My Top 13 iPhone Applications

Later update: maybe you could also be interested in another related post, about my Top 13 iPhone 3G Applications.

Yes, I know, I know, we all have our little brick stuffed with technology, we waited months for it (some of us, aware of the old Newton grand-father, could say that we’ve even waited years for it) and now we are really, really happy with it. The iPhone, I mean. Of course.

But what are we actually doing with it? A part from reading blogs that are talking about it, I mean. Well, here’s a list of my most used 13 iPhone applications. Please keep in mind that I have an iPhone only for a few weeks, I still have a full time job, so I haven’t had a lot of time to dig for special or hyped iPhone applications, it’s just my regular setup.

Did I said it’s jaibroken? Yes, that means that I will split the iPhone applications list in two parts: iPhone native, and third party iPhone applications.

Let’s start with what we had by default when we buy (or, for the small fortunate part of the world, we receive) an iPhone:

Native applications:

iPhone Mail

It’s good. It’s easy to set up, it’s easy to monitor, and it’s easy to read. I still have some problems with office and / or multimedia attachments, but most of the time I use it with joy. If I’m not wrong, the mail interface it’s the only one that supports the “swipe” touch action, for deleting a message.

Mobile Safari

I’m a web child – you know, there are indigo children, crystal children and so on… – I’m a web child. Take the web away from me and I’ll be half the man I used to be. Below you’ll see a snapshot of my statistics page for my other blog on Mobile Safari, of course.

Calendar

I discovered the Calendar in iPhone kinda lately, but quickly become and addict. It syncs with the Calendar on my mac, and it has enough power to keep me on track with my regular tasks and meetings. Not a full GTD implementations, of course, but good enough.

Stocks

Since i quit reading so much news, the stocks are my favorite piece of entertainment. As you can see below, I closely follow the Big Steve’s child, and it seems it started to recover pretty well. At least, so far…

Google Maps

I’m a traveler by nature and a dreamer by circumstances. Seeing places all around the world in my little device seems to become my favorite waste of time, as the song says. It’s fast on Wi-Fi and it’s funnier than a movie. Sometimes…

Weather

Not much to say here. A must for every decent digital device with an internet connection. The iPhone still has a nice interface for showing it, although the lack of forecasts it’s a big minus here…

That’s for the native package. Let’s see what the community have for us.

iPhone third-party applications:

iPhone Finder

Not being able to see the contents of my file system it’s a big frustration. iPhone Finder came to the rescue, and now I’m happy. A companion viewer for the most used file types (pdf, xls, doc) would make it even better.

iPhone Text Edit

Extremely spartan but easy to use. I can quickly write notes (a little easier than on the native iPhone Notes application), save them, and retrieve them later by using the above iPhone Finder.

iPhone Pocket Money

That’s a challenge. Keeping tracks of your finances with your mobile phone. The application is simple but easy to use. Not so much fuss like electronic payment integration, but still a very useful piece of software.

iPhone Shopping List

Another one extremely useful. You can create separate shopping lists – for separate shopping sprees, if you can afford them 🙂 .

And, once an item bought, it would go out of sight, letting you focus only on what you have left to buy.

iPhone System Information

That’s another geeky legacy: from the time I used “top” every five minutes on my linux machine, I left with an unspeakable urge of seeing all the processes of a device that I have in my hand. And this is what iPhone System Information does.

iPhones Sketches

And one for the fun. By using this, you can actually finger draw everything you want. You have some control over the colors – for both pencil and canvas, and also you can draw basic geometric figures. You can save the result of your creative efforts in the iPhone, or you can quickly email it. And, oh, by shaking the brick, you can erase the content of your current draw. This move also activate a little vibrate session on the iPhone. Neat.

All these applications can be found via the excellent Installer.app, on a jailbroken iPhone. And if you are wondering how the screenshots were made, I was used another extremely useful tool, called Capture (this link will take it to its Installer repository). It creates a floating window over your current screen, containing with two buttons, one for taking a snapshot, and the other one for quiting. Useful for writing blog posts like this one.