iPhone App Review
By David Fisher. Filed in technology |Tags: app, apple, application, crappy, downsides, iphone, poor, review, thoughts
I updated my iPhone to firmware 2.0 the day before it came out. I was glad to see that it didn’t complain too much about having a jailbroken phone, and I was pretty happy. I immediately went out to get some apps.
However, I’ve gotten a handful of applications now and realize that most of them honestly suck or are worthless. I guess this is true with every platform, but even many of the “Top 10″ applications really aren’t all that useful and are just a waste of time and money.
Let’s go through what I’ve tried so far:
- Bank of America- This is a pretty nice application, but it’s really just a re-wrap of their website as an application. This is a trend that many websites seem to be going for. Wrap up your website, and call it an app. It’s good for checking balances, but little else. C+
- Google- Again, just really a re-wrap of the iPhone website. I really wish Google would have done something more but they didn’t. It’s basically just replaced my Safari shortcut to Google apps. C-
- Remote- This is likely one of the best applications I have. I have three computers running Leopard, with one of them always hooked up to my media setup. It basically acts as a really sweet iTunes remote control. I wish it looked a bit more like the iTunes on the iPhone. Maybe in revision 2. I’ll give it an “A-“
- Monkey Ball- This game is horrible. Likely the worst $10 I’ve ever spent on a game. It was #1 on the top 10 just because it was demo’d as a 3d iPhone app with motion control from Sega. Thankfully I think people have realized that this is the worst game since ET on the Atari 2600. F-
- PayPal- This is oddly cool. It actually approximates what PayPal initially was attempting to be as a company. If I don’t mind the PayPal fees, I can actually do things like beam my friends money at the dinner table to pay for dinner or something. I wish it did something super cool like pick up on which iPhone is nearest to transfer the money or something, but as is its pretty good. B+
- AquaForest- Also a waste of money. It’s a neat tech demo, but if someone records a video of it online then that’s all you’d ever need to see. Oddly enough more entertaining than Super Monkey Ball. D-.
- SmugShot- I have a Smugmug account, but I only like to post professional photos for sale- not junk from my iPhone. I could care less about this app. F. Useless
- Twitterrific- It’s a decent Twitter application. Pretty smooth really, but I wish it did a few things better. Searching Twitter would be great. Since it doesn’t “push” in the background you don’t get refreshed while your phone is dormant. Wake me up when it’s updated to be a push-application.
- Wordpress- I get it, but blogging from that onscreen keyboard? Umm. No. C-
- Pandora- This is pretty awesome. Moreso if you have the 3G phone. It stops the music when my phone is locked though, which isn’t cool. A-
- Facebook- Just another website re-wrap. B-
- eBay- Just another website re-wrap. C-
- Bloomberg- Another website re-wrap but it’s fast and useful and shows the graphs well on screen. B+
- Tap Tap Revenge- This is the best free game out there I think. Flawless. Amazing. Fun. A+
- AOL Instant Messenge- It worked for me, but it still kinda sucks without Push. C-.
Overall the apps aren’t all that great. I think a lot of people honestly did better without the official API and writing jailbroken apps. Julia Roy also seems to have been dissapointed by many of them. Plus the 2.0 update made things so slow that it was almost unusable. Apparently 2.01 is supposed to be better, but it took them a while to address the issues. I’m installing it right now.