iPhone, the cat among the pigeons
Every time I fire up Trains, TV Plus, Wikipanion, Twitterrific, Apple’s YouTube app or even Sunrise, I am reminded of just how quickly iPhone apps are changing my usage of the Internet.
Take Trains as an example. Before Trains if I wanted to check on the progress of my ride home I would fire up the South West Trains website and navigate to the ‘How’s My Train Running’ page. With Trains on the iPhone, just one click plus a five second delay and I can clearly see what time my train is due in, the time at which it left every station along the route and an expected time of arrival at my final destination.
Another example? Try TV Plus. Before TV plus I would open up the Sky homepage, navigate to the ‘My Sky’ page, wait for the remote record section to load up, complete with four adverts for other Sky services and then eventually find and select the show I wanted to record. Now just two or three clicks, a couple of swipes and I’m good to go.
It’s not hard to imagine how this non-Web widgetised version of the Internet could become far more useful than the current Web-centric model, especially on mobile platforms.
App Store – Help, I want my life back!
You know, once the iPhone App Store got to a few hundred applications, I sat back and thought “Well, that’s a decent selection, it’s getting up to the speed of other handheld platforms and, hey, there are some nice apps here to keep me occupied.”
Once the App Store got to a few thousand applications, I started to get worried. “Whoa there, this is starting to get seriously overwhelming. I’m only just keeping up and I already have more applications than I’ll ever need…”
Then the App Store (last week) hit 10,000 applications, with new apps now arriving at the rate of over 50 a day. At which point, as someone who likes to feel like I’ve got a handle on a software scene, I’m really panicking. “Stttooooppppp!! This is a deluge and great apps are being missed right, left and centre – even trying to keep up is taking over my life – and I want it back!”
9 App screens - 144 apps!
The traffic colours on the iPhone’s Google Map
Consider this a bit of a Saturday morning throwaway post 
This may be a case of “duh”, but since traffic data for England went live on the iPhone’s Google Map, I’ve been badgered to find out exactly what the road colour scheme means. I had a quick look at traffic on a desktop Google Map, and saw:
As far as I can tell, there is no black and red indicator on the iPhone’s map, just red. So we’re left with:
- Green: 45mph+ (Billy Whizz)
- Yellow: 25mph+ (just about cruising)
- Red: 0mph+ (going nowhere fast)
There’s also grey which, according to Paul Stamatiou, indicates no data available. By the way, there’s no traffic data available yet for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland…
Three reasons to jailbreak: Backgrounder
James wrote recently that “Background push notification is Apple’s solution to the problems created by refusing to grant multi-tasking to 3rd party applications.”
I think push notification is a great idea, as it avoids running apps in the background, and thereby draining the battery. Plenty of applications will benefit for from this, such as RSS readers having new stories quietly pushed, with a pop-up or icon badge change to alert the user. However,
- As of firmware 2.2, Apple haven’t yet turned push on
- Push just isn’t suitable for many applications
Take Tuner – an internet radio app. Push notification is pointless in this context where, for example, I just want to listen to the radio while I compose an email. At the moment, this is impossible – unless you jailbreak and install Backgrounder.
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Three reasons to jailbreak: PdaNet
Yesterday, I looked at the good reasons for jailbreaking your device, and introduced Cycorder. Today, I’m going to look at an app that allows you to use the data package on your iPhone with a laptop.
(2) PdaNet
Almost all the other phones I have owned (a) will allow you to tether a computer. This means that the computer can use the phone’s data connection to access the internet. This is accomplished through either Bluetooth connection sharing, or by making the phone into something of a wireless router that the computer can connect to.
Not so with the iPhone. It’s not built-in, and the only app to allow tethering – Nullriver‘s NetShare – only made a brief appearance on the App Store before it was pulled.
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Three reasons to jailbreak: Cycorder
I’m posting more and more reviews of applications to this site (a), and so far they’ve only been from Apple’s official App Store. But you can jailbreak your iPhone; jailbreaking allows you to massively expand the potential use of your iPhone, beyond the limited functionality currently granted by Apple. If you do decide to jailbreak, I’d recommend Pwnageto do so, following the tutorials at iClarified (b). You will gain you deeper access to not only the device’s hidden filesystem, but two more unofficial “app stores”, Cydia and Installer (c).
Most of the applications available in Cydia and Installer will not be allowed in the official App Store. They may contravene Apple’s (somewhat opaque) store policies, or run in the background, or not have a graphical interface, etc. The majority of applications are free. Many are ported Unix apps that are open source, and some are commercial applications. I’d like to highlight three free apps that I think are so good, it’s worth you taking the time to jailbreak your iPhone.
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