iPhone-i-fide Goddamn Hero

Last week­end I offi­cially turned off my Android phone and felt the power in my hands as I began using an iPhone. As I wrote last time, it wasn’t a deci­sion I took to lightly.

I spent a fair bit of time before my last post, and after, con­sid­er­ing why the chang­ing of Android to iPhone bore such weight for me. In some ways, I’ve tried to cham­pion Android among my less tech savvy friends. I held up the open­ness, show­ing off my cus­tomized inter­face with unique icons and mov­ing wall­pa­per. I con­stantly defended Android to my tech savvy friends who had iPhones. I even, for a short time, con­verted one to the world of Android only to see him return to iPhone ‘because it just works.’

The fact is that Android is fol­low­ing the path of Win­dows, becom­ing a more open OS and trad­ing cost to the detri­ment of sta­bil­ity or smooth func­tion. When a siz­able OS change occurs, as did with their still-rolling-out Ice Cream Sand­wich ver­sion, old phones are left in the dust. And unlike Win­dows, where users tend to cling to the ver­sions they know and love, many Android fans lust for the next ver­sion. Why? Because it might do more bet­ter. The OS still feels unfinished.

So here I am, con­verted, hap­pily using my iPhone. I would esti­mate that I spent roughly $50 on apps for the phone, from top notch games like Puz­zle­juice and Ascen­sion, to the best app for Twit­ter, Tweet­bot, and on to other nec­es­sary apps such as ones used to help me eat health­ier. It’s sad, because I’d hap­pily weigh the best Android apps with the best iPhone apps and say that they will often match up excel­lently. But there are also are­nas where Android sim­ply falls flat. Tweet­bot far out­shines any­thing I found on Android, but on Android I found I pre­fer the selec­tion of Red­dit apps such as Red­dionic (which is still in Alpha.)

In the first days I had the iPhone, I spent prob­a­bly six hours toy­ing with it and adding apps, here is the cur­rent list of apps I’ve downloaded.

Games

Ascen­sion: Chron­i­cle of the God­slayer — $4.99
I love this game and was always frus­trated at being unable to play on my Android, so it was one of the very first apps I put on my phone. The game is a great game made by Magic: The Gath­er­ing pros.

Words with Friends — $0.99
I have had a long stand­ing run­ning series of games against my brother Adam, and I enjoy play­ing them so I needed the most pop­u­lar ver­sion on iPhone. Though I am also like to get Scrab­ble. As for why pro? Well, I hate the ads.

Chess with Friends — $0.99
Same as with Words with Friends, enjoy play­ing with oth­ers and hate ads, so I pay the min­i­mal cost to save me the frus­tra­tion of inter­spersed ads.

Puz­zle­juice — $0.99
Now this game, just don’t get it. Don’t put it on your phone. You’ll end up regret­ful and angry that I let you become addicted. It’s like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion where Wes­ley plays that video game, or doesn’t play that video game and every­one else does. What­ever the plot was, it’s like that. This game is addic­tive and awe­some. I’m curi­ous how many hours I’ve sunk into it in the 4 days I’ve had my iPhone.

Bejew­eled — $0.99
Old clas­sic, great for pass­ing time in wait­ing rooms with­out hav­ing to think too much.

Notable absen­tee: Tetris. Puz­zle­juice fills some of my Tetris crav­ings, but I may suc­cumb and send more money to Mother Rus­sia EA.

Pro­duc­tiv­ity

Wun­derlist — FREE
Best pro­duc­tiv­ity / to-do list app I’ve found. I loved Android’s AnyDO, but it hasn’t come to Android yet and until then I shall make do with Wun­derlist. If AnyDO is a 9 on the scale, Wun­derlist is an 8. Still strong, just not the app I know and love.

Ever­note — FREE
Fan­tas­tic note­book app, stores pics, con­tent etc. I’ll use it more now that I’m on iPhone, on Android I used more GoogleDocs.

Pho­tog­ra­phy

Insta­gram — FREE
Insta­gram is great fun. Sort of its own social net­work, but more a fun cam­era app with easy and nifty fil­ters for your photos.

Cam­era+ — $0.99
Another fun cam­era app, has some excel­lent fea­tures miss­ing from the stan­dard cam­era app includ­ing improved post pro­cess­ing and things like timer shot, or set­ting it to snap a photo when the vol­ume peaks which is pretty cool (though I haven’t tested it yet.)

iMovie — $4.99
The most expen­sive app I’ve pur­chased, but also one that I am not sure was worth it. BUT, I also haven’t really tried shoot­ing video on my phone yet aside from a few journal-esque videos.

Action Movie FX — FREE
Mostly silli­ness. Has some fun effects to add to your videos.

Health

Weight­bot — $0.99
The best look­ing weight tracker app you’ll ever find. You have your por­trait mode for entry, and then turned one way for stats, and turned hor­i­zon­tal the other way to see a graph of your weight log. Lacks the other fea­ture I wish I could find in a good weight track­ing app, which is allow­ing a sec­ond chart for body fat track­ing. But that’s minor as no one else seems to have it.

Nike+ GPS — $1.99
I bought it, but Run­K­eeper is free and pro­vides the same sort of func­tion­al­ity. I haven’t used this one enough to really be able to talk much about it yet.

MyFit­ness­Pal — FREE
I’ve been using this to track my daily calo­ries which I eat and how many I burn while work­ing out. A great app with a huge direc­tory for calo­ries in foods, and an online web­site it inte­grates with.

Media

Down­cast — $1.99
A fan­tas­tic pod­cast app for down­load­ing and man­ag­ing them on your iPhone. Huge direc­tory, smart play­ing, lots of fea­tures. I use it for my daily com­mute and some­times while work­ing to lis­ten to my favorite podcasts.

Net­flix — FREE
Watch Net­flix. Makes sense to me.

TwitchTV — FREE
For watch­ing gamers stream games on their iPhone. I have a guilty plea­sure of watch­ing Star­craft 2 streams with­out own­ing or play­ing the game, and also Magic: The Gath­er­ing streams have picked up and are gain­ing steam. Great to watch them while on the tread­mill work­ing out.

Pan­dora — FREE
For when I need radio music. A gen­eral guide­line of music and off we go for aural pleasure.

TED — FREE
For inspi­ra­tion and awe­some videos from the TED con­fer­ence. Easy enough.

Xfin­ity — FREE
For con­trol­ling our home DVR box while out and about. I admit I thought there was some more TV stream­ing capa­bil­ity when I installed it but it’s func­tion­al­ity will still come in handy… eventually?

HBOGO — FREE
Watch Game of Thrones on my iPhone? Yes please.

News

AP Mobile — FREE
Seems to be among the best news apps on the iPhone, it’s ad sup­ported but they aren’t full screen or any­thing like that.

The Onion — FREE
The older I get, the more I enjoy the Onion. Hav­ing it mobile is handy and good for an awk­ward laugh in an elevator.

ESPN Score­cen­ter — FREE
This is largely a direct equiv­a­lent to the app I had on Android. Good for track­ing the scores I most care about.

Read It Later — $2.99
Fan­tas­tic for sync­ing and read­ing inter­est­ing arti­cles on the phone. Good for the morn­ing con­sti­tu­tion­als and other such times.

Shop­ping

Ama­zon — FREE
Being an Ama­zon Prime mem­ber, being able to place orders quickly when out and think­ing about it is a fan­tas­tic utility.

Ama­zon Price Check — FREE
Ama­zon does it again. I can’t bear to spend extra money on some­thing i can as eas­ily order from Ama­zon for free shipping.

eBay — FREE
I do very lit­tle impulse shop­ping on Ebay but there are times when I’m try­ing to find some­thing or curi­ous how things are doing, or also for mon­i­tor­ing auc­tions I’ve bid on if I go out and about.

Oink — FREE
Like Yelp, but for the things inside restau­rants or stores. It’s the brain­child of Kevin Rose’s lat­est busi­ness Milk, devel­op­ing mobile apps. It’s a good app though it still is strug­gling to catch on as a ser­vice and so it can be hard to find places which have rated items unless you’re in a metrop­o­lis like NYC, San Fran­cisco etc.

Yelp — FREE
Like Oink but for rat­ing the busi­nesses as a whole, not the things inside them. Unlike Oink, it does have a big fol­low­ing and can be quite good to learn about loca­tions or businesses.

Money

Bank of Amer­ica — FREE
Say what you wish about the bank, but the app is fan­tas­tic and makes my life quite a bit eas­ier in terms of mak­ing sure accounts are what they should be.

Pay­pal — FREE
I don’t use Pay­pal much, but it comes and goes in spurts for side busi­ness or something.

Square — FREE
The main thing I use this app for is for shar­ing the cost of a meal. Got a friend with a card and I have cash, then I’d use this to swipe their card while I pay the bill. Easy, sim­ple, straight forward.

Social

Tweet­bot — $2.99
This is the best Twit­ter client on iPhone and the dif­fer­ence is stark. Allows mul­ti­ple accounts, a clean and respon­sive inter­face. Leaps and bounds above any Android Twit­ter clients.

Face­book — FREE
A good way to access Face­book, it does have some prob­lems in show­ing new con­tent with it being slow to load updates for comments.

Google+ — FREE
I don’t do a lot on G+ right now, but it’s good to have. I do miss the auto­sync of pho­tos that G+ pro­vided on Android.

Pin­ter­est — FREE
I’m still wrap­ping my head around Pin­ter­est, but it is pretty and a good diver­sion from time to time.

Path — FREE
Another social net­work I’m still learn­ing, but the app is quite good.

Word­Press — FREE
I use this only to post pho­tos and videos to a small pri­vate blog I share with a small group of con­fi­dants. Does its job well!

Misc

Gmail — FREE
A great app for my email. Much prefer­able to using Gmail through the iPhone mail app.

Drop­box — FREE
Ahhh Drop­box, how I love thee. Such a great app.

New York Times — FREE
Why isn’t this Media? Because it’s not clas­si­fied as an app. It shows up on the News­stand in the phone. And the free ver­sion lets me scan the head­lines and see what’s the news from the grey lady.

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And there you have it, an in depth look at the apps on my iPhone. Hope­fully I shared some which you haven’t seen or used before!

But, are there any I missed?