Essential iPhone apps

Note: I started listing apps, then thought about linking them. The obvious place to start was the Apple web site. I have never found out how to search for an app from this site without having to launch the dreaded iTunes. As usual, a little googling brought me right on track.

Free

• Google: your Google stuff made available from a single place, but launched in Safari. Your Google apps stuff too, which is really nice.
• Wapedia: let's face it, the Wikipedia mobile site is bad. Their dedicated iPhone app is worst. Wapedia gives you bookmarks, contents table, and access to other wikis from the same interface.
• Tellmewhere: rate your favourite places, find people who share your tastes, get recommendations. It works pretty much anywhere: what aroundme could have been but isn't. Pretty much invaluable when you are lost in the city, looking for a restaurant you will like.
• Linkedin: like the web site, easier to use and integrates with your contacts.
• Kindle: Amazon's book reader.
• Kobo: Kobo's book reader.
• Stanza: Generic book reader.
• Shazam: ever wondered what is this tune you are hearing? Shazam will find it for you.
• Radio.BE: streamed Belgian radio stations.
• TV Gids Belgïe Lite: a TV guide in Dutch. As I do not have a TV nor do I speak Dutch, that's fine :-)

Paying

• Sleep Cycle: an app I have found there. It wakes you up gently when you start moving in your sheets a few minutes before your waking time. And it tells you how much you have slept, draws graphs and computes an average. My average total time is currently 4h 34m. And I was wondering why I was feeling tired these last few weeks ;-)

Apple: the good, the bad and the ugly...

OK, I know, I said no tech post here, and declared a unconditional nerdry cease-fire. Well, there is a good thing about unconditional cease-fires: they are actually meant to be broken ;-)

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I wasn't a big fan of Apple products. My aversion was twofold: CISC suck(s/ed) (the idea is good, but the implementation was usually poor) ; Apple's OSes sucked even more. Well, I am a SPARC/Solaris guy, it was to be expected ;-)
Then came MacOS X and the iPhone.
RISC+Unix.
On a *cellphone*.
In my *pocket*.
t3h nErdZ dre4mZ :-)

So I got an iPhone, freed it, loved it, bought a macBook, picked up some objective C, and I was set. Since then, I no longer dislike Apple as much as I did. Quite a long way to go for a guy who had never used an iPod and was appalled by the crass vulgarity of Apple apps. I even offered a macBook to my not-quite-70 mother, thinking that it would be easier for her to use (and for me to maintain...). So it seems that my opinion has been fully reversed.
Not quite.
I am not a blind fan yet ;-)

The good:

You can set up an Apple product with your fingers alone. You can unpack it with your fingers alone. With a single finger even. It doesn't require a knife, not a single tool. Just a finger. Two if you are really clumsy.

It is really easy to use. Crass vulgarity at its best ;-)

Unix. Did I mention that?

It is (still) safer to use than you usual Wintel PC.

It looks good.

The bad:

• One word: maintenance.

For my computers, I have to set and reset the power and screensaver settings each and every time I update them. It doesn't happen quite as much as for a Windows box, granted, but it is still annoying as hell. Even Windows allows you to update silently, even if it keeps asking you for a reboot again and again.
For my iPhones (I have four of them and go through two each day: the battery is very short-lived) , it is worst. The OS upgrades are few and far between, true, but once you have a few apps it becomes a nightmare. And, even though once an app is downloaded and updated you can synch it on all your phones without further downloads, I have never found a way to do so with the OS upgrade files.
All in all, I would say that the maintenance process is tedious but bearable. Most people won't be inconvenienced.

• JAVA

It lags far behind Sunacle release. Most people will not matter.
I do.

The ugly:

• iTunes synch

My boy, are you ugly...
And retarded...
Is that pus oozing out of your mouth?
So far, the best argument in favour of retroactive abortion...
Ever tried synching your library on many computers?
Ever tried telling it that you want this song on that device, not using playlists (because you do not want to have to maintain them too)?
This single piece of software is the most burdensome jukebox ever. Junkbox would be more appropriate.

• iStore for apps

OK, the content is not universally distributed, and some countries have access to more, some other to less. Not really Apple's fault. I can understand that. And as long as music is concerned, you can easily find what you are looking for.
Then came the apps. Finding something there is like going 15 years back and using Yahoo categories to find a web site when you know of AltaVista. Even worst: Yahoo actually did a good job in defining its topology and classifying content according to it. iStore apps categories are a ((very) sad) joke, and the actual classification is at best haphazard.