Back in January I conveyed my excitement for the coming iPhone revolution…
“This month the iPhone will be transformed. At present the iPhone is a refined phone, a first class iPod and a capable internet device. By this summer it might well have been reborn as the smallest, lightest, thinnest and cheapest Mac OSX computer. If the iPhone SDK lives up to expectations, it could propel the iPhone into a completely new orbit, escaping even the Newton’s powerful gravitational field.”
It turned out that Apple wasn’t quite ready in February, but pent up demand and an extra few months of development overcame any marketing hurdles that the delay may have caused Apple.
I think history will testify that the mobile variant of OS X is the fastest growing computing platform of all time. Personally, I simply cannot think of another computing device – handheld or desktop – that has given birth to so many quality applications in such short order. From zero to thousands in four months, that’s quite something.
This weeks App Store picks, Classics and Weightbot, are prime examples of why Symbian, Android and Blackberry developers will have a tough time competing. Both applications offer a master class in simplicity and beauty, both applications are perfectly suited to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Classics, by Andrew Kaz and Phill Ryu is a gorgeous e-book reader. Though presently limited to a mere 12 books, including The Jungle Book, The Time Machine, Flatland and Gulliver’s Travels, the real joy of Classics is not the size and diversity of its library, but rather it’s in the beautiful way in which the library is presented.
The books are found on a perfectly rendered bookshelf. Each book has an appealing cover and even some hand drawn illustrations. The pages are turned by swiping your finger from right to left, each page turn is perfectly animated. The style and size of the font used is spot on, easy to read without excessive page turning. On returning to the bookcase a bookmark slides into place over your current page, no folding over the corner of the page with these classics!
My second application is Weightbot by Tapbots. Weightbot is a super simple, dare I say, even addictive, body weight and body mass index tracker. Once again, the key innovation found in Weightbot is not in what it does rather it’s in the execution of its simple features that the creativity lies. In short, Weightbot is the very definition of intuitive and a pleasure to use, even if did does return depressing results! (see video below).
Rather than try to explain these two applications further, allow me to demonstrate them.
There have been some great iPhone applications launched in the last couple of weeks, and it looks as if there are some superb games on the horizon. More soon!