My Online Thoughts & Pontifications

We put our heads together and came up with a list of the apps you should install first on your brand-new, factory-fresh iPhone. Keeping in mind that people from all over the world use iPhones and read TUAW, we excluded from consideration any apps that don't have full international functionality.

Can't really argue with any of the choices here by TUAW

One of my favourite iPhone apps Notesy has just been updated to version 2 with the inclusions of some excellent new features, namely support for sub folders and Markdown.

Notesy is a text editing application which synchronises automatically through dropbox, allowing you to access you text from any device or machine. When combined with the excellent Notational Velocity on the Mac this makes a killer text editing solution across all my devices. My particular preference is the nvALT 2.0 branch of Notational Velocity which also includes support for the excellent Markdown.

So whether you're looking for a simple text editing solution to manage your shopping lists or want a feature rich application to allow you to draft out blog posts, then you should definitely take a look at Notesy in the App Store right now

Ben Brooks on Tweetbot:

While I have yet to decide if I like Tweetbot any more, or less, than I like the official Twitter app — I did note two annoying things:

1. The app doesn’t have the “one” single feature that is unique to it.
2. The app feels like a nice wrapper of eye candy applied over the existing apps out there (mainly the official Twitter app).

I agree. Tweetbot is a very good app, but I’m sticking with the official Twitter app for now because it’s also a very good app, it seems faster and more responsive to me, I know it’s not going anywhere, and I already know how to use it efficiently.

Full-featured Twitter clients need to have so many features that switching has a learning curve and an indirect cost. It’s not difficult, but it takes time to develop the habits to navigate each app efficiently.

A new Twitter client that essentially offers the Twitter app’s features, but in different places, isn’t enough of a difference for me to switch. If anything, it supports Twitter’s “don’t make full-featured apps” position. Maybe they were right.

This isn’t to say that Tweetbot shouldn’t exist as an option for people who really do like it a lot better than all of the other full-featured Twitter clients. It really is very good. But it lacks significant reasons why anyone should switch to it if they already like their Twitter client of choice.

I couldn't agree more with the points made by both Ben Brooks and Marco Arment in their blogs today.

While I will happily acknowledge that Tweetbot is a great Twitter client with a fabulous looking user interface, there isn't any one feature that stands it apart from my existing Twitter client of choice, TweetList.

While I will keep it on my iPhone and use it occasionally for the novelty value, Tweetlist still retains its privileged location in my iPhone's dock and I cannot see that changing anytime soon.

There has been a lot of excitement about this app since Tapbots first teased us about it a year ago but now finally Tweetbots has arrived in the wild!

Yes its another Twitter client for the iPhone, as if I didn't need another one, but all the feedback that we have been hearing from beta users like John Gruber is extremely positive.

Brief highlights of the functionality available includes:

◆ Multiple Timelines. Quickly switch between your lists as your main timeline.
◆ Smart Gestures. Use Twitter more efficiently with time-saving and configurable gestures.
◆ Customizable Navigation. The last 2 tabs are customizable and unused tabs are easily accessible.
◆ Support for multiple services like Read it Later, Instapaper, Cloudapp URL Shortening.
◆ Save drafts, add locations and POI's, attach photos and videos, manage your lists, and much more.

Nothing awe inspiring in the feature list but their blog post really emphasises the work they have put into both the gesture system and the integration of lists into the main timeline. Does it have enough to get me to switch from my current Twitter app of choice, TweetList? I'll report back once I have had a chance to try it out in earnest.

Have a look at the demonstration video on the Tapbots website and then get over to the App Store and give it a spin for yourself.

Really interesting, and surprisingly open post, by Tap Tap Tap, on how successful their application Camera+ has been in the iPhone App Store, both in terms of copies sold and revenue generated. Something I am sure every iPhone developer would give their right arm to emulate!

Happy Fourth Birthday, iPhone!

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Jan 9th 2011 at 3:30PM

We've already celebrated the 10th birthday of iTunes today; now it's time to remember the birth of another member of the Apple family.

On January 9, 2007, I was one of the lucky folks who was sitting in the chairs at Moscone West in San Francisco, waiting for the Steve Jobs keynote address for Macworld Expo to kick off. The assembled crowd all knew that some sort of Apple phone was going to be announced, and when Jobs finally waved the phone to the crowd, the place went wild. To me, it was one of the most exciting Macworld Expo moments ever, and I actually have a painting by Nitrozac on my wall that commemorates that announcement.

Both game changers in their own rights. iTunes for revolutionising the music industry and changing how we buy and consume music. iPhone for shaking up the smart phone market. Happy birthday to both!