Archive for the 'iPhone Apps' Category
April 11, 2010
Updated April 21, 2010.
The world probably doesn’t really need another iPad review, does it?
There’s a glut out of them out there.
And I’m not a tech reviewer. I’m a gadget nut, so feel free to discount my enthusiasm by the appropriate percentage. After all, I did pre-order this thing sight unseen so it could be delivered on Day One.
So this post will be impressionistic, just some notes on my first week with the device.
First: It’s fast. Snappy. It makes the iPhone and the iPod Touch seem slow. It makes a Macbook seem slow.
Second: The battery life is amazing. You don’t even think about the battery. I plug it it in every night, and have used it heavily many days. It has never dropped below 50 percent.
Remarkable for an Apple product: It doesn’t get hot — unlike my Macbook Air, or my iPhone, which can get uncomfortable to the touch and sluggish with heavy use. I have often thought that Steve Jobs was trying to brand me with his products. No more.
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Posted in iPhone Apps, Social Media | 5 Comments »
Tags: Amazon, Apple, Apple TV, Books, computers, iPad, iPad apps, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPod Touch, iPods, iTunes, Kindle, Kindle for iPad, music, NYT, podcasts, Steve Jobs, technology, TiVo, Twitter
April 3, 2010
It’s still syncing.
While I prepare myself for the inevitable post-purchase depression and “why can’t I do that, Mr. Jobs” revelations, here are some unboxing pictures and a video from my Posterous page.
At some point I’ll list the pros and cons. But I’m done with the posting and tweeting today. I doubt there’s much new that I could say about it.
Technology isn’t my beat, so I’ll leave the iPad news and reviews to my colleagues at Bits. (Here’s an earlier post about how I made the purchase decision.)
For me, the iPad is first and foremost a book and media reader. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in iPhone Apps, New York, Paper & Ink | 3 Comments »
Tags: Apple, Books, Collyer brothers, comics, ebooks, iBooks, iPad, Kindle, Kindle for iPad, macs, NYT, Posterous
February 1, 2010
You’ve seen the new toy. You’ve seen the experts debate: Will the Apple iPad “save” newspapers, journalism, book publishing? Will it kill the Amazon Kindle? Is this the death of the laptop, and the PC as we know it? Has Apple just signaled the death of the ultraportable MacBook Air? Will it replace smartphones like the iPhone or Nexus One? Has Apple just pwned another media marketplace — sorry Amazon, Google, Microsoft? Goodbye, netbooks? Farewell, computers?
Blah, blah, blah. Nobody knows the future, so such pronouncements are justifiably viewed as so much hype.
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Posted in iPhone Apps, Moving Images, Paper & Ink, Social Media | 8 Comments »
Tags: Amazon, Apple, Books, computers, e-books, Google, iPad, iphone, iPod, iTunes, laptops, Microsoft, Nexus One, NYT, smartphones, technology
September 9, 2009
More often than I care to recall, I have impulsively downloaded a fancy new iPhone application, only to have it languish on my phone. That was the inspiration for the first “list of iPhone apps I actually use” last year, after the iTunes store started selling third-party applications.
Since then, the number of new applications has grown rapidly. Now there’s a cottage industry of lists, blogs and podcasts devoted to reviewing applications. Here’s a recent Techcrunch list of the “best” apps, which notes the store had 300 new apps rolling out every day. Here’s a similar post at Gizmodo, which put the total number of apps at more than 74,000. Many of the lists that try to sort out the best applications seem to focus more on flash than substance.
In August, I finally renewed my AT&T contract and upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. It seemed like the right time to reconsider the programs I had loaded onto my phone. Did I actually use them?
Here’s my revised list:
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Moving Images, New York, Social Media | 10 Comments »
Tags: 1Password, AIM, Amazon, AOL Radio, Bento, Books, computers, dictionaries, Facebook, games, Gizmodo, Google, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPods, iTunes, Kindle, Last.FM, macs, Midomi, music, newspapers, NPR, NYC, NYT, O.E.D., Pandora, Posterous, radio, Readdle, remotes, Shakespeare, Shazam, SMS, software, Stanza, Techcrunch, technology, texting, Tweetie, Twitter, Twitterfon, UpNext, Urbanspoon, Wall Street Journal, webcams, WikiHow, Wikipanion, Wikipedia, Yelp
September 3, 2009
I tried out the new PicPosterous iPhone app today to take some pictures of the wreckage from a taxi fire in front of Maison restaurant in Midtown, at 53rd and 7th. The fire was put out pretty quickly. Nobody was hurt.
Afterward, tourists were standing around snapping pictures of each other in front of the wreck. City Room has more details. So does the local CBS site.
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Social Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: iphone, NYC, NYT, photography, PicPosterous, Posterous, Twitter
August 9, 2009
Well, this is one cost of early technology adoption. I bought an original Kindle in April 2008, and it has served me well, so I can’t complain too much.
Recently, I noticed a sort of smudge developing in the upper left corner of the screen, even when the machine was turned off. There were also slight streaks of white lines going vertically down the screen, with a washed-out appearance at the top. I could still read books, but it was sort of annoying. I decided to see if Amazon tech support could offer any advice.
I wasn’t looking for a replacement, although I wouldn’t have minded a sort of cash-for-clunkers trade-in discount on a Kindle 2 or a DX. Mainly I was hoping this was an easy problem that they had learned how to fix. If they couldn’t, I would live with it.
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Paper & Ink, Social Media | 9 Comments »
Tags: Amazon, Apple tablet, Books, customer service, ebooks, iphone, Kindle, New York Times, Posterous, tech support, Twitter
April 11, 2009
[Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.}
I am surprised by how well this list of iPhone apps I actually use has held up over the past few months. Most of the apps I’ve added in recent months have been games, none of them particularly amazing, although my daughter swears by one, Jelly Car. I have to admit, it is fun.
The only significant new application I’ve added is the Amazon Kindle for iPhone. It has quickly become one of my favorites. I actually find reading on it preferable to the clunky Kindle 1 in some ways. (I read most of this book on the iPhone.)
The application is free, but of course you need to own an Amazon Kindle and download some books. Kindle newspaper and magazine subscriptions don’t work, nor can you read documents you have sent to yourself or ebooks from sources other than Amazon (the original Kindle allows this). Unfortunately, Amazon and publishers have recently raised the cost of new Kindle books. The page-turning is easier than the Kindle 1, and of course the phone has a backlight, while the Kindle uses e-ink that is supposedly easier on the eyes but requires outside light. The coolest feature is the Whisper Sync: You are taken to the most recent page you read, whether on the phone or the Kindle.
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Tags: Amazon, Apple, iphone, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPod, Kindle, Mac, NYT
December 27, 2008
I’m in Los Angeles with the family this week, visiting the in-laws. I booked the flight kind of late and decided to try Virgin America, which had been getting a lot of hype for its geeky amenities and Jetblue-style business model. The only way I could get three seats together on Virgin was to pay extra for the roomier bulkhead seats, the so-called Main Cabin Select, which came with “unlimited” food and media, a sort of discount business class. The flight was pleasant and as enjoyable as JetBlue, but the geek reality has not yet caught up with the hype.
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Posted in iPhone Apps, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: air travel, cheese, Christmas, drinks, Facebook, first class, food, gum, Hancock, Harrison Ford, holidays, hooks, iPhones, iTunes, JetBlue, John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, MacBreak Weekly, music, podcasts, pokes, Stephen Colbert, student films, Tweets, Twitter, Uhh Yeah Dude, Virgin America, Wall-E, Will Smith, Witness
December 13, 2008
{Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]
I’ve added some new updates to the post “third-party iPhone apps I actually use,” including MightyDocs, which displays Google docs offline (now with spreadsheet support); SayWho, a free voice-activated dialer; Amazon, which lets you shop and compare prices and even experiment with looking up products via iPhone photographs (it worked for me with a pretty bad photo of an obscure book); and Twitterific, which even in ad-supported free mode is overtaking my earlier favorite Twitter client, Twinkle.
Posted in iPhone Apps | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Amazon, iPhones, iPods, MightyDocs, SayWho, software, technology, Twinkle, Twitter, Twitterific, voice activation
November 22, 2008
{Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]
For 99 cents I downloaded Ocarina, an app from Smule that turns an iPhone into a version of that ancient flute-like instrument. You press glowing “finger holes” on the touchscreen and blow into the microphone to play [Video].
That’s fun, but Ocarina does more than that. The app also uses the location software and a Google-Earth style globe to let you rotate the earth and listen to others play on their phones around the world. As they play one by one, visual images of the notes stream upward, as you watch from space. Around the globe, patches of glowing white show what are apparently concentrations of signals, particularly on the coasts of the United States and in Europe. One soloist sent a lonely tune up from an island of Hawaii.
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Posted in iPhone Apps | 2 Comments »
Tags: Apple, computers, GPS, iphone, iPhone Apps, iPods, macs, music, musicians, Ocarina, Smart Playlists, Smule, software, technology
The world probably doesn’t really need another iPad review, does it? 
