I had become very excited about the release of the App store, 2.0 software and new capabilities of the iPhone from the March 6 Event and WWDC 2008 Event. On July 10th I was intently watching Macrumors.com and they had a “leaked” version of the 2.0 software. I thought about it… and thought about it some more and decided to wait until the next morning to see if the 2.0 software was out. I woke up early on July 11th like a kid on Christmas morning (to which my wife can testify to!). After clicking the “Check for updates” button in iTunes every 3 seconds for well over an hour, to my dismay it was not available yet! Knowing that I still needed to go to work, I decided to install the version that macrumors posted. While the process started, I kept watching macrumors and ohh about 10 minutes in the install they posted it has officially been released! DOH! The next day, I did upgrade from unofficial to the official release.
Thanks to another post on MacRumors of how to get to the app store, I was able to browse and pick out several apps I wanted to try BEFORE the launch. Ok ok, before I sound like an advertisement for MacRumors, (a site of which I am not even a member) and before you get tired of my ramblings, lets talk about some apps, well.. I’ll tell you what, I will “talk” or type and you can just read. How you choose to do that whether it be to yourself, outloud or text to speech, that is up to you.
First up, lets talk about the iPhone as a gaming device. At the March 6th Event, one demo was Super Monkey Ball, reminded me of similar games I have seen that involved a marble. This is a fast paced, action game with great graphics and shows the power behind the iPhone really well. I did buy this game for $9.99 and overall is a great game. The game does seem like a natural fit to control using the accelerometer, however two improvements I would like to see in relation to the controls are 1) user ability to define the center – or where the resting place for the monkey is and 2) user ability to define the sensitivity of the accelerometer. Overall this is a great first generation iPhone game that I give Super Monkey Ball 4.0 out of 5 stars. It only loses a star due the lack of settings.
I have always liked racing games, so I began a search to find a good racing game and came across 2 of note, Moto Racer by Freeverse and Cro-Mag by Pangea, they both were rated about the same by users (atleast at the time). Since I had heard about Pangea already in the WWDC 2008 event and they showed a demo of Enigmo, a puzzle water physics game – I decided I would lay down my $10 (9.99) on Cro-Mag. Cro-Mag makes excellent use of the accelerometer, has great graphics and game play. It has settings to change the “Steering Sensitivity” (ie how sensitive the accelerometer is) – very smart! I find it interesting that in the settings, it says “For best performance turn Music and Sound Effects Off”. I guess the iPhone is still just a little bit away from having the necessary horsepower to handle both? I tried it both ways, but do not notice really any difference personally. There are 8 tracks + 1 special, 10 vehicles that are all amusing and 2 character options of very much ugly cave people but still amusing. For game play, you must keep your thumb on the F (F is for forward) while you tilt the screen left or right for steering, much like a steering wheel. There is also a button for R (Reverse) and a round circle to stop. Id like to see 3 things added to this game. 1) Option to use either F and R buttons OR to tilt phone forward and back to move the vehicle. 2) Ability to save game data and have goals to work toward – maybe I am missing something here? 3) Ability to turn off vibration function as I just find it annoying and know it is not helping with battery life.
Overall I give Cro-Mag 4.5 out of 5 stars!
There are many other games that peak my interest, Enigmo that water physics game by Pangea I mentioned earlier, Bejeweled 2 – my wife would love and we may buy when we get her an iPhone, Moto Racer, and while writing this, I just noticed Crash Bandicoot.
I want em all, but the $20 I already spent is already far over budget for the Farnum household. The iPhone makes it TOO easy to buy apps. For most game systems you have to physically go to the closest store to get it now or order online, give your CC and wait for it to arrive. With the app store, you click Buy, enter your password and presto – instant gratification. The fact that there are not really much “demos” makes it really tempting to “Buy to Try” instead of “Try then Buy” as I would put it. Apple is going to need to come up with a trial version solution somehow. I firmly believe that Apple is in a position to begin to compete with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS for portable gaming device market. In fact if Apple adds the ability to play these games to the Apple TV, watch out!
Alrighty, well thats enough of the Games, now how about other Fun items like Social Networking, etc. I installed Twitterrific and Twittelator to manage my tweets and peeps on Twitter. Say that 10 times fast. I have used both , but not extensively and so far think I perfer Twitterrific but would perfer it didn’t have the tweet sound when I start it. There are tons of other social apps I have not really looked at much, more of because I don’t want to join everyone of them only for me to be my only friend. At this moment, I give Twitterrific 4 out of 5 stars.
I installed the AOL app, spent a half hour digging up my old username “Jared4Jesus78” and password and signed on to find a long long list of people most of which I have no idea who they are or why I had them on my list and only recognized a few names, one of which was an old friend David Cougle from Slidell, Louisiana who I exchanged a few sentences with. It did not seem that I got notifications of messages sent while I was offline as was shown in the WWDC 08, but I have not really confirmed this. In any case, I have very few contacts on AOL and am debating if I want to keep it installed or not. If I did like or generally use AOL, then it is a decent messenger program and I rate AOL messanger 4 out of 5 stars.
Another app in the Entertainment category is Movies.app, this simplistic app allows you to find movie times for local theaters and can even can show you a movie trailer. I know a few times I have been at the move theater, not sure what we wanted to watch and the poster is not enough information to decide. Having the ability to watch a trailer while in line…would be awesome. I say would be because I found the trailer watching feature hit and miss. About 1/3 of the time I would tap watch trailer and nothing happens. One other nit picky item is that instead of asking the zip code, why not attempt to get this from the GPS abilities? What if I am visiting a city and do not know the zip code? This is the app that is almost there, it just needs refinement. Overall very worthy to install and I rate Movies.app 3.5 out of 5 stars.
If you use eBay frequently, the eBay app is pretty good. This is however one of those apps that I think to myself.
.. does it need to be a native app? Like I said, if you use eBay frequently, it may be good. Let me explain. This app has very little reason to be a native app, it accesses the web every time you use it and I do not think it stores anything for offline use (untested). The ONLY advantage it is as a native app, is that your username / password is always stored and you are automatically logged in. With Safari, you may need to often retype your username / password. For an infrequent eBay user such as myself, the eBay app is not really worth anything as I could use Safari just fine and this could of been a webapp just as easy. I rate the eBay app 2.5 out of 5 stars.
To interject my own blog, here are some things to consider when deciding if the app best suited as web app or native app
- A native app can save username / password for longer time, not reliant on browser. Is this needed for your app?
- A native app can save data for offline viewing. Are you using this other than username/password
- A web app can easily be updated, on the fly, no download and install needed
Moving on, AOL Radio is pretty neat. Finally I can listen to internet radio on the iPhone! This is really awesome. On July 11th, I noticed at one point I was no longer able to listen. I am not sure if there was a current issue or if I reached a time limit of some sort.. or what. Overall I rate AOL Radio 3 out of 5 stars due to the issue I experienced. I moved on to another service called Pandora. I found the setup / signup a bit clunky and unnecessary. Basically you create your own stations, however the catch is you pick a single song or artist and it names the station after your selection and chooses other song or artists it thinks is related – so you must pick wisely. I first picked “Demi Lovato” before I knew the songs I would pick for Demo Lovato Station (many songs I am not interested in from OTHER artists). After that I picked “Third Day” and the Third Day Station is great! It also seems clearer than AOL. I give Pandora Radio app 4 out of 5 stars.
Now, lets put away the Fun & Games and move on to something more serious – utilities and apps to make life easier / cheaper / better.
One app I was excited to see… but really let me down is Google. It basically only helps offer suggestions for searches and a couple other things. I was really hoping it better incorporated Calendar, Reader, etc. My wife and I extensively use Google Calendar and I have not found a great way for this to incorporate with the iPhone. I know about the iPhone version webapp, but having to type username and password is a beating to quickly view the calendar, plus to be able to view offline without internet would be awesome. I hope Google comes up with a calendar app or otherwise someone comes up with a good calendar sync for multiple calendars for Windows users between Google calender and Calendar on iPhone – is that really too much to ask?
Overall I rate Googles current app 3 out of 5 stars.
YPmobile is the yellow pages for the iPhone. This is a great idea. I am so sick of getting huge phone books that sit around unused until they are finally thrown away–WHAT A WASTE!! Having this information in your phone, brilliant. Again I should say does it need to be a native app…well not in its current form because it seems to think I am in California and it not obvious how to change it. Clicking the magnifying glass allows you set this, depending on your current location, however with my iPhone (not 3G), this did not work very well. I love the idea, but it seems buggy. Overall 2.5 out of 5 stars.
There is no book more important the word of God. Lifechurch.tv has come up with a bible application, simply called Bible, (but known as YouVersion) where you can read the bible in many English versions and a couple of Spanish versions and you can read contributions from others from YouVersion.com. There is a great Daily Read feature which I presume is the bible in one year reading plan, a search feature to find scripture by keywords and you can browse by book in the bible as well. I am looking forward to other enhansements such as contributing via the iPhone app and on my wish list would be the Polish version of the bible for my wife and maybe the ability to see 2 bible versions side by side in a landscape mode. Overall I rate Bible (YouVersion) 4 out of 5 stars.
Ever get tired of being on hold with some company? or worse yet, can not find a phone number on the maze of a website. There is an app called Dial Zero, that helps you find an 800 number for companies and instructions of how to get a hold of a actual live person. I have this installed and hope it will be useful. One thing I noticed it lacks is the ability to send updates / corrections. I give this a pre-rating (since I did not call any numbers) of 3.5 out of 5 stars.
There are many other interesting apps, like FileMagnet that allows Mac users to copy files and view them on the iPhone. Too bad for me this is Mac only.
I am also looking at some mileage tracking apps. Prices below were taken on July 13th.
Car Care by KB Productions $4.99
CarStat by Stephen Blessing $1.99
FuelGauge by Joel Kueser $0.99
MPG by Appigo $0.99
TripLog/1040 by Steven Creek Software $12.99
None of the above have trial versions, I could buy CarStat, FuelGauge and MPG and still not pay what Car Care costs.. or even come close to TripLog’s price tag. Then again, maybe TripLog is that much better and worth it? I don’t have the answer. Two things are clear… pricing for apps still has a while before it is well defined based on demand / profit and with a myrid of similar apps out there, it will be confusing of which one you should purchase.
One last thing, don’t buy a Flashlight app. Seriously, use that $0.99 to buy a song or maybe FuelGauge or MPG above.
Jared Farnum
http://jaredfarnum.com
UPDATE – I am now a member on MacRumors
Awesome blog Jared! Lots of great information…