Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store
Favorite iPhone apps: Steve's take
Well, Victor took away part of my thunder with his pick of Texas Hold 'Em, but I have three other frequently-used iPhone apps in mind. Twitterrific is my first choice. I love Twitter and formerly used the awe-inspiring Hahlo web app on my iPhone, but there's no native Hahlo app...yet. So for the time being, Twitterrific is what I use to blast my tweets out to the world. If native Hahlo ever appears, Twitterrific gets nixed immediately. So much for loyalty, eh?
My second fave is DataCase. Yeah, I've tried a bunch of the others, but DataCase is still (in my opinion) the best little app for shooting files to my iPhone and then sucking them down to another Mac. I've even had it work with Windows. The interface is not my favorite, but I can put up with a lot for functionality.
Número tres is NetNewsWire. This is the iPhone companion to NewsGator (Mac) and Feed Demon (Windows). Although NetNewsWire received low reviews in the iTunes App Store, I've found it to be very useful for my RSS needs and have no complaints. And the price is right - FREE!
App Store Links --
Twitterrific (free, US$9.99 for an ad-free version)
DataCase (US$6.99)
NetNewsWire (free)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
VeoSotano said 8:21AM on 8-27-2008
If you were trying to talk spanish on the third one, you misspelled the accents completely. The correct form is "número tres". Keep up the great work. Cheers!
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Ryan Trevisol said 8:43AM on 8-27-2008
Now, that was Stévish.
Steven Sande said 9:50AM on 8-27-2008
Thanks for the constructive criticism! It has been changed in the text.
TUAW Steve
rdas7 said 8:37AM on 8-27-2008
Was it just me, or did I assume the Steve in the title was Steve Jobs? Why do I care that some guy named Steve loves "blasting his tweets out to the world" using Twitteriffic? TUAW, you are about to be deleted from my bookmarks...
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Steven Sande said 9:51AM on 8-27-2008
C'mon, if you've been reading TUAW for any length of time, you ought to know that there's a guy named Steve who blogs here. And who would care what that "other" Steve's favorite iPhone apps are? ;-)
TUAW Steve
Kevin Doyle said 8:28AM on 8-27-2008
I prefer Twinkle over Twitterific. It's location based service and included image posting really makes it a better choice.
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antiorario said 8:31AM on 8-27-2008
It's also "Twitterrific," with two Rs. As in "terrific," you know?
;-)
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Steven Sande said 9:51AM on 8-27-2008
And thank YOU for the correction on Twitterrific! See what happens when you write a post late at night? ;-)
TUAW Steve
JohnPQ said 8:59AM on 8-27-2008
Over 90% of the apps in the App Store are crap and completely worthless. Kinda like some of the articles here. TGFE (Thank god for Engadget)
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James Britton said 9:02AM on 8-27-2008
Twinkle is waaaay better, but competition is good.
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mr. anyonmous said 9:23AM on 8-27-2008
NetNewsWire is the companion to NetNewsWire on the mac. which syncs through the newsgator service. Sorry for being pedantic ;)
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mingistech said 9:27AM on 8-27-2008
First off like other posters mentioned Twinkle is a much better Twitter client than twitterific for many reasons. Even twitterific's interface is horrible.. just an all around lame app.
Secondly NetNewsWire is an horrible RSS reader. The interface is as vanilla as you can get. It's built in browser is soooo slow. And, once you read a story is just vanishes like it was never there. It's like the developers have no grasp of what users want. I've downloaded every single RSS reader from the app store and so far Newsstand is by far the best. It works in landscape and portrait view, lets you organize your feeds into folders, has the option to email, or post stories to del.icio.us, flag stories for reading later and even syncs with a boglines account if you have one. By far the best RSS reader on the iPhone so far.
Steve's list here looks like random apps were written down. Recommending some of these apps makes me wonder if he's even tried any of the better apps on the AppStore.
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DougC said 9:38AM on 8-27-2008
You are kidding right? Steve's take? TUAW, you are about to get pulled from my iGoogle page.
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Aron T said 9:45AM on 8-27-2008
I concur regarding NetNewsWire - it's hard to beat a FREE client that syncs your feeds across Windows, OS X and iPhone.
Twitterrific and Twinkle both have a place on my iPhone, I use them for different purposes... Twinkle is good for finding people I know nearby. But Twitterrific is my main client for just browsing the folks I follow. You really can't beat the built-in browser!
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Ken said 9:47AM on 8-27-2008
mingistech: Yes, NNW for iPhone does have its current limitations, but the developers DO have a grasp on what users want. Just check out the NewsGator forums. One of my gripes is the article disappearing, once read, like you said. I think the next version will have a 'mark as unread' option. It's one of the most requested features. I do find it silly for it not to have been included. I think they initially saw it as a simple companion to your desktop RSS reader, but it should get more and more features.
Developers don't always know what users want until said users speak up, which they definitely do in the forums. And though I personally do like the "vanilla" interface (this is why I started using RSS in the first place), I think that the syncing with NewsGator makes any current downsides more than worth it.
So no one has any love for midomi? I find it an awesome all-around music app. Or maybe I'm more of a music geek than most.
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THJ said 11:07AM on 8-27-2008
My Take (no one asked, but I'm hopped up on caffeine and have a lot of work to not do):
Trism: Only game I've played for more than 30 minutes. Simple, holds your place when you quit, and lots of 'achievements' to keep you coming back for more.
NNW: I desperately want to love this app - I start it up every morning on the way to the train, and can usually read an article or two before it crashes. Maybe 6k+ articles is too much. I wish I could flag some feeds for Desktop only and some for phone only.
Zenbe Lists: Free, simple, syncable and/or sharable to do lists.
iNetworktest: No purpose, I'm just OCD and like to constantly test my network speed. Nervous twitch food.
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42 said 2:01PM on 8-27-2008
Ugh, NNW on the iFone is horrible. Love the desktop app, but the mobile version is sloooooooow and looks like it was thrown together over a weekend.
Twitterrific isn't much better. TwitterFon is also free and only does, you know, tweets, not all the other bullshit.
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punkassjim said 2:10PM on 8-27-2008
You may want to try an updated version of NNW iPhone. He made it much faster. I had to update mine manually, since iTunes wasn't handling updates properly.
I tried Twitterfon, really liked how smoothly it scrolled, and I believe it had landscape mode...but the on-screen organization was atrocious, not enough info was presented with each tweet (how long ago, in reply to, etc), there's no favoriting mechanism, and the background color made my eyes hurt. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt for future updates, but when I looked at the support site, I unfairly judged the developer because of his poor grasp of the english language...I'll readily admit that. I just think, if you're distributing software, you need to effectively communicate with your user base in order to get anywhere, and I don't think that one guy is gonna make quick progress. I'll check back in a couple months.
punkassjim said 2:04PM on 8-27-2008
I can't believe so many people are ga-ga over Twinkle and Twitterriffic. Just goes to show how different people's priorities are: for me, Hahlo still reigns supreme. The scrolling jerkiness and the lack of landscape mode are big deal-breakers for the native apps (so far), even considering the "nifty" features.
For the dudes who threaten unsubscribing from TUAW, get over yourselves.
For the TUAW bloggers, please don't blog about great tools like http://iphone.iusethis.com/ if you're just gonna go ahead and not use those tools along with us. There's not much point in blogging about what iPhone apps you use, when you've already told us the place to find out that information, which isn't here. Make sense?
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rishi said 4:27PM on 8-27-2008
When I read this title in my RSS feed, before I clicked on it, I thought it was Steve JOBS'S favorite iPhone apps. :)
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