The iOS platform, consisting of the iPhone and the iPad, has seen most of it’s success thanks to the plethora of applications (apps) available for download. It is without a doubt the platform’s strongest asset and one that, thanks to the continued success of apps like Angry Birds, seems likely to continue for some time. While a lot of time on these devices is spent listening to music, browsing the web, reading e-mails and, let’s face it, playing games I wanted to write up a quick post about some of the other apps that I use on a regular basis. These small, often single purpose, programs make my life easier in their unique way and keep me connected no matter where I am. The following is a list of apps, ordered by how often I use them, that I am currently making heavy use of on my iPhone.

10. VLC

The iOS media player can play a large number of audio and video formats. Unfortunately there are still a few obscure formats, and some that Apple just doesn’t like, that won’t work. This is where VLC comes in. Like the desktop counterpart, VLC lets the device play almost every file type imaginable, from MKV to OGG. It even integrates into the e-mail client letting me view attachments that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. The only drawback is the ridiculous way you have to add media to the VLC library. Sadly this is on Apple’s side of the equation and I doubt we’ll see this changed anytime soon.

Do I have to read a manual first too?

9. IMDb

The Internet Movie Database is an awesome website that tracks almost ever detail of a movie’s production (from actors to directors and more). This app is the iOS version of their website (they actually block you from using the proper website on your device). Thankfully this is also one of the most well designed and easy to use apps I have ever seen. Need to find the name of that actress? No problem. Want to know what else she’s been in? Super simple. This app is a staple that everyone should have installed.

It even gives you movie news and showtimes

8. Corus Radio

There are a number of streaming radio apps available for download from Shoutcast! to those specific to a certain radio station. Corus Radio is one such application. It makes it easy to listen to any of the Corus owned radio stations all from within a single app. From a design perspective this is not a very good app, but its no frills approach makes it sufficient for me when I want to catch the early morning Dean Blundell Show.

No frills but it does the job

7. Convert Units

Have you ever been reading a recipe or following directions and had to convert between oz and mL or lbs and kg? Enter Convert Units. This super handy application lets you easily convert between all sorts of different units for all kinds of situations

Did you know 1 beer = 0.355L?

Convert Units works in all sorts of different situations

6. Netflix

With the recent release of Netflix in Canada I am suddenly able to try out this service from the comfort of my… phone. OK so maybe it’s not the best way to watch movies but it’s still really cool. There isn’t much to really say about this beyond the fact that this is yet another excellent Netflix experience.

I wonder how much data a movie uses over 3G

5. Facebook

Ah Facebook. Whatever your feelings are about this privacy eroding service that enables complete publication of your life you to keep in touch with friends and family, Facebook (the app) is a prime example of how an iOS program should work. It is so simple and feature rich (a rare combination) that I actually prefer it to the full website.

Even better than their excellent mobile site

4. Newsy

Newsy is an interesting app, actually more of a front end to their website, that combines various perspectives of a newsworthy event from different TV news shows, blogs and radio commentators. Their tag-line is “Multiple sources. The real story.” and one that I believe they live up to. If you are looking for a more or less non-bias summary of something in the news I would highly recommend checking out Newsy.

Top stories of the day (videos and transcripts)

3. TweetDeck

There are literally dozens, maybe even hundreds, of Twitter clients for iOS but none are as fully featured (in my opinion at least) as TweetDeck. Taking a cue from their desktop version, this client displays all of the information in a series of columns that you can swipe back and forth to cycle through.

Everything is split up into customizable columns

If you do use the desktop version as well it will automatically sync things between them so you don’t have to constantly update both independently. My only complaints have to do with the lack of real multitasking and the crash happy nature of the in-application browser. Honestly I don’t know how they did it… but they took the perfectly stable browser component and broke it.

2. PingChat!

PingChat! has the dubious honour of being one of the only remaining cross-platform instant messengers in the vein of BlackBerry Messenger. This means that from your iOS device can talk to your friend on an Android device or even on a BlackBerry.

PingChat! also supports group chat

Like BBM, PingChat! shows you when the other party has received a message and runs over the data network, thus saving you from text messaging fees. Another nice feature is the ability to send pictures, video, audio, contact information and more.

The send contact feature is especially useful for quickly sharing information

I highly recommend this application, and not just because the guys behind it are local

1. IM+

iOS has a slew of instant messenger applications but I prefer IM+ to all of the other ones that I’ve tried. A slick interface, tons of features, and a quick update cycle means that this app is constantly improving.

Trust me, it looks better without all of the censorship

You can send pictures, audio, and videos to your contacts, talk on all different types of services (MSN, AOL, etc.) and even configure it to stay logged in on their servers so that (even with the application closed) you get Push notifications when someone messages you. Overall it offers a solid experience that is only getting better and better.

Honourable Mention

Epic has recently released a tech demo called Citadel showcasing the Unreal Engine running on iOS. This is by far the best example of what the iPhone/iPad hardware is capable of in terms of delivering absolutely stunning graphics. Sadly that’s all it is, a tech demo. Hopefully we will see this technology used more often going forward.

Very gorgeous graphics

There has been far too much iPhone related news lately but I feel as though I should at least weigh in with my thoughts on the new iPhone OS. I have been running iOS 4 on my iPhone 3GS since it was officially released about a week ago. Rather than write a lengthy review I figured I would simply add my short comments about the major new features. This should, hopefully, result in a very quick and informative review.

Multitasking

This is the big new feature and honestly the one that you’ll forget about the quickest. What do I mean by this? The multitasking implementation in iOS 4 is so seamless that the new double-tap on the home button paradigm works far better as a quick app switcher than as a task manager. Don’t read this as a negative however; all user interfaces should strive to do as good of a job at ‘hiding’ such a fundamental change to the OS by building it into a user-centric design. Do all the apps on my phone multitask? Heck no, but I couldn’t even tell you which do and which don’t and that right there is the real genius behind this design.

Folders

Far from perfect, folders are a welcome change to the iPhone experience. I was able to cut down the number of app screens on my device from about 10 to only 2. My only real complaint about folders is the fixed limit to the number of apps you can put in each, a maximum of 12 per folder. I would almost prefer to have the option to put all of my games in a single folder and then scroll through them as a list instead.

Wallpaper

The background wallpaper is a nice addition. It’s obviously nothing groundbreaking but it does add a nice personalized feel to the phone. This ‘feature’ will not work on the older 3G model because of the slower hardware. If that statement sounds ridiculous to you then you obviously haven’t played with the update enough to notice the new animations. iOS 4 literally vomits animation at you every chance it gets.

Mail

By far the best part of the upgrade, mail saw the addition of a unified inbox (where all of your accounts can filter into one place) and e-mail threading. I have four e-mail accounts on my device and switching between their individual inboxes was always a pain. But now with the unified inbox I can quickly get all of my updates and respond to all of the messages very quickly. Threaded e-mail is also awesome and is something sorely missing from many other phones and even desktop clients. Once you start using a threaded e-mail client, like Gmail or Thunderbird, it is very hard to go back to the old way of doing things. Now I don’t have to! I only encountered one issue with the new mail app. The first time I ran the app it seemed liked it was indexing all my stored mail which really slowed the app down. Since then however it works like a charm.

Photo and Camera

On an unrelated note I REALLY need to clean my phone's camera lens

There is now a 5x digital zoom for the camera which is so easy to operate a child could use it. Simply tap on the screen and the control appears as a slider at the bottom. Sliding it to the right zooms in, to the left zooms out. Simple, easy, elegant. It’s just a shame that digital zoom sucks too much to be really useful.

Adding focus to the video camera is also nice but this feature might be put to better use on the new iPhone 4G hardware where the video camera is actually worth using.

A new tab for a geo-tagged map overlay has also been added to the photo app which will show you where you took each picture. It’s neat but not really something I think I’ll be using often.

iPod

The iPod app user interface got a bit of an overhaul and it now shows more information in a much more streamlined and effective way. It also lets you manage playlists (beyond the simple ‘on-the-go’ ones) right on the device itself. Music playback has always been one of the great strengths of this platform and its nice to see Apple hasn’t forgotten where their success has come from.

Others

E-mail attachments can now be set up to be opened by any application, third-party or otherwise. This should make the e-mail experience far more flexible and help enterprise deployments open home-grown data sources. I’m also hoping to see a PGP application take advantage of this soon.

Calendar has had a couple of improvements but the biggest change is the addition of full support for .ics calendar entries. This has been a missing feature from day one and it is nice to see that the ability is finally here.

iBooks has been added the the iPhone which should help people who want to read a page or two on the bus to school or work. Other than that I just don’t see this as such a big deal. Afterall who would want to read a whole book on a device as small as a phone?

In both Spotlight (the device wide search) and Safari Wikipedia and your selected search engine will offer suggestions for what you are trying to find. While this feature is nice it does slow down the search results slightly as it tries to retrieve suggestions from the web in real time. If it becomes too annoying you can turn it off.

iOS 4 also brought some much needed security improvements including the option for a full text password (no longer just a 4-digit one) and full device encryption. Again this is a feature that was missing since the launch of the iPhone for no really good reason.

Spellcheck has also been added which offers some nice suggestions when the auto-complete isn’t quite sure what you meant to type. It works in a similar way to copy & paste which makes it instantly accessible to anyone used to the phone.

A slew of enterprise features were added as well but seeing as I’m not in charge of any enterprise deployments most of these additions were lost on me.

Overall

Overall the iOS 4 feels faster in general but not without some slowdown in specific cases, such as mail above. Even with these oddities the update allows you to be much more productive than ever before and so on the whole it is still faster in almost every practical use case. As a computer science graduate I am far more interested in the addition of APIs and tweaks under the hood and from everything I have read or experienced it all looks very good.

Conclusion

The iOS 4, while not completely revolutionary in any way, is a strong evolutionary upgrade and well worth your time. Just be warned that if you are upgrading your 3G it may take a while.

Update size: 378MiB
Time to install: about 10 minutes to update + phone restart + 10KiB carrier update + phone backup ~= 15 minutes total