What do you consider to be the “essential” iPhone apps?

by Matt Stratton on June 18, 2009

steve-iphoneMy father-in-law has just become the latest convert to the iPhone Revolution, or whatever it’s called. He emailed me yesterday asking for my recommendations for the “must-have” apps for the iPhone.

Of course, since I am a “corporate shill” (according to Marcelo) BlackBerry user, I don’t have personal experience with the super-duper awesome apps out there for the iPhone. I read about them, of course, and I am a proponent of the “there’s an app for that” joke, but in reality, I don’t know what is REALLY out there.

My wife is also on the cusp of iPhoning – we’re going to be getting her a 3G in a couple of weeks. I know she’s really excited about it, but she too is going to need guidance on what are the most important and awesome apps out there.

Therefore, I turn to you, loyal readers (and others) – what apps do you recommend for the following people:

  • My father-in-law: Not a Facebooker or Twitterer… is into photography, sailing, his grandchildren, and the news.
  • My wife: Doesn’t use Twitter, but loves the Fizzy Bizzy (Facebook, that is). She likes cooking,trashy reality TV, reading, celebrity gossip, and home decorating.

Please post your suggestions in the comments!

Tagged as: iphone

  • For your wife, I recommend one that my girlfriend loves -- iShoes.

    More later, M@.
  • My wife isn't really shoe-obsessed...but maybe she just needed the right app!
  • Rowmote Pro is a new favourite for controlling my computer- not sure your FiL or Wife would be into that though...

    CLUEDO is quite fun. But not 'essential', same with Toobz and Paper Toss.

    if they're into currency then XE Currency is good!

    eBay is quite handy for folllowing your eBay buys.

    TED is good to listen to some inspiring talks.

    The Google apps is good- I use it for my reader.

    Can I also suggest that they have a look at AWESOME podcasts? I think this is an aspect of iPhone/iPod Touch that people really miss out on. There are SO MANY great, free podcasts full of exciting information! My particular favs are a few christian ones, and some craft ones- because they're what I'm into. But there are really excellent photography ones- vodcasts and podcasts, and interior design as well!
    .-= Talia´s last blog ..It’s Funny Like That =-.
  • For FIL: Quickpedia (Wikipedia app); Google app; The Weather Channel; Darkslide (best Flickr app everest); Scribble Lite (just drawing and writing over photos, really fun with kids); AP Mobile (news); TiVo Mobile, Amazon, Ebay, craigsphone.

    WifelyWife: Facebook app; Food Network (iphone formatted website); AllRecipes; Shopper (grocery shopping lists); Remote (controls iTunes through WiFi network); Bowl (skiiball game); Bounce On (some ball game, Smange likes it); Whack'emAll (yes, whack-a-mole).

    Guaranteed, they'll love every awesome minute.
  • Ali Illyas
    Here is some I use in a daily basis:
    Pandora,
    FaceBook,
    Twitterfon,
    Sportstap (all sport plays and news),
    The weather channel,
    Evernote (OCR, voice and text really good),
    And a good app to pass the time "Emergency" free or paid police scanner. You can listen to about 30 cities including Chicago.
  • I prefer the Accuweather app for the iPhone. I would also go along with the recs for eBay. It works very well for what it intended to do.

    The NY Times and Associated Press News apps are quite good. And free. Free is good. For baseball, the MLB At Bat app is terrific. Great value for the money you pay.

    Hope that helps
    .-= Mark Stratton´s last blog ..Writer's Block: Local Favorite =-.
  • Tim Chapel
    I've seen a couple of the sailing apps in action and they are pretty impressive. NavX in paticulur is fast and responsive.

    The piloting apps are useful for anyone on the water too. Some of them focus more on weather alerts and highly accurate wind and front tracking.

    A couple of the apps are $$$ but most captains and pilots don't skimp on the price of such things, for obvious reason.
  • Juan Rhodes
    I'm not sure if he likes sports but I'd recommend the following.

    ESPN Scorecenter

    MLB AtBat (It now lets you stream live video of certain games. You can get the local radio broadcast audio of all games for each team playing.)

    Weatherbug (Has a weather radar, and pictures from different sites in the area. Good for if you're driving into the city and want to see if it's raining in the city but not where you are.)

    NY Times
  • Juan Rhodes
    One more. There's a cooliris app for looking at and searching for pictures.
  • I absolutely LOVE the MLB at Bat app. They just added live video streams yesterday (although i haven't used that feature), and the audio streams are awesome. My favorite game is probably Zombieville USA, and any music junky will want to have Shazam, Pandora Radio, and Remote.
  • Steve Costello
    Excluding apps already mentioned, here are a few:

    For both: Urbanspoon and/or Yelp are musts if you like finding cool places to eat. I use Urbanspoon most often because I like the ability to get random places to eat based on several factors you can limit, including your current location. Pretty awesome.

    FIL: MotionX GPS & GPS Lite are pretty cool GPS-based apps. I haven't looked at any sailing apps, so not sure if they have the same features that MotionX has. MotionX is great for keeping track of where you've been, where you are going, how long you've been traveling, how long it took you to get there, etc. It also provides a compass and a bunch of other GPS-ey type things.
  • Tim Grace
    I'd toss in Sportacular for score tracking - if you're into fantasy sports you can also plug your roster in and have it track stats for just those players.

    The Flixter app is solid for buying movie tix, as is OpenTable for restaurant reservations.

    If you're ever in need of finding a sports bar with a specific team allegiance, FanFinder is a decent app for that.

    Dashbuster works for managing the old Netflix queue and plugging something in when someone makes a movie reco.

    Wallet Zero is a neat app that lets you import grocery preferred card info, etc. for use a the scanner instead of the card itself.
  • Dashbuster sounds cool - I know that my father-in-law uses Netflix, so I bet he'll get some mileage out of that.
  • Shana
    The apps I use most often are: facebook, Shazam, Wikipanion, Yelp, Flixter, Peggle, Pandora, and Public Radio Tuner.
  • Camerabag and Picoli are excellent photo manipulation apps. Picoli adds basic on the fly post production to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. Camerabag has a bunch of preset filters to make your photos look like they came out of a Holga or a Diana or were shot on 1960's black and white film. It's really well done and I use them a lot when I want to make my photos artsy.

    For food apps I like the epicurious app, which has like 20,000 recipes from Gourmet magazine, Bon Appetit magazine, SELF, Cookie, Parade - quality stuff.

    Your wife might enjoy the Stanza ebook reader app for reading ebooks on her phone, also the Kindle for iPhone app. Don't you have a Kindle? You can probably figure out a way to share the account on your phone and your device to get the same books on it.

    Other apps I use constantly include Pandora for music, Peggle, Bookworm, Solebon, Tetris, and Katamari for games, Now Playing for movie times and Netflix stuff (although the other recs are interesting and I want to try them out), Sportacular for sports scores, and a nifty ambient music generation app called Bloom written by Brian Eno.
  • Marcelo - yeah, we have a Kindle, so I am looking forward to seeing if we can use that same account that already has the books and stuff downloaded. I'm fairly certain you can (you can use the same account on multiple Kindles, so it should work with the iPhone app I would imagine).
  • Nando Velasquez
    Just looking at the apps I like to use.

    For News: USA TODAY, AP, New York Times, Wall Street Journal (Although I rarely use it, but from what I've noticed, you can read free stories there that are locked for subscribers on their website)

    Mint.com is a good Quicken type website that's free and has a good app.

    Amazon is great. and I'd second the Kindle for Amazon. I haven't bought anything yet, but just the fact that I can download the first chapter of any book in the kindle store for perusing is awesome.

    Shazam is great when you have the radio on and want to find out what song you're listening too. Remote is awesome when you're too lazy to walk to your desktop to play iTunes.

    I have a bunch of movie theater apps. Personally, I like the way One Tap Movies looks, but it's not free. The free version of One Tap Movies is called Showtimes. What I like about both is they're intergrated very well with Google Maps. But Movies, Now Playing, and Fandango are good too. Try all the free ones and see which works for you.

    My favorite game is MotionX's Poker Quest. It's a dice game, but very fun to shake the iPhone and feel like you've got dice rolling around in there. It costs money, but MotionX has a free version called Dice. No game involved, but good if you want to try what I'm talking about.

    I also like Aurora Feint II: The Beginning, Haven't DL'd Peggle yet, but might based on the recommendations above.

    Oh yeah and for the wifey, the Entertainment News apps for Access Hollywood and TMZ
  • Steve
    Thanks to my son-in-law Matt, and to all that responded with the great tips. It will take me weeks to sort thru all of them, but that's the fun of having an iPhone. What did we ever do without them?
  • No iPhone for me - but I am considering switching from the G1 once mine gives out/contract is up. But...is there an Apartment Therapy app? I love the site and wish I could view it on my phones browser.
  • There is now an Apartments.com app, but I don't think that's what you have in mind...
  • Hardly! Apartment Therapy is pretty decorating pictures and home organization ideas.
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