Best iPhone Apps: The Must-Have Downloads

Hi everyone, thanks for joining in. I&#x2019;m thinking of this a state of the App Store talk. What I&#x2019;m going to do today is survey the must-have downloads for the iPhone and iPod Touch, taking a look at what I consider to be the best apps out there. The must-haves.

Along the way, I&#x2019;d like to highlight how I think the iPhone, along with other smart gadgets, is changing the way that we all individually relate to information and computing.

Quickly say what this isn&#x2019;t: Not a talk for developers. Some comments in the registration suggested some of you are looking for tips about building or coding apps; that&#x2019;s not what this is. This is really aimed at mainstream iPhone owners, including newcomers, who just want to know the apps that will best unlock their iPhones&#x2019; potential.

Because it&#x2019;s really hard to find apps. In the 15 months since the App Store opened, somewhere around 80,000 apps have appeared in the app store. About half of them are exclusively designed to belch out a variety of bodily noises.

So finding apps, finding the best apps, can be daunting, and I know lots of people who love their iPhone but find the prospect of spelunking in the App Store completely paralyzing. My book, Best iPhone Apps, picks over 200 apps and says, these are good. These are the best apps for a range of tasks: Managing to-do lists, finding recipes, following the market, using a flight simulator, you name it. And we&#x2019;re going to go through a bunch of them today.

Before doing that, though, let me just mention a few things that I think make for a great app.

Simple, focused on very specific task. Whether playing a game or jotting a note, you&#x2019;re on the go when you&#x2019;re using the iPhone, and you need an efficient interface and an efficient mission, if you will, for the software. Less is more here: The more features the more razzle dazzle, the more you feel like an app is getting in your way instead of helping you do what you want to do. So: The best apps keep it simple and do less to help you do more.

At the same time, there has to be a certain amount of design and, dare I say it, adorability. I think we&#x2019;ve perhaps all been a little surprised by the personal attachment we&#x2019;ve developed to our iPhones. And somehow the apps you put on your iPhone say something about you, like the stuff you carry in your bag or what you put on your walls. There&#x2019;s a certain style that&#x2019;s required.

Most important of all, the best apps satisfy one of three states of mind. The iPhone is really uniquely able to scratch an itch when:
* I&#x2019;m bored, and I&#x2019;ve got some down time to kill.
* I&#x2019;m local. I need some info specific to right here and right now.
* I&#x2019;m tasking. By that I really mean I&#x2019;m working, but it&#x2019;s really micro-work, dashes of individual tasks. More on that in a bit.

First...

Here&#x2019;s the cool thing about the iPhone. It's always with you. You've got a computer in your pocket all the time. That means that you're able to use it to reclaim downtime and bring a bit of life to otherwise lifeless moments. In line at the Post Office. Waiting for a plane. At the grocery store. There are lots of great iPhone apps for filling those lost moments. It's a terrific device for making good use of stray minutes.

I'm not going to talk about games today, although they're of course a fun way to fill time, and my book recommends lots of them. I'm going to angle for a few more productive and creative ways to use your downtime. Starting with reading.

I&#x2019;ve always been a paper guy and never thought I&#x2019;d go for ebooks. But the iPhone changed that for me. Stanza is the king of the book readers, and it offers a really good reading experience.

It wont&#x2019; replace your paperback, you probably won&#x2019;t want to spend hours and hours on end reading it. But again, it&#x2019;s great to fill in 10 minutes of downtime with the pages of your current novel. Keep the paper version on your bedside table and read the ebook when you&#x2019;re out and about.

Adjust the font and the font size, the page color, you can customize just about everything. Nice page turn, just tap or swipe the page. When you quit it remembers what page you&#x2019;re on. Tap the top right corner to turn the page to add a bookmark. Tap and press a word to look up its definition or make a note.

To get books, Stanza has a built-in catalog, and you can purchase ebooks from online stores, including the O&#x2019;Reilly store, or you can download free public-domain books, mostly classics, or you can copy ebook files and pdfs from your computer.

You can&#x2019;t get Amazon ebooks, though.

For that, you need Kindle for the iPhone. It&#x2019;s not as good a reading experience as Stanza, but it&#x2019;s fine and it gives you access to all of Amazon&#x2019;s kindle library of ebooks, typically $10 a pop.

Eucalyptus on the other hand is a cadillac reading experience. If you&#x2019;re sensitive to typography and graceful presentation of text, Eucalyptus is what you&#x2019;re looking for. Two downsides: It&#x2019;s pricier at $10, and it offers access only to books from the Gutenberg Project, an archive of thousands of public domain books, generally classics. But it&#x2019;s worth visiting the Eucalyptus website to see a video of the app in action. Gorgeous.

Another great way to fill time is to read those web pages and online articles you didn&#x2019;t have time to read earlier. Instapaper is a great app for that, and may just be my very favorite app out there.

Works with the online service at instapaper.com, and you go there to get a free account. From there, whenever you&#x2019;re using your browser, either on your iphone or on your desktop computer, you click a bookmark link to add a page to your instapaper account. If you don&#x2019;t have the time or attention to read the page, just click and Instapaper hangs onto it for you.

The next time you launch the app, your articles are there waiting for you to read. After the app downloads the pages, it hangs onto them, so you can still read without an internet connection -- on the plane, the subway, the Matterhorn, whatever.

It also strips out all the ads and design and gobbledygook from the page so you just get the text. Great.

Great for sports scores

$1.99 pro version plucks out ads and gives you push notifications when there&#x2019;s news about your favorite teams or updates on a game you want to follow.

So the apps that we&#x2019;ve seen so far are my picks for getting the story, whether that&#x2019;s books or news. But another great way to fill your downtime is to tell your story, or soak up the stories of your online pals.

Best iPhone Apps: The Must-Have Downloads

Josh Clark

Best iPhone Apps: The Must-Have Downloads