IPhone

Revision as of 15:36, 6 January 2010

So I recently purchased an iPhone...

This page will become a general review of the iPhone, with intent for it to then be published to ThorxBlog.

First however, the apps I have installed and use, in approximate order of use and function.... (I am not including my layout of pre-installed apps, which I have scattered across all pages listed below)

Applications

Note: I mostly do not recall offhand which apps I paid for, and which were free (I allow myself to 'umpulse buy' any app at the AUD$1.19 price point). I have also written reviews of some applications to the AppStore. offhand, I can't tell you which apps I have reviewed there

So, here are the installed apps as they appear on each page of my phone...

Dock

• Awesome Note - this is very excellent.

Page 1

Stuff I use regularly

• Occasions - awesome remindering of upcoming birthdays and events. Syncs data from facebook also.
• iDent - a basic StatusNet client
• Twitterrific - a decent Twitter client
• facebook - facebook client is good.
• Google RSS - if google reader is your RSS reader of choice, this is a good front end to it :)
• Google mobile - voice search! It's like the futurrrrrrre!
• AppGmail - better for gmail than the builtin. shows gmail conversation view
• MyBrisbane - a range of info for Brisbane folk

Page 2

More or less this is overflow from page1 , just less usage.

• Gaia GPS - saves and records your movements using the builtin GPS (for iPhones with built in GPS of course)
• Moon Globe - excellent moon views. warning: 40+meg app!
• AppBox Pro - a bunch of free tiny utilities
• Shazam - identify songs (I've yet to use this)
• Frotz - infocom text adventure gaming! :D
• Stanza - eBook reader.
• iSSH - ssh client
• wikiHOW - frontend to wikihow. Caches survival guides locally
• Solstice - sunrise and sunset positions. Oddly, NOT solstice dates and times!
• TimeLapse - a timelapse app
• FotoTimerLE - another timelapse app
• Gorillacam - another timelapse app
• SketchBookX - a cool sketching app
• GeoHash - because I am a geohasher: http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/User:Nemo

Page 3

Stuff which isn't so useful (st.George), or is useful but only irregularly (eg: feX), or amusements.

• Echofon - good alternate Twitter client
• TouchCalc - excellent scientific calculator. I installed this before I discovered that the regular calc is scientific in landscape mode
• RotaryDialer - retro style dialer. just for fun
• St.George - not as good as it should be
• musebook - a pretty nice metronome
• HeartBeat - count heartbeats (or any beats - effectively a reverse metronome)
• Speedtest - measure your internet speed
• feX - facebook exchange - sync facebook data to your local contacts! (update icons, addresses and birthdays)
• iFractal - Mandelbrot and Julia set browser
• Cell-life - a fun little Conways game of life.
• RjDj - ambient sound creation
• Totalpong - classic pong
• NASA - a bunch of NASA info
• Epicurious - a decent recipe search app.

Page 4

Stuff for which I was pretty dissapointed really.

• Alarm Clock - a "better" alarm clock than the builtin. certainly prettier
• wordpress - a bit buggy, though useable, I think. I don't use it at the moment though.
• BigOven - recipes. Just a frontend to their site
• RFK - Robot Finds Kitten. Does NOT COMPLY to the RFK RFC. ( http://robotfindskitten.org/download/rfk-rfc/ )
• Flickr - the official flickr app. geotagging is broken for uploading, but it's great to view your friends image stream
• Flickd - geotagging works for uploads, but does not resize.
• Total Automata - cellular automata
• VNC lite - yet to properly test.
• One Tap Movies - yet to properly test

Page 5

Redundant. These are alternate versions of apps previously noted.

• ShoutEm - Twitter/StatusNet client.
• iTick - a nice enough metronome
• Metronome - another metronome with the traditional look
• NoteTakerLife - a clever way of inputting handwritten notes from the author of Visicalc. But ultimately not actually useful enough to use in preference to other note applications.
• RSSRunner - a RSS reader
• FreeRSS - another RSS reader
• Birthday - a basic birthday reminder (I think this was free, whilst the far superior 'Occassions' was $)
• LifeGame - another conways game of life

Still to get

• A decent app to give me astronomical times (sun/moon rise/set times, solstices, equinoxes, phases of the moon, etc) All to the MINUTE please.

Review notes

(best not to edit this here just yet, the master copy exists within AwesomeNote on my iPhone, and I dont want to have to manually sync diffs when I propogate changes from there to here)

Things that have impressed me

+SMS conversation view

Things that have annoyed/frustrated me

-Birthday integration to calender? -no SMS character count? -but messages width is constant between landscape and portrait mode. ie, constant pixel width, but shoulnd't it be be set proportional to screen width? -can't start to add calender events by tapping the time -why can't I swipe sideways to move between days? -6 buttons ideal IMHO. See: apple remote -how can I make an event repeat every nth week per month? Fail! -date choosing by slot machine? Cute, but dumb -Updating applications seems to regularly fail -geotagging photos captures longitude only! (?) -re: calendar... No week 'timetable' view :( -why is multitouch not more ubiquitous? -ditto rotation. I want landscape home screen! -70meg of local photos optimise into 700meg??? - iPod quick view gives a volume slider (redundant to the hardware one!) but not a track position scrubber - accessibility VoiceOver breaks slide ui - iPod ui changes capabilities purely based on rotation!