Syncing into ‘Apple-ications’

Apple pioneered the concept of allowing third party applications to be run on its devices. Steve Jobs was a genius, opening up this space for private players creating a successful business out of Apps, says Janani Krishnaswamy as she downloads and tests a few Apple Apps to find out what make them unique.

Application stores appear to be the new rage now. After Apple, Google announced its Android market last week and rumour mills claim that Microsoft is also developing a new app store.

Steve Jobs started it and has even taken it forward with the iPhone, giving start-ups and developers enough to be enthused about to create richer mobile applications. What attracted them most was the open platform that Apple offers. However, the company still controls which ones get virtual shelf space and which ones get featured. There are a 1000 or so apps in the store, but not all of them are featured in the website. We tested a few of them, paid and free applications on the iPod Touch – most of which can be used in the iPhone 3G as well.

Gamers’ paradise

The store is almost filled with gaming applications – free and paid. Wonder why. That’s cos’ Jobs knew playing games on the iPhone/iPod Touch would be fun, and that why it was built with a screen pivoting option. So, you can just tilt, drag, juggle and rotate what’s onscreen. From Audi A4 Driving to Air Hockey, from the Solitaire to Blackjack, the store has something for everyone. Sure, it gives you more thrill than most gaming gadgets, but its one with a difference. For instance, driving through a Logitech Driving Force EX on a PS3 will give you an almost real driving experience and make your heart race, but test driving the Audi on the iPod Touch didn’t give us as much of a near and up-close feedback.

Believe me; if you didn’t tilt the device the right way, you’ll end up losing game after game. That’s the depressing part of it. For example, when you play ‘Super Monkey Ball,’ produced by Sega, you have the option of choosing from four different monkeys and four different monkey islands, then you get to choose your level and all you need to do is tilt and rotate the handset in a way such that you help the monkey eat up the bananas. Remember, it is an island, so you tilt a little extra, your monkey jumps into the sea and will be dead. There, you lose a game very easily.

So, that’s a positive and a negative together. However playing other games like ‘Pocket Hoops,’ which is a basketball-based game, could be real fun when played using the screen pivoting option.

Why not for India?

Apple’s Apps development has been very centric to the American market and its App store reflects this. Be it business, finance, real estate, entertainment or healthcare, a lot of the applications are location specific ones. But why should lifestyle applications that can be used by others not made available in India? We tried downloading one of the well-acclaimed free lifestyle apps – the ‘mobile eBay,’ but unfortunately all we got was a pop-up that said ‘sorry, not available in Indian store yet.’ Too bad! When will Apple encourage India-specific Apps?

There are Apps that can read tarots and foretell the future too. Just as we dabbled with a few apps, we realized that the iPhone can do that too with an exciting download. The ‘iTarot’ application, powered by astrology.com, the popular astrology website, lets you shuffle and pick a tarot for the day. We had two options there – daily tarot and love tarot. Each time we tried opening the application, a new card opened up and it showed up a different interpretation.

Apps for the frequent traveller

While tech experts around the globe are quite disappointed with the GPS in the iPhone, that tries hard to show your location on a map by analyzing nearby towers and Wi-Fi hot spots, its smart apps offer you navigation services and weather updates too, most of them require a Wi-Fi connection. However, many of them come for free. Finding it tough locating a Wi-Fi hotspot… use a wireless router. For the globetrotter, there are language tools too. If for instance you are lost in a foreign country, these apps will help you translate the local languages - Spanish, French, German and Italian are available so far under the category. There are a few applications to calculate your speed and help you keep a watch on your speed limits.

Smart applications

Apple has cleverly managed to deflect some of the criticisms about the iPhone through some really smart apps. You don’t have to be upset over the 2.0 mega pixel camera of the iPhone – not anymore. Download all ‘photography-based’ apps; a few offered free, and with this, you can make it an intelligent camera capable phone. There are not only apps for zooming in and out, panning to and from, but also other interesting ones like ‘ezimba’ - a fun and simple image conversion tool, that allows you to edit and transform your photographs with over 250 conversion categories. Apart from that, there’s ‘fuzzyshot’, ‘photobucket’ and many more that help photo bloggers. But Apple, this is no reason why you shouldn’t upgrade the camera in the iPhone!

For the fitness freak

A handful of apps focus on health and well-being too. Keeping in mind the psychology of the health conscious, developers have also managed to offer varied services from keeping up with a healthy diet, keeping tabs on one’s own medical records to learning about human anatomy. These apps can literally put all your health records within your palm. Or they can keep track of your calories and exercise.

One of the most wholesome fitness apps among the ones we tested was the ‘Medical calculator’ – it calculates Body Mass Index (BMI), Bicarb deficit, Hepatitis Discriminant, Free water deficit and tells you a lot of interesting facts about your body and about how to have a check on it. We can hear you screaming out loud that you don’t want such details. You can probably download just the BMI application – it’s for free. It calculates your BMI, ideal body weight, tells you if you need to put on more weight or if you need to cut some extra flab and also tells you how many calories you need in a day. There’s an app that calculates your Blood alcohol concentration levels too.

Functional apps

You thought the iPhone is only for gizmo freaks and gaming geeks? We found some ‘down-to-earth’ apps that can be used very often and most of them are offered free! ‘Flashlight’ fills up the iPhone screen with bright colour variants thus illuminating the space around you. Clubbing? Want to flash lights in different hues? There’s a ‘myLight flashlight’ to light up the iPhone. Forgot to take your scale to your classroom? The iPhone can help – with it’s ‘RulerPlus’ app.

There’s something for everyone

Something for the business man, something for the nomad, something for the music freak, and something for the student – there’s something for almost every user. Apart from the free ones, the priced apps are quite reasonable too. The delivery system for these apps are supposedly simple - you buy them through Apple’s iTunes store, which then stores the programs on your computer and loads them on your iPhone or iPod Touch.