iPhone Apps

With the new iPhone 3G S launching in just eight days, now would be a good time to do what all iPhone owners/bloggers must eventually do: write about his or her favorite iPhone applications.  This will serve two purposes.  First, I want to share with the blogosphere what apps I use and I why I use them.  Secondly, my parents are getting iPhone 3G S - their first iPhones.  This will be their very own quick-start guide to useful and fun apps.

Apple Apps

It is important to become familiar with the Apple apps that are available on iPhone when you get the device.  If you're already familiar with the Apple apps included on the iPhone, click here to continue to my App Store recommendations.

Calendar.app is very useful, miniature version of iCal for Mac OS X.  It allows you to view your calendar by list, day or month.  You can set up multiple calendars (Personal, Work, School, Church) and filter them if you like.  Quickly add events, giving them custom titles, locations, starting and ending times.  You can also set an alarm to remind yourself of the event.  I believe Google has now set up their Google Calendar to sync with iPhone also, although I have not tried this yet.

Mail.app can be set up to sync multiple e-mail accounts, including Microsoft Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL.  Most useful for me are Gmail and Yahoo! Mail; however, I've used Gmail exclusively for years.

Camera.app and Photos.app work together seamlessly to provide one of the best photography experiences available on a mobile phone.  Camera.app is extremely easy to use, self-explanatory, and receiving a significant update with the release of iPhone 3G S.  You can access your "Camera Roll," containing all of the photos you've taken directly from Camera.app.  This opens Photos.app.  All of your Camera.app photos go directly into Camera Roll within Photos.app, and you can set up additional folders in Photos.app to sync through iTunes.

I use Maps.app frequently, as it is the quickest way to easily find a business phone number.  In addition to the standard features you would expect from a map application, you can place calls and add contacts directly from Maps.app.  The new compass application for iPhone 3G S will also bring many new features to Maps.app, allowing for turn by turn directions and true GPS.

Clock.app serves as a world clock, alarm clock, stopwatch, and timer.  Once again, this is very self-explanatory.  I use Clock.app as my alarm clock every day (or at least every day that I remember to set my alarm!)

YouTube.app brings full YouTube functionality to iPhone.  While it was decent before iPhone OS 3.0 (which I'm now using, thanks to @toxinide), YouTube.app will soon have many new features.  YouTube.app now allows you to sign into your own YouTube account, gives you access to your YouTube favorites, and will allow for direct YouTube uploads from your new iPhone 3G S's video camera.

Stocks.app remains fairly unused by most iPhone users, but it received an upgrade in iPhone OS 3.0 also.  I like to use it to track how my favorite (and least favorite) companies are doing economically.  I track AAPL, DELL, YHOO, LOGI, T, SNE, MSFT, WMT, DIS, and MMM.

Weather.app is a quick way to check the six-day forecast for multiple locations.  It shows the current temperature, accompanied by an attractive visual symbol of the current conditions (rainy, sunny, storms, cloudy).  I had high hopes that Weather.app would receive an update in OS 3.0, allowing you to view more details in landscape mode, but no such luck.

That's a quick rundown on most of the included Apple apps.

Assorted Apps


USA Today (free) is my favorite source for news on the iPhone.  In the app, you have access to headlines from the Top News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech and Travel categories.  Each category has sub-categories of news with each article available in its entirety.  From each article, you can share the story via e-mail, text, Twitter or Facebook.  The app also has a weather page with a brief forecast and still image radar map.  You can access the current day's NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAAF and NCAAB schedules and scores.  All of the popular "Day in Pictures" categories from the website are available, plus all the graphs and charts that make USA Today so popular.  Overall, this is an outstanding, feature-packed little free app.


Restaurant Nutrition (free) is a very handy tool for finding nutrition facts for several restaurants.  The developers update it with new restaurants frequently.




AP Mobile News Network (free) is my source for local news.  All of the biggest headlines from my local papers, Daily American Republic and Southeast Missourian, come straight down the AP wire and land right here in this handy little iPhone app.  This app also serves as a huge source of national and internation news from the Associated Press.  It now features weather forecasts and a fast loading still image radar map from AccuWeather.com


Remote (free) is a handy little app, designed by the gurus at Apple, which allows me to control iTunes from anywhere within my wireless network.  Unfortunately for my parents, it is only compatible with Mac; they could control my iTunes, but not their own.



WeDict ($5.99) used to be free, and I'm really glad I picked it up when I did.  This is the best electronic dictionary I've ever used, and I find myself looking up words daily.




Shovel (free) provides a native app for viewing the top stories from the popular social news website, Digg.  This makes it a quick and easy source for Apple, Mac, and iPhone news on the go for me.  If you are a Digg user, or simply like browsing articles on various subjects, Shovel is an excellent source.


Movies (free) is an app provided by Flixster which allows users to view box office information, local theater listings, DVD releases, and movie reviews.




Wikipanion (free) is the best native Wikipedia app available for iPhone.  The Wikipedia website can be viewed in Safari.app, but it's hard to see and not very iPhone friendly.  Never fear, Wikipanion searches Wikipedia as you type and displays Wikipedia entries as they should look, complete with links.  The Wikipanion interface is nothing short of perfection, allowing you to save the pictures you find on Wikipedia in Photos.app.

Bible (free) is the best Bible app I've found for iPhone, with the added benefit of the excellent price.  There are several translations available offline, with even more available online.  It is fully searchable, and has all of my favorite translations: NIV, ESV, NLT, NKJV, The Message.  It features a daily reading plan to allow you to read the entire Bible in a year, allows for bookmarking passages, and has small, medium, large, extra large and giant font sizes.

Shazam (free) is the popular little app seen on television that lets you record 10 seconds of a song and magically analyzes the clip to reveal the title and artist.  You can store songs that you've tagged however long you'd like, and many songs give you direct links to download the song from iTunes, watch videos from YouTube, and access a biography and discography of the artist or band.

Backgrounds (free) has a nice little iPhone interface for finding new wallpapers for your phone, broken up into categories.  Easily save new backgrounds and set them as your wallpaper or assign them to contacts.



Google Earth (free) gives you the same features as the desktop version, on your iPhone.




Sports Apps

Sometimes, USA Today's sports information is not enough -- perhaps you're looking for a full schedule or real-time updates on a game.  That's where these apps come in handy.

Sportacular (free) offers updates and standings for 17 different sports, sports news, team specific updates, and stats.  Scores auto-update every 30 seconds, and I love the play by play updates.  This app has several international sports updates available.



SportsTap (free) is missing some of the international sports, but I still prefer it over Sportacular.  The live play by play updates are better in this app, and the main menu displays how many games are in progress for each sport.  It has tennis updates, which are highly important to this sports fan.  Another great feature is the build in "LocalTap" which finds local sports within 50, 100, or 200 miles from your current location.  A quick tap gave me Arkansas St., SIU, SEMO, and Tennessee sports.  All data refreshes automatically.  These features make SportsTap my favorite iPhone sports app, hands down.


Weather Apps


As far as weather apps go, these are the best free options.  Some of the nicest paid weather apps have more features, but the prices jump by large increments.  I recommend you try as many free weather apps as you can find and use the ones that suit your tastes.

AccuWeather (free)is a great little weather app; it's not necessarily always my weather source of choice, but it is probably my weather app of choice, at least aesthetically - more about that later.
AccuWeather gives the current temperature, as well as the "RealFeel" heat index.  Also readily available are humidity percentages, pressure levels, and wind information.  You can access hourly and 5-day forecasts; UV, air quality, arthritis and flu indices.  Both still and animated radars are available.  Videos are available, but they work best on wifi.  I really like AccuWeather's risk meters which include t-storm, rain, snow, ice, wind and fog.  The app also provides weather alerts, watches, and warnings.

The Weather Channel (free) is, of course, the app from the big boys themselves.  This one is nice too: hourly, 36 hour and 10 day forecasts; wind, humidity, UV index, visibility, sunrise and sunset times; video; severe weather alerts.  Overall, I don't think this is as feature rich as AccuWeather, but it does have a few things AccuWeather doesn't have - most notably, the radar is laid over an attractive Google Map.

WeatherBug (free) comes to you without all of the bugs, crashes and spyware which have always been the highlight of my desktop WeatherBug experiences.  Decent app with maps from Microsoft Virtual Earth that can be overlaid with radar, satellite or temperatures.  Not a bad app, but certainly not my first choice.  Aesthetically, this is possibly one of the worst apps of its type.


WeatherEye (free) is yet another weather application.  Its features are fairly standard for iPhone weather apps.



Social Networking

Twitterrific (free) is my favorite Twitter client for iPhone.  Everybody tells me Tweetie is the best, but with the Twitterrific 2.0 version that's available now, I like this more than Tweetie.  If you're a Twitter fanatic, get this app!



Facebook (free) - This is pretty obvious - the Facebook app for iPhone.  Every Facebook user needs this app.  It's not fully featured, and is in drastic need of an update (no update since the most recent update of the full version), but it is quite nice.



MySpace Mobile (free) - I don't use MySpace, but my mom (@mrsclanahan) will want this app.  Poor design and mediocrity define MySpace Mobile, but that's par for the course when it comes to MySpace.  At any rate, here it is...


These are just a few of my favorite iPhone apps.  Check back later for an update, detailing my favorite iPhone games!