Best of the Best iPhone Apps: New Book Rounds Them Up

A new iPhone app guide book by Josh Clark hopes to clear up some of the clutter of the App Store. Here's a look at his picks for the best iPhone apps for work and play.

By
Tue, August 11, 2009

CIO — It's one of the world's most successful retail launches in recent history: the Apple App Store. In only a year since its debut, the App Store now offers some 65,000 different apps. Apple claims more than 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded from its virtual shelves.

Granted, many are useless while others are silly and senseless; a couple of competing apps make fart noises. One could write a book that cuts through all the clutter—in fact, that's exactly what Josh Clark did in his Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders (O'Reilly, July 2009, $19.99).

[ Check out the hottest mobile apps for the BlackBerry and iPhone for summer travel, CIO reports. Learn valuable tips on how to care for your iPhone. ]

The notion of a printed guide book covering something as dynamic as apps in an online app store that run on a deliciously digital device like the iPhone seems a bit outdated. It's akin to buying a two-day-old newspaper for a buck when you can get all the breaking news for free online.

That was my initial thinking when I picked up the guide book and read it over the weekend. But I quickly understood its value and Clark's reasoning behind its creation. There is an irony with longevity in a medium that changes by the minute: Only a handful of apps are really any good—and the good ones have staying power.

Clarks' guide breaks out 200 popular apps in seven categories: At Work, On the Town, At Leisure, At Play, At Home, On the Road, and For Your Health. I've listed some of Clark's choices in each category below.

The big criticism I have of Best iPhone Apps is that, in many cases, Clark doesn't go far enough in detailing the shortcomings of some apps.

For instance, one of his favorite apps for editing office documents is Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite (which happens to be mine, too). He adequately describes the main functions of the app, offers lessons on how to use the app in fairly non-technical language, and provides the app's logo and iPhone screen shots.

But the app has a major flaw, which Clark addresses in a mere two sentences: "Alas, the app can send but can't receive files by email (Mail won't let it read attachments, an unfortunate limitation.)" This means you can't edit received documents in Quickoffice (although you can view attachments in the iPhone's native mail app) and send out a new version. Yet this app bills itself as enabling iPhone users to edit office documents.

Continue Reading

Virtualization and cloud are driving new requirements for data center network performance, VM support, automation and simplified orchestration. This paper outlines Extreme Networks® open fabric approach to high speed, low latency networks for modern data centers.
The evolution of the network to provide the intelligence needed to address user, device and application mobility is underway. In this white paper, Extreme Networks® outlines the five phases required to bring mobility into the network.
Individuals and businesses alike are embracing the digital revolution. Social networks and digital devices are being used to engage government, businesses and civil society, as well as friends and family.
Whether you need to build a business case for a UC system, or are ready to select a new solution, this white paper offers a thorough, side-by-side comparison of ShoreTel and Avaya offerings to help you make informed decisions.
Compared with Cisco products, ShoreTel UC can offer numerous advantages, including streamlined deployment and management, easier scalability, and a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
This must-read publication features independent research from Gartner, providing a wealth of information around best in breed Unified Communication systems. 12 Unified Communications vendor ratings, along with their strengths and cautions, are provided.
Join us for this live web event where featured Forrester Research principal analyst, Art Schoeller and Interactive Intelligence senior vice president, Joe Staples will discuss these topics and help you be ready to take the best advantage of the upcoming year and the contribution your contact center can make to the success of your business.
Tune into this insightful webinar to see Riverbed Technology product marketing manager Joe Ghory present the facts on how you can ensure consistent performance wherever workers connect, get the most out of limited connectivity, and accomplish more by eliminating round trips and slow latency.
As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center