Sunday, July 19, 2009

iPhone virgin wanting to learn from your experience

Seeing as I've been (somehow) working in the mobile app development space for a few years, it's high time I got my hands on an iPhone. I got a swanky new 3G S and I'm learning the ropes.

While the standard set of apps are reasonably interesting and give some nice feel for what the device is capable of, it's obvious that the device becomes really useful with the addition of specific apps tailored to the user's interests. As there are so many apps out there, I'm looking for some advice on which apps people are using (with the assumption that people I know are likely to have similar needs/interests to me).

I've had a look at a couple of websites which recommend apps, but I'm not so inspired by their choices. Also, things are changing so fast that a report from even a couple of months ago could be missing some very interesting new apps. (Is there any SN tie in where I can see what apps people in my SN have downloaded or recommend?)

I've installed 6 apps so far:
  • Tweetdeck
  • Wikipanion
  • Skype
  • Google Mobile App for iPhone
  • Todo Lite (will prob have to upgrade this to Todo heavy real soon now)
  • Apple Remote
All look very slick, useful and useable. However, I have a sneaky feeling that there must be at least a few more treasures in the 60,000 odd apps on the AppStore.

I'm looking for recommendations for new apps, which people are either using regularly or are used less frequently but solve an important problem when used. I'm a bit less interested in the wacky, zany, fun stuff for now.

Any takers?