you more weather info than the built-in app — radar maps & the like
iWant is good if you travel much
I’ve used Flashlight more than I care to admit
Loopt is pretty cool — V & I use it to avoid phone calls along the lines of “Where are you”
Trailguru is great if you hike/jog/bike much — GPS tracking and uploading of routes.
Games are pretty much personal choice — but it is really cool that Advent is available on the iPhone (original version)
Best thing about a lot of iPhone apps is that they’re free. And the ones that cost money are mostly cheap.
Here are a few to check out - all free unless otherwise noted:
The Weather Channel - better than the weather app that come with the phone.
Pandora - Create your own radio station and then listen until your ears bleed.
Magic 8 Ball - Yes, like what it says. Silly fun.
Flixster - See what’s playing in your neighborhood. Read reviews (when you’re not writing ‘em, that is.)
Shazam - That music that’s playing right now? Shazam will tell you what it is and give you chances to buy it…or watch videos. A jaw-dropper.
Google - has voice search capabilties.
Google Earth - because you want to see where the hell you are.
UrbanSpoon - Play local restaurant roulette, wherever you are!
Yelp - Also useful for locating restaurants.
USA Today - McPaper for the McPhone.
Skyworks Bowl Lite - Skee ball. Addictive.
FallingBalls - Silly, yet amusing.
iHandyLevel - Because you never know when you’ll need a spirit level.
Zippo Lighter - Great for concerts - or karaoke nights.
Lightsaber - For Star Wars douchebags. I mean, fans.
iFart - You know you want it. Sure you do. Great for enlivening boring meetings.
Other apps like iSteam (play with images as seen through a steamed pane of glass), Vicinity, and Ocarina are fun and relatively inexpensive. But you can get almost every app you might want for free.
I’m going to second the suggestion for Pandora, easily the most used app on my iphone. Vicinity saved my butt in europe last summer, it uses your location and tells you nearby restaurants, bars, grocery stores, and places with wikipedia articles, which is surprisingly useful.
Public radio is good, its free public radio stations, tons of them all in one spot.
You have stanza already (which is good), but there is also an amazon kindle reader out now.
2 Across allows you to download crossword puzzles. Unless you go through a huge number of these in a week, go for the free version (I think its marked as 2 across LE).
Facebook- you’re already on it, so why not?
Tweetie- yes, it’s a twitter app
Apple’s Texas Hold ‘em- If you like poker, this is pretty cool. it even has full motion video!
Evernote- great note-taking app. You can make picture notes, text notes or audio notes and upload them to the evernote site and access them on your desktop. Might come in handy for those movie reviews…
LED Football- the classic Mattel LED football game that everybody had back in the day
LinkedIn- if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s like Pokemon for professionals!
Space Deadbeef- funky little side-scrolling spaceship game. it;’s free
Rolando- quirky little game that is somewhat like Loco Roco and Katamari Damacy
Wikipanion- Wikipedia, duh.
Wooo!- quite simply, a button that when pressed, goes ‘Woooo!”
Also, someone is working on a universal remote app that I am eagerly awaiting
Yay! Congratulations on your new phone. I love mine.
My most used app is one that already comes on the phone and that is Google Maps. I love that thing and use it not only for directions, but to look up phone numbers, addresses, get traffic and find the nearest location of things when I am out and about town.
I like that there is a Kindle app. I don’t plan on reading a lot on the iPhone, but sometimes when I have a few minutes to kill and I’m having to wait somewhere it is nice to have a book on my phone.
If you like to play music Ocarina is a must. Make sure to go into the Smule Forums and get some of the different song notation.
I’m a big game player, but as David said games are a personal choice. I like Frenzic, Galcon, Lightbike and Mancala.
Ed just got the iPhone for work a few weeks ago, loves it. I swear to God that I am going to have to bury him with it someday, he loves it that much. Oh and he got a zillion apps including the level, iFart and something that lets you listen to all the music stored on your computer from afar. We had to drive 2 hours to a wedding last weekend and I got to play DJ! Enjoy man, it’s probably the most fun you are gonna have for awhile.
iPhones, Twitter, XBox….what is it with you damn kids and your technology these days? ;)
Gotta agree with Shazam & Pandora - those apps are my fave! I also get a sick twisted pleasure out of Pocket God. The Facebook app is great because you can immediately upload pix to your page, which I do quite a bit!
I am covetous of your iPhone, but until they stop having an exclusive contract with AT&T, which gets horrible reception in NY and CO, I fear I must delay gratification. A couple things you absolutely don’t need but might cater to your more adolescent tendencies are the beer mug that drains as you tilt your phone and the random fart sound generator that you can also set as an alarm if any unauthorized personnel pick up your phone. Ah, the miracles of modern technology….