My name is Jason Discount. I am an American living in Australia where I develop software primarily for primary schools and manage servers.
So, last entry I posted a pic of my iPhone home screen. In hindsight, it’s a bit self-serving, possibly the modern digital equivalent of posting what I had for breakfast. But that being said, I’ve always found value in looking at others’ home screens, a concept introduced to me by the site First and 20. The problem is that App Store is such a hodge podge, mishmap of 99c crap, it’s hard to find the good stuff that should be floating to the top. By looking at others’ home screens, I’ve discovered many great applications, so allow me to hopefully return the favor by offering a bit of a description of my favorites.
Jumsoft Money
In 1999, I got my first PDA, a Palm IIIx. I spent that entire weekend downloading nearly every application from PalmGear and Handango, the two predominant “App Stores” of their time. I was just looking for excuses to whip out my Palm and use it, and one of the applications I was immediately drawn to was financial tracking. I’ve never lost this love, and as a result, I have a record of how I’ve spent every cent since 1999.
For most of this time, SplashData’s SplashMoney was my predominant application. It allowed me to export CSVs to my Mac which I then imported into FileMaker Pro to do my yearly reporting and archiving. I had a brief flirt with Symbian via a Nokia E61 in between my transition from Palm to iPhone, and when I came home with my new iPhone, I was thrilled to see SplashMoney was already in the App Store. Unfortunately, the pleasure ended quite quickly thereafter. SplashMoney didn’t have anywhere near the same reliability as its Palm OS counterpart. The syncing was super buggy, transactions would magically swap amounts, it was a tremendous headache.
Finally, a dear friend kicked me in the ass and motivated me to search for a replacement, and that replacement was Jumsoft’s Money. Money has a beautiful, native Mac App and a reliable syncing iPhone counterpart, and a match made in heaven was made. I’ve never looked back since, and I hope the door hits SplashMoney on the way out.
This sparked a new search to make sure any new iPhone application I decided to depend on, was of the utmost quality in user interface and reliability, and for my most crucial tasks, either had a syncing Mac component, or an export that I could rely upon.
FileMaker Bento
One of the milestones in my career was learning FileMaker Pro. It was my ability to port FileMaker applications to the web that landed me a job in Australia, which is one of the single most important events of my life. To this day, I still use FileMaker for various personal tasks, but no longer for the web or client work. FileMaker Bento is their newer, scaled down, consumer friendly version. I really think this app was developed by Apple and intended for inclusion with iWork, but Apple happily let it be marketed by their FileMaker subsidiary as to not cut their lunch. As with Money, there is a beautiful Mac app and reliable syncing. While the app does not have true relational capabilities, it’s perfect for the storage of anything that doesn’t require a dedicated app. I’ve even modeled the tables I use after another SplashData app, SplashID. Of course, Bento is considerably more extensible, and undeniably more reliable. Version 3 added the very needed feature of password protection, but in a very clever way, at a per field level, thus only requiring authentication when accessing sensitive data.
d3i’s Momento
My most recent addition. This app is intended to be used as a diary but includes a very clever feature which is the ability to automatically incorporate social feeds, specifically Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and last.fm. The UI for this app is stunning and it’s quite feature rich allowing you to incorporate contact, locations, photos and custom tags into every entry, referred to as a Moment. While there is no Mac client that can be kept in sync, the application has an XML export, and the developers have promised to make it more robust in a future version. Keep your eye on this app. It’s a rising star.
AppCubby’s GasCubby
Tracking gas mileage was something that I’ve been doing as long as I’ve been tracking my finances. AppCubby was pretty quick to market with an application with a nice style. They also have a companion TripCubby for tracking your mileage against personal or business use. While, similarly to Momento, there is no Mac client, but an export, in addition to that, AppCubby provides a free online storage to which the app can sync. This is great if you are switching devices, or wiping your device clean without restoring from a backup. The app also tracks other non-fuel charges, like services, registration and insurance payments and features reminders for these services, which manifest as an application badge, which is a paradigm I’m quite fond of.
Cultured Code’s Things
Apple’s iCal on the Mac is a running joke to many power users. It’s always blown my mind that iMovie, an app crunching HD video can outperform a calendar app that reads and writes text files. Apple’s lack of love for their own app has been further reinforced in that after 3 major OS releases on the iPhone, Apple still will not sync To Dos from iCal. Unfortunately, that means I no longer use To Dos in iCal. Let’s face it though, they sucked anyway.
So I, like many others, turned to Things. Aligned with my mantra, this app has a beautiful aesthetic and a beautiful Mac client with reliable sync services. For those aware of GTD (not myself), I believe Things is a complaint tool to help you with that kind of thing. It’s extremely full featured, including the ability to work with projects and teammates, stuff I’ve barely scratched the surface of.
Tapbot’s Convertbot
The first, truly stunning, unit converter, a valuable resource for an American in Australia. Adding auto-updating currencies was yet another valuable addition for the importer that I am, and last but not least, by building in a calculator, I was able to relegate the iPhone’s built-in Calculator to a far away page and graduate ConvertBot to my home screen where it serves multiple roles, and with such style! More from TapBots below!
Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder
I’ve always been a huge consumer of the web via RSS, and NetNewsWire on the Mac was always my stalwart application for doing so. They released a syncing iPhone client which used their own proprietary NewsGator service to do so, but it was never very reliable. They eventually decided to switch to using Google Reader as their centralized syncing platform, and while this provided me with great data portability, it also signalled their death knell by opening me up to using the plethora of Google Reader compatible clients on the market. I searched high and low, tested loads, bought a few, and found the little-known-at-the-time Reeder. It immediately piqued my interest, and similar to Momento, I have high hopes and expectations for Silvio Rizzi. This app is beautiful, well thought out, and a pleasure to use. I provided a lot of early feedback and was welcomed in to the beta program and have enjoyed at least one notable contribution. Silvio has great ideas on his roadmap, many already prepared for the next release. If you do RSS, this is the way.
atebit’s Tweetie and Facebook
If you use Twitter and Facebook and aren’t familiar with these apps, you must be living in a cave.
Beejive IM with Push
I was using eBuddy at first because it was free and thorough, but it’s push notifications were extremely inconsistent and its UI and icon were not of the caliber of the other apps on my phone. Beejive is a gorgeous multi-protocol chat client worthy of the iPhone. I’d love to show you screenshots of the buddy list or a chat, but it would be ruined by having to blur out personal information, so here is the accounts pane. The chat view emulates the speech bubble aesthetic of iChat which is welcome to Mac users. The push notifications are reliable, the ability to merge contacts across networks is great, and the integration with the contacts is excellent insuring that all of my address book records have accurate IM handles stored inside. The application has a truckload of settings, many for customisation, but they are foolishly buried in the Settings app forcing the time consuming process of exiting Beejive, going to Settings, changing the settings, returning to Beejive to view the result. Luckily, the settings are well documented on their website and in the Beehive application, but you’d want to bring up the description on your computer as to prevent the ping-ponging back and forth. The application was initially quite expensive, but there have been sales and I believe the price has dropped. Well worth it if you need IM access on the road.
Shifty Jelly’s PocketWeather AU
The iPhone’s built in Weather app isn’t very good for most international folks, least of all Australians. PocketWeather AU was one of the first apps to use the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to source its weather info. It also had a nice aesthetic, offering a few different well designed styles to suit anyone’s palette. Recently, they jumped on the push bandwagon, and in a very clever way. They push either the expected high of the day or the current temperature (my preference) as a badge on the application’s icon. This enables my iPhone’s home screen to behave as a quasi-thermometer, which I find quite neat! When I shifted from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast, I noticed the weather report wasn’t thorough. I contacted the developer and in 24 hours they implemented a fix. I was very impressed and as a result, recommend this app to all Australians.
Organisation
I think part of my OCD goes a bit beyond the stringent requirements for an application to join my home screen, but the layout of the home screen must also be logical.
- Row 1: Purpose built data entry applications
- Row 2: Date and time based applications easing to simplicity with the clock and calculator replacement on the end
- Row 3: Consumption and social interaction
- Row 4: Internet resources and finally settings
Second Page
Applications have to earn their presence on my iPhone, and I try to only keep essentials. I’d love to only have one screen’s worth, but I’ve grown to two screens, with my third screen only containing the built in applications that I no longer use, but cannot delete. There are plenty of gems on page two, so here’s a quick one liner for each:
Row 1: Media
iPod, Remote, Photos, Camera: All built in besides Remote, which is a killer app made by Apple to remotely control iTunes.
Row 2: Information Services
NAB: Link to a great mobile web version of NAB’s internet banking. My only web-link-as-an-app. (Website)
IceTV: Australian television listings. Admittedly, not presented very well, but there is little competition. (Website | iTunes)
Consume: An excellent usage monitor for virtually every Australian mobile and internet provider. Not only do I track my own plans, but also those of my clients, which has proved an invaluable tool when they call me to wonder why their internet is so slow. (Website | iTunes)
Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide: An app I had and loved on the Palm. While I don’t agree with Maltin much of the time, I love the ability to jump around from movie to director to actor and back. The app also lets you maintain lists of your favorites movies, movies you want to see, or lists for any other purpose. Unfortunately, the application’s search is excruciatingly slow. To the developer: Database indexes, have you heard of them? (Website | iTunes)
Row 3: Content Management and Work
Tumblr: This blog is hosted by Tumblr. Reason enough? (Website | iTunes)
Pastebot: Another gem from Tapbots! This app is an incredibly clipboard manager. Not something I thought I’d need, but it comes with a Mac equivalent that lets you shoot information back and forth between iPhone and Mac seamlessly and instantly, which has proved invaluable! It’s how I prepared all of the screenshots from my phone needed for this post. (Website | iTunes)
SmartSync for Facebook: This app let’s you pull information about your friends from Facebook into your contacts. It allows granular control about which fields to sync, which to overwrite, and can be excepted on a per contact basis. Much better than the new Facebook app’s built in contact sync. (Website | iTunes)
iSSH: Needed for work and remote emergencies. This was one of the first internationally available ssh apps. It even includes a VNC viewer to use tunneled over SSH. While it’s useful for emergencies, the interface and controls are a bit painful, so I only use it when absolutely necessary. (Website | iTunes)
Row 4: Purchasing/Remnants
eBay, Shazam, and Skype: These should all be pretty obvious.
Summary
That’s it! Any app I’ve listed here comes with a strong recommendation if it provides a service applicable to you. Although that being said, some of these I bought/downloaded only to have a perusal of their UI (like PasteBot), only to realize that I did have a true need for their services. I always find it fascinating and frustrating when I hear users complain about iPhone app pricing, or a refusal to buy commercial apps at all (you know who you are ;-) as the most expensive app I paid for is A$13, which is basically 4 cups of coffee.
It’s been nearly a year and half since I’ve had my iPhone and the App Store’s birth, and in the last six months I’ve found that the apps have matured to an incredible level making the iPhone and its ecosystem a truly indispensable tool for my work and personal lives. I look forward to what the future holds and what future OS upgrades from Apple can enable developers to bring us next.
