World of Apple

The iPhone 3GS is the latest incarnation of the iPhone from Apple, encompassing just a handful of new features and looking identical to its predecessor the 3GS may seem like a non-sensical upgrade to some.

Compared to the iPhone 3G the iPhone 3GS adds a better camera with auto-focus and the ability to record video, a magnetometer (digital compass), and voice commands. Beyond these features the iPhone 3GS also has some hidden tricks, revealed only by its name. The ‘S’ according to Apple stands for speed and this is where the iPhone 3GS shines.

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Description: THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS! Play with your Sim using touch and accelerometer controls while exploring stunning 3D open-world environments. Customize your Sim with personality traits and physical characteristics, as you decide whether to fulfill their destiny…or not. Do good or mischief. Fall in love or watch them get dumped. Pick a fight or make a friend. Good or bad, enjoy the ride with The Sims as they experience everything “real” life has to offer.

Developer – EA Mobile

The Sims 3 – ($9.99) £5.99 – iTunes

EA Games have been working with The Sims series for a long time now, with which they have had great success. The series has sold surplus of 100 million copies worldwide and to date is the best-selling PC franchise in history. For these reasons and the fact that I have played The Sims in the past I had some great expectations for this game. It has been specifically made for the iPhone/iPod touch and there has clearly been a lot of effort put in.

When I have played previous versions of The Sims I have found that initially the game is very addictive and comes packed with a lot of entertainment, but once I have made myself a mansion, maximised all my Sims skills and so forth then I just lose interest. This game is a scaled-down version of The Sims, but it has moved away from the traditional style, where you would spend a lot of time producing your dream home (which is still possible), and moves more towards looking after your sim and individualising their personalities. This still involves improving various skills such as cooking, fishing, repairing and gardening; but now there is a lot more involvement with how your Sim socialises.

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Description: Experience Sonic the Hedgehog on the iPhone and iPod Touch for the first time! Relive your favorite memories of the Genesis era as you rocket Sonic through hair-raising loop-de-loops and dizzying dives as you gather up Rings and stop Dr. Eggman’s schemes for world domination! Dr. Eggman has turned all of the animals into mechanical monsters, and it’s up to the legendary hedgehog to save them.

Developer – SEGA

Sonic The Hedgehog – ($5.99) £3.49 – iTunes

Another timeless classic has been brought to the iPhone, which fills you with a deep sense of nostalgia if nothing else. If you enjoyed playing this for the Sega Mega Drive back in the day then this is the game for you; if not then you have definitely been missing out. Sonic The Hedgehog is a platform game with many hours of enjoyment. The aim of the game is to collect rings, destroy enemies and hurdle your way through various obstacles as you aim to defeat Dr. Eggman’s evil plans. There are seven stages, each with three acts and a fight with Dr. Eggman at the end of each stage.

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Description: A fruit monster has run off with your juicy fruit and kidnapped your babies. Help Leon chase after Ms. Tum Tum in this off-the-wall puzzle adventure spanning 4 worlds and 36 brain-tingling levels. Eat fruit, change your colour, and lick your babies to make them follow you. Remember, more chameleons means more eating power, and that means it’s GIANT FRUIT time!

Developer: AirPlay

Price: £2.99 ($4.99 – $1 starting June 6th)

The developers of this game have been making games for mobile phones for the past five years now. One of their most successful games has been the Super Yum Yum series; the first of which was a BAFTA games awards nominee for the 2004 mobile game of the year award. Although they have been making mobile games for sometime now, Super Yum Yum 3 is the first game that they have made for the iPhone. Ok, so what you really want to know is whether or not this game is worth spending £2.99 on, as was I before I paid for it.

The motive of the game is simple; eat all the fruit and help Leon collect up all of his babies. The game is quick to understand and the puzzles start off quite simple and get increasingly difficult throughout the game. The app has gone for a retro arcade style, which they have done well with. To move about you just touch the screen where you want Leon to move to, which saves the need for a D-pad control as I’m not a fan of D-pad controls on a touch screen. In general, the interactive feel to the game is just not as smooth as I would expect for an iPhone app

I don’t often play games on my phone so an iPhone game has to be pretty special to attain my interest; probably playing a couple of times a week when I am having to hang around or just sat on the couch watching T.V. Although saying that, when I find a game for the iPhone that I truly like I will get quite addicted. With this game I found it a bit of a struggle to play. The game quickly becomes tedious and very repetitive, lacking variation between levels in the fact that the goal is the same every time; eat your fruit and rescue your babies. As the game goes on the levels get increasingly harder, which adds some interest to the game; but at the same time becomes frustrating and just causes a loss of interest.

Adding to these drawbacks, the game isn’t particularly quick to get into if you just have a spare couple of minutes and want to solve a puzzle. On top of that it isn’t possible to save mid-game, which means that you would have to start that puzzle over again the next time you play. This is another reason why I find the game so difficult to play as I don’t want to keep playing the same level.

One of the better aspects to this game is that there is now a rewind button, which means that if you make a mistake in the puzzle and get stuck then you can easily correct your mistakes. Although the puzzles can get quite tedious, I do find that they can get quite addictive and there is some entertainment to be gained form the game.

Pros

• Rewind button allows for easy correction of mistakes through out puzzle
• Concept of puzzle is quite unique

Cons

• The game becomes very repetitive
• Unique puzzle
• Game doesn’t save if you’re in the middle of a puzzle
• No quick save ability

Verdict

Although I have made a lot of negative comments about the game I feel that the concepts of the puzzle are quite unique and the story line in the beginning of the game is interesting. This game definitely isn’t up there with some of the top iPhone games but at the same time it’s not a bad game.

Description: Listen to over thirty thousand radio stations on your iPhone with WunderRadio. WunderRadio provides a quick and easy way to play thousands of streaming Internet radio stations and other audio streams on your iPhone.

Developer: Weather Underground

Price £3.99 ($6.99)

I thought I would review this app as I felt it would come in useful to me; I was definitely right. I really love this app. It has excellent functionality. This app allows you to access literally thousands of radio stations and there is definitely a radio station for anyone. The app allows you to select the radio stations you like and place them into a “favourites” tab. When you just want to listen to your desired station, the app is pretty simple to use; the ability to search for a specific station makes it quite useful.

Something that attributes to the quality of this app is the simplicity to learn more about unknown artists. When you hear a new artist that you like, simply press the Last.fm button and you’re taken straight to the Last.fm website through the built-in browser to learn more about them. I find this beneficial as it helps me to discover new artists; you can also still be listening to your desired music station at the same time. The radio stations will still stream over 3G and EDGE connections with a minimum of 12Kbits/s, which means it is difficult to not get a connection. Great for listening to stations on the go.

I think that there are some things that could be improved with this app. Browsing through the app to find new radio stations is quite long winded to find anything. For example I can browse music by Genre, which sounds really cool but there is only a choice of about twenty genre’s; considering there are over thirty thousand stations I think that narrowing them down into twenty genre’s is being a bit too general; I select a genre and then I get a choice of about 12 “featured stations”. It gives you an option to look at more stations of that genre, which you select and then it shows a ridiculous amount of stations in alphabetical order. I feel that unless you know what radio stations you like you wouldn’t want to spend ages browsing and trying so many unknown stations.

There are also some points that I am probably being quite meticulous about but thought I should mention. The app just isn’t as elegant as I would like for an iPhone app. This doesn’t get in the way of the apps functionality but I always think that beauty is important when designing software. I find it really irritating that the app can’t be run as a background app. I know that this isn’t feasible but if I’m using this app and I want to send someone a text message for example then I have to quit the app. [Editors note - not technically the developers fault; Apple doesn't allow applications to run in the background.]

Pros

• Over thirty thousand Stations
• Web browser, with simple to access to Last.fm
• Great for discovering new music
• Radio stations will stream through Edge and 3G stations

Cons

• Not so elegant
• Searching for new stations can become monotonous

Verdict

After reviewing this app, knowing what I know about it I would still definitely recommend it. For such effortless access to an impressive amount of radio stations, which even run on 3G and EDGE connections this app is definitely worth buying.

Description: Take a photo, snap a webpage, or choose an existing image from your photo album and share it online via QuickSnapper.

Developer: Realmac Software

Price: £1.79 ($2.99)

Towards the end of 2008 Mac software developer Realmac Software delivered a handy desktop application called LittleSnapper. LittleSnapper offers many features but primarily allows snaps shots to be taken from your desktop or a website and be uploaded quickly to a image sharing website.

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Over the last 24-hours the talk of Twitter has been a brand new Mac based client known as Tweetie. For some that name might ring a bell, developer Atebits who originally created the incredibly successful Tweetie for iPhone has decided to cave to the pressure and release a Mac based version. But Tweetie for Mac or codenamed “Bigbird” is not merely a port of the iPhone version; it certainly borrows heavily but Tweetie for Mac is an intuitive dream for any Mac using Tweeter.

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Description – If you want the latest in F1 news then this is the app for you. This app features news feeds from a number of top F1 websites that are streamed throughout the day directly into the app.

Developer – Gourmet Pixel

Go Go Go! – £3.99 – iTunes Link

I have been quite keen to start following the Formula 1 this season and for this reason I decided to take a look at this app to see how much it would help me to keep up to date. After playing with this app for a week I have found that there are a lot of useful features.

Open the app and straight away you get a really smooth design with a countdown of how many days until the next race and the weather forecast for that race.

Then you enter into the app where there is a large panoply of information available to you. Up to date information on the drivers and the teams standings; information on all of the races this season; maps of all the race tracks; loads of details on the teams and the drivers including history, photos and technical information. The list just goes on. The app also contains a library of videos to stream. This app really does contain everything you would ever want to know about the Formula 1 season. I quite enjoy reading up on the information about the next race tracks. The app updates with several news feeds everyday, so there is always something interesting to read about.

The app has had a lot of effort put into it in my opinion. Something I find really useful is that the app is able to store all the latest data. This means that even without any internet access you can read up on F1 info previously stored onto the phone.

There was one thing that I find a bit disappointing about this app but I’m not really sure if GPXL could easily get around this problem. It is that the app will let you know the dates and times for the races, which is great. But it doesn’t allow you to convert those times into your own local time zone. I think that this is quite a key issue as obviously if you are into Formula 1 then you are going to want to know what time the races are on for you to watch.

Pros

• Incredible amount of Formula 1 information available.
• Elegant finish and simple to use.
• High amounts of stored data to keep you informed even without any wireless connection.

Cons

• Cannot convert the race times to your local time-zone.

Verdict

This app is well worth its money and a must have for anyone following the F1 this season. All the information you could possibly want to have on the go and more.

Description: Remember the Milk integrates with the web service of the same name to provide to-do list functionalities to iPhone and iPod touch users on the go.

Developer – Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk – Free (requires $25/year “Pro” account on web application) – iTunes Link

In the today’s fast paced world, everyone has lots to do and invariably most have a to-do list of one kind or another. Remember the Milk is one such to-do list implemented as a web application with a companion app for the iPhone and iPod touch. This review will not cover the features of the web application overall, but rather will cover the functionality and features of the Remember the Milk iPhone app.

After downloading the application to your device, registering it with the web service is fairly trivial, however you need to have a “Pro” account which is $25 annually. Once you enter your login details, you are required, only once, to approve the external application to use the web services API, connect to your account, and sync your information. Once completed the application launches into its default view, Today.

As the name suggests, the Today view displays a listing of all tasks due today. Similarly there are other views shown as tabs at the bottom: Tomorrow, This Week, and Lists. Finally there is a tab for more views, including Tags, Locations, Nearby and Search. Like the iPod application, you can change the display of these tabs.

Adding a task is simple from anywhere in the application and is context aware. If you are viewing Today, the task is set to be due today. If you are on a certain list or tag, the task is added to that list or tag. New tasks can be given a name, due date and time, tags, a time estimate, a repeat schedule, a location, a URL, added to a List, and have notes attached. Once a task is added, the app needs to be synced to the server via the refresh button in the lower left before the change will be visible on the webapp.

When viewing a list, a simple swipe can mark a task complete (hiding it from view after a few seconds), but in order to delete or postpone a task, a more cumbersome action must be performed (Tap task -> click Edit -> scroll to the bottom -> click Postpone/Delete). I reschedule or remove tasks just as often as I complete them, so I find task management to be unnecessarily burdensome at times.

If you are a user of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, you will be able to fit Remember the Milk into your system. With both list and tag functionality, there are many ways to architect a GTD solution to fit your needs. Additionally, by using the Location feature of the app and your current position, you can have location-aware contexts for GTD. If you are at the post office and check for tasks nearby, you will be shown a list of tasks within a certain radius, like getting milk from the store. Alternatively, if you work from multiple offices or client sites, you can list your tasks by those locations individually. More information can be found at the RTM blog.

Pros

• Integration with web app
• GTD capable
• Location aware
• Offline editable

Cons

• Need to pay for “Pro” account
• Need to re-sync before quitting app
• Awkward UI for certain task management tasks

Verdict

Overall, the Remember the Milk iPhone application is a fully-featured companion to the corresponding web app and even adds iPhone-specific location awareness. Unlike some standalone iPhone task managers, the integration with the web application allows you desk access to your list primarily as well as mobile access when needed

Description – Listen to more than 5 million tracks for free with Last.fm on your iPhone.

Developer – Last.fm

Price – Free – iTunes Link

Simply insert your favourite artist, tag or user and the Last.fm app will produce a personal radio station full of similar artists commercial free. When you find artists that you like there is a lot of useful features that allow you to find out more. The app has a smooth finish and an easy to use interface.

It includes some of the Last.fm classic tools such as Love or Ban. You’re able to look at the artists Bio, which I always like to read a bit of background info from my favourite artists. If the artist is on tour then a tab notifies you and allows you to check out tour dates, plus you can state whether or not you are attending in your events calendar within the application. Once the event is in the calendar, you can check the address of the venue and the app can take you to Google maps to pinpoint the location; One of my favourite attributes and useful for when you’re out and about and can’t find the venue.

The app will still stream music in 3G areas without the requirement for a wireless connection. This is quite a nice touch as it means you can use the app pretty much anywhere. Any less than a 3G connection and you will find the app is buffering every ten seconds. Something that I really like about the app is that you can easily look at your top played artists, albums, tracks, recently played and even lets you check out your friends profiles and check out your common artists.

Last.fm have done a great job with this app but I do feel there are some downsides that I should mention. Something that I find really frustrating about the app is when I am thinking of an artist that I have just heard on the radio for example, and I now want to find out some information about that artist; there isn’t anyway to do that with this app. This is something that is really simple to do on the Last.fm website and I didn’t think it would be too difficult to integrate into the Last.fm app.

“Insufficient Content, There is not enough content available to play this station. Please try another Station”

This is a comment that comes up too often for me to not mention it. When searching an artist in the station, I can get this message several times before it realises that it can find some similar artists for a particular station.

Pros

• Free
• Really beautiful finish
• Wonderful to use when your out and about
• A great tool for discovering new artists
• A major edition to what the iPhone/Touch has to offer
• Commercial free

Cons

• Unable to search a specific artist of interest to find out more about them
• Still needs to have some bug fixes

Verdict

Overall I really like this app and find myself looking for new music a lot more than I used to when I just had Last.fm on my computer. Considering that the Last.fm app is free, it really is worth having a play with as it does have some useful features and is fantastic for discovering new music.