My friend Adam, a new iPhone owner (yay! welcome to the dark side!), asked me what apps I recommend, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to share my favorites with everyone. These are in no particular order, other than useful apps first, followed by games.
Evernote - FREE
I use this in place of the built-in Notes app. It lets you create text, photo, and voice notes, and syncs them up with an online account which is also accessible via your web browser or their desktop client.
AccuWeather - FREE
This is my replacement for the built-in Weather app. Store as many cities as you want, and you can use location services (or GPS) to have it automatically pull up the weather for your current location. In addition to current conditions, it gives daily forecasts fifteen days out, as well as hourly forecasts for the next fifteen hours, severe weather alerts, an animated radar map, and video forecasts. I find their info to be more accurate than the conditions and forecasts provided by Yahoo! to the built-in app.
Air Sharing - $4.99
This was free when I downloaded it, but I think it's well worth the five bucks they want for it now. Basically it turns your iPhone into a wireless flash drive you can mount to any Mac, Windows or Linux PC via Wi-Fi. Great for those of us who have difficulty plugging in a USB flash drive. It also views many document types right on the iPhone. There's also a pro version for $9.99 which has the added ability to e-mail files and print them to a network printer directly from the iPhone.
Lose It! - FREE
The app I use to track my calorie intake and weight loss. My review of this app continues to be one of the most popular posts on confoozled.com.
DVR Remote - $2.99
TiVo Series 3 DVRs have a feature whereby they can be controlled directly over a home network. With that feature enabled on the DVR, and your iPhone connected to the same network over Wi-Fi, this app turns your iPhone into a remote control for your TiVo. It's somewhat of a novelty, but the real usefulness comes in two other features. On TiVo text entry screens, such as when searching for programs, instead of using the remote to manually move from letter to letter, you can type the text you want to enter on the iPhone, press go and it very quickly sends all of the commands to enter the text for you. It's a sanity saver, plus pretty funny to watch the cursor fly around the screen while hearing the rapid "boop-boop-boop-badoop" coming from the TiVo. The other useful feature is the ability to pull up your Now Playing List (the list of recorded programs) on the iPhone screen without turning on the TV (or interrupting the currently playing program) to see if you have anything to watch.
MailPhotos - $0.99
When you e-mail a photo from the iPhone's camera roll, it is resized to 800x600 pixels. But with this app, you can not only e-mail a photo in any resolution from 320x240 up to full size 1600x1200*, you can even attach multiple photos to the same e-mail message. (*It does not yet support the new, higher full size resolution of the iPhone 3GS. I'm sure that will be fixed soon.)
Midomi - $4.99
Identify songs either by holding the iPhone close to a speaker playing the song, or by simply singing or humming the melody. Hear a preview clip to make sure you have the right song, buy it from iTunes right away, share it with a friend, or bookmark it for later. You can also search for songs by speaking the artist or song title, or by traditional typing.
HP iPrint Photo - FREE
If you have an HP printer on your network, you can print your iPhone's photos directly over Wi-Fi without using a computer. It prints 4"x6" and you will lose a little bit off the long edges of the photo. Printers with a 4"x6" photo tray will select that automatically.
MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition - $4.99
Okay, so it's been modernized (monetary values have all been multiplied by 1,000) and the properties are locations all over the world. Monopoly purists bitch about this. I say, "Who cares?" The gameplay is the same. Play with friends over Wi-Fi, or solo against the AI (be prepared: the AI does cheat, but this has been true of every computer version of Monopoly I have ever played).
UNO - $4.99
Great rendition of the classic card game. Customizable with all kinds of rule variations which can make for an absolutely crazy game. Play solo against AI, locally over Wi-Fi, or on the internet.
Phase 10 - $2.99
Another highly addictive, UNO-like card game. This game is to Rummy what UNO is to Crazy Eights. Unfortunately no multiplayer functionality to this one - you're stuck playing against three AI players and can't even choose your character. I still love the game, though, and hope they will fix those complaints at some point.
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