Best of the worst: the App Store's hits and misses
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted July 11th 2008 10:06AM
posted July 11th 2008 10:06AM
The best:
Remote
Apple mixes it up with the indie developers and turns in a responsive, intuitive and extensive interface for controlling iTunes remotely. Setup is a breeze -- though we weren't really expecting anything less from Apple -- and we're nerdy enough to sit two feet from our computer and choose songs via the iPhone. This app clearly benefited from the money, time and testing advantage Apple has over the "competition."
Ms. Pac Man
Good old school vibe, nice choice of control methods, and solid, professional feel. Game makers take note, you could learn something from one of the classics.
File Magnet
This one is kind of cool. It lets you upload PDFs, Office documents, pictures, movies, and audio files wirelessly to your phone to view or listen to. It requires Leopard and a separate uploader app, but it works seamlessly and does exactly what it claims to. We're hoping they add some basic editing functions here, or allow you to export to other apps that can.
Guitar Toolkit
If you're a guitar player, this has a handful of tools (tuner, metronome, etc.) that are actually useable and handsomely presented. Still, the plucked strings could be a bit louder if you're trying to use them to tune.
CityTransit
If you live in NYC, this service not only gives you a full MTA subway map and separate line guides, but also provides a location based stop-finder, and OTA updates of train trouble or service outages direct from the source. At $2.99, you probably can't afford not to have this in New York.
Twittelator
The free (and superior) alternative to Twitterrific. It may not be as handsome, but it's not hard on the eyes, and definitely gets the job done a lot smoother.
Bomberman Touch
It's got a badly translated plot, old-school graphics, and control that we can live with (though it's no Ms. Pac Man). Oh, and it's Bomberman.
Hold Button
This might be the single greatest "productivity" app ever coded.
The worst:
AIM
You're kidding us, right? This is the best chat we can get for one of the world's most advanced phones? Almost every instant messenger program that was available for jailbroken phones make this look like My First Coding Project. Buggy UI, annoying lack of mute, no icon message updates (or updates at all), and rapid fire message downloading when you reopen make this pure, unadulterated fail.
NetNewsWire
No ability to add or remove feeds, improper display of feed names and hierarchy, and no way to zoom out on large stories or pictures are just a few of the problems we have with this app. Back to the drawing board -- the competition isn't sleeping guys. Like a lot of free apps, it just feels like a sleazy way to tether you to an online service.
Twitterrific
Well it looks nice -- but jumpy, sluggish performance make this a pain to use. Also, ads? It doesn't inspire us to pay for this, it inspires us to download Twittelator.
What's the point of an application that offers slightly less functionality than the iPhone site? The world may never know.
NYTimes
Okay, you're the world's greatest news source, right? So why can't your iPhone app load pictures or update properly, and why are you using our miniscule bandwidth to display ads? We don't know... do you?
Ebay Mobile
Look, we all need to shop on the go, right? But we don't all need to use an application that looks like its buttons were lazily stolen from Flash templates circa 1999. It's ugly, it's sloppy. It doesn't alert you to bidding wars or potential upsets. Get it away from us.
Almost, but not quite:
Super Monkey Ball
Touted as being the high-water-mark for the iPhone's graphics performance, Super Monkey Ball doesn't disappoint in that department. Controls are difficult (to say the least), and that can dip the fun-levels kind of low -- since you have to tilt the screen away from you to move the monkey, you sometimes miss the action altogether. Still it's a good time once you get the hang of it, though some of those kinks can be pretty maddening (no real pause?). Needs some tightening up, but still quite playable.
Mobile Flickr
Worth the cash if you're a Flickr addict, and mobile uploads are a joy, but a serious D- on presentation, and suffers from the buggy feel of so many of these apps.
Whrrl
We're loving the concept, and plan on tricking our friends into joining up into our own little Whrrl-based restaurant-reviewing mafia, but this is another app that needs (a lot) more time in the oven.
Pandora is awesome!
lol, agilemessenger owns AIM. jailbreak FTW
Really disappointed in the AIM.
Blackberry has tiny apps for YIM, AIM, GTalk that just work.
Hard to believe that none of the big chat players are interested in this space.
Seriously, when I open a buddy for IM, the keyboard takes half the screen and there is no way to hide it so I can just peruse the list. That would be essential for a client that reconnects every few minutes and gets a flood of msgs.
The two Apps I have used the most have been AIM and Facebook. While I agree with you on the AIM one, I can't seem to see why you don't like the Facebook App. If you use Facebook a lot to stay in contact with people, this is a killer app, offering MUCH more function than the current web app. Facbook Chat and the ability to have a badge on your home screen when you have received a new message. Other than that, I agree with most everything else. I would really just like for Apple to port iChat, AIM was lackluster on the Mac leading Apple to make iChat, this is no difference.
The NetNewsWire app isn't that bad IMO. While I agree that the zooming with large pictures problem can be slightly annoying, there's always the option of opening those feed items in Safari.
It works fine for my purposes because I tend to have a set list of feeds and don't add new ones very often and I'd prefer doing that through NetNewsWire on OSX anyway. The iPhone version is great for just reading thru feeds on the bus when going to work in the morning.
I do hope that they keep working on it because NetNewsWire is by far the best RSS reader for any OS.
There are two apps that I want to see:
1. An astronomy app that utilizes GPS to locate your current location and indicate not only the typical starmap, planets, etc. But also the visible satellites (ie. ISS) and push alerts to your phone based on your location.
2. Bird-song identifier. Using programming like Shazam, be able to identify a bird species based on the local sounds of birds.
Who does this sort of stuff?
All the Apps I've downloaded so far are fine, even though they are all free!
One App I would like to see would be Firefox, as there cannot be a builtin OS web browser without a competitor from the Open Source movement.
A big thing I always felt missing from iPhone was an app to store your usernames, passwords, all the stuff I always forget. This app called Keeper does the trick:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=287170072&mt=8