Almost immediately after upgrading my Touch to 2.0, I went in search of a good Tasks application. I found one with Appigo, and thought it was so good that I modified my iPod Touch as a PDA and Entertainer post to talk about it. In my view, it turned the Touch into a full-fledged PDA.
Since my revamp of that post, I’ve had a few days to try out a few other things on the Touch and thought I’d share the results of my tinkering with you.
Before I get into specific apps, I’ll mention a couple of other observations:
- It appears to me that there is a mechanism in place for apps to automatically update themselves, and that it works. I installed the New York Times app, and the next day it updated itself. Pretty cool, eh?
- A sound feature has been added for incoming mail. Whenever mail arrives in your inbox, you hear a few little beeps. From the testing I’ve done so far, this beep alert seems to only occur for email … it sure would be nice if it beeped for upcoming appointments, too. Perhaps in some future revision.
- There are lots and lots of new settings in the settings panel. And, some third-party apps have their own settings, too.
Now to the apps. Note that the screen shots herein do not adequately represent the fantastic quality of the Touch screen and interface. To keep the image file sizes down, I have saved them from their original 115KB high-quality format to a lower quality format of a lot smaller size. Otherwise, the images would take too long to load.
The second app that I loaded onto the Touch was eReader. I’ve used eReader for years, first on my Palm devices, then on my Windows Mobile devices. Since it was listed as one of the top 10 free apps in the App Store, I figured they had done their typical good job with it.
At first I was disappointed with it: I could access my library of books using it (books I had already purchased), but could not download them:
After messing around with this for way too long, I went to the site in my computer browser and looked at my account settings. Turns out that my account listed a credit card that I had not used in a long while, and the credit card numbers are a part of the activation code on eReader books. I updated my CC information and was then able to download books from eReader. Here’s a sample of what one looks like on the Touch:
The next app I spent a good bit of time playing with was WeatherBug, a free app that was in the top 10 listing in the App Store. This has three screens: a summary of general conditions (temperature, etc.), a radar map, and three frequently updated camera shots from the area in which you live. Here is a screen shot from Saturday that shows the storms that were in my area:
And, here is a snap shot of one of the photos from the other side of town:
This is really a cool app, and I love it. It stays up-to-date on the conditions, radar, and photos. Pretty much real-time info.
And, of course, how can you not have Bejeweled on a device if it is available?
I think you get the picture: Keener loves the Touch 2.0 upgrade. No point in me getting into every app I’ve tried out, as this page would load really slowly if I filled it with too many pictures.
The only other thing I’ll say about the apps is that there are plenty of good ones already available, and there are more to come. For example, we can expect to see eWallet and ListPro from IliumSoft pretty soon. And, I’ve heard that Pocket Informant might be made available, too. No doubt we’ll see many more fine apps added to an already great selection.
Thoughts and questions?
All good picks, Bruce! I have the same set of items, though I like OmniFocus better than Appigo’s Todo app (though I own both). Really digging the iPhone as an eReader. Been posting in Twitter about ePub (which I hope eReader will support soon) and Stanza (eBook reader that reads several formats, including ePub). Once Mobipocket’s Reader gets put on the iPhone, I’ll have all of my eBook formats available.
Great write-up. Looking forward to more of your very educated posts on the new 2.0 OS upgrade.
Thanks, Thomas. Good apps you mentioned. I also look forward to Mobipocket’s Reader being available. I actually use it a bit more on my Pocket PC than eReader.
Thanks again.
What’s your opinion of eWallet vs something like Passpack or Clipperz for the iPhone or iTouch?
Hi John,
I like eWallet, personally, because I am accustomed to it and already have my data in it, and because I like the developers: they are good people with good products and customer service.
However, if you have data in another wallet, it would make sense to me to keep it there. If you already have data in Passpack format, for example, I would see no reason to change (unless you are unhappy with the interface or some other aspect of it). I finally learned, after jumping from one program to another, that one can really waste a hell of a lot of time switching software, generally for very little, if any, gain.
Just my view. Others may have different thoughts on the products you mentioned and may think they are outstanding.
I don’t have much invested in Passpack other than some light experimentation.
I’ve never used eWallet. Reckon they both have about the same amount of security. Probably about the only difference is philosophically-web vs “on-board” storage of one’s data, although it appears Ilium is working on a web version that will be synchable.
Sounds like you might want to experiment with eWallet, then, John. I had an invite to beta testing of their web version but haven’t followed up on it … the invite was some time back, which means they have been working on it for a while, and which means they must be getting close to having any bugs worked out of it.
Again, I would not encourage to change for the sake of change, but I do like eWallet and their reputation is impeccable. SplashData also gets a lot of good reviews, although I haven’t tried it in a long while. If they are working on a web version, though, I am not aware of it.
I use the iPhone as my complete system now. As far as I’m concerned, the BEST app in the whole store is Stanza. It’s free, and gives access to thousands of free ebooks through Gutenberg and others. You can’t beat it!
I have also been using Todo+Cal+Sync as my task management app, and it’s a great system. It’s great to see a popular blog promoting the iPhone/iPod Touch as a PDA, because I have tried 7 PDAs (I’m only 22), and this is the ONLY one I’ve ever used for more than 2 months and not got totally fed up with. Also apps are really easy to buy with prepaid credit, something I’ve yet to discover for any other platform, and they’re cheap by comparison too. Great days!
As a note you can set up reminders for Calendar appointments in the calendar app and mine also sync from Outlook (Windows User) without any problems.