Now, I know Apple iPhone fans have been known to get a bit… well, zealous. And as such, some of the writing on iPhone sites can be tarred with the ‘fanboy’ brush. But when scanning this post, bear in mind that I’m a hardened journalist who has specialised in Symbian OS hardware for the past 15 years. So it takes a lot to impress me.
We have written, here on All About iPhone, quite a bit about the iPhone App Store. No, it’s not perfect, but it has given an awful lot of creative programmers a real chance to shine. We all have our own favourites from the App store, and I’m looking past the legions of games, both good and bad, but let me run some of these less obvious applications past you…. Each is potentially jaw-dropping, capable of making a hardened fan of any other handheld device green with jealousy….
WorldView
On the face of it, just another way into thousands of webcams throughout the world. But the implementation here is staggeringly slick and joined up, from the way it can sort webcams by distance from your current location to the directories of ‘New’, ‘Recent’ and ‘Popular’, from the ‘Bookmarks’ system to the way webcam images are autorotated when you rotate the iPhone and can be saved into your photo gallery.
Bloom
To get you hooked on Bloom, I probably only need to say the name “Brian Eno”. The prog/pop/ambient master producer (e.g. the brains behind U2’s sound) has combined with a fellow enthusiast to produce a generative music tool. Essentially, the application ‘composes’ ambient music to order or, uniquely, let’s you drive the melody by responding to screen taps and timing. Elevator or mood music it may be, but it’s still ingenious.
Wings
Ah yes. I remember going to an air show with my dad, circa 1978. A glider pilot was putting on a show, to the accompaniment of Pink Floyd’s “Shine on you crazy diamond”. Long swooping moves to gloriously swooping music. And you can do the same now in Wings. Not to Pink Floyd, but to one of three pieces of ambient electronic music, while soaring around a 3D fractally-generated landscape. Very relaxing.
eBay
Now look, I’ve tried the so-called eBay mobile web site. I’ve tried their generic (Java) mobile client on other phones, but nothing comes remotely close to their iPhone version. It’s slick, it’s detailed and, to be honest, it’s faster to look up the state of my buying and selling auctions on the iPhone/iPod Touch than it is to use my main desktop. Terrifically useful.
BBC iPlayer
As the very first phone to officially get iPlayer support, the iPhone was off to a flying start. The BBC is the premier producer of quality TV in the UK, by a HUGE margin, and in iPlayer UK residents can watch any of their programmes on demand, now streamed as and when on the iPhone. Only Nokia’s N96 comes close, with a version of iPlayer (and one that supports downloads, too), but other than that the iPhone implementation of iPlayer is out on its own. And it goes without saying that the iPhone/iPod Touch’s large 4″ capacitive screen is superb for watching ‘TV’ on.
Movies
One of the new breed of smartphone applications that uses your location intelligently, Movies taps into…. well, movies. Something we’re all interested in. Sorting cinemas by distance from where you are, you can drill down into showtimes, movie details, ratings, trailers and web links. You can also browse around other upcoming films and DVDs and about the only black mark is that you can’t (yet) drill down far enough to book movie tickets within the application or within an associated link.
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The Apple iPhone may be functionally inferior (in terms of tech specs) to other top smartphones, but the wealth of goodies like those above sure make it hard to move from the iPhone platform back to something more mundane. And we’ve only had the App Store for three months. What will we see by the end of its first year?