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.

New iPod Touch not seen at all in Best Buy ad

Apple has officially confirmed an event for September 9, though some in the crowd may be disappointed. It appears that this will be an all iPod event. So what? The more iPods, the merrier, unless you happen to be a Zune user.

Some thought they may have spotted the new iPod in a recent Best Buy ad, they didn’t. The only change that is rumored is that it will be more like the iPhone 3G and may lose the mirrored back. There also just might be dedicated volume controls on the side but don’t hold your breath.

You can expect price drops to be present on the current iPod line across third party retailers everywhere. I’m still hoping that there will be an iPod Touch classic but it could very well lack WiFi and that wouldn’t be much fun.

Supposedly there will be new firmware for the iPod Touch, iPhone and a new version of iTunes as well.

I’m afraid we’ll all just have to wait a few days until we all know what the great Jobs had had rattling around in his mind. It’s entirely possible that distribution of the new iPods to Apple retail stores has begun… you know, in time for the announcements.

On a side note, once again there WILL NOT, let me repeat that, THERE WILL NOT be an iTunes subscription service. All five of you that care take note, the rest of us do not care about you and never will. I think that the Cnet editors are the only ones that care (seeing as how they test this stuff for free – and I mean those other services out there that have failed to make a dent in the iTunes Store).

The iPhone was launched in India yesterday and the hoopla surrounding the world's most talked-about mobile handset is understandable.

With its smooth curves, chrome lining, and lightly brushed aluminum finish, there's no denying that the iPhone looks trendy -- and it's sleek build and size allow it to fit easily into the palm.

Network service providers Bharti Airtel and Vodafone have tied up with Apple and the latter is offering the 3G model of the phone at a staggering Rs 31,000 (Bharti is yet to quote a price). Indian network services, however, do not even offer the range of services that a 3G model cellphone can avail of, so you're hardly going to get everything you pay for.

Is the iPhone going to live up to the hype? Let's take a look at its features.

First off, there's no denying that the phone looks great. That being said, the phone isn't really tough -- the high-gloss body doesn't allow a proper grip on it at all times and if it falls, rest assured it will dent.

Also, the phone has no buttons, except for a 'Home' button below the screen which take you directly to the cell phone �desktop', so to speak; a volume switch to the left; and a small sleep/wake button on the top. This allows the phone to remain inactive, without being switched off.

So how do you punch in numbers? You use the touch-screen to perform practically every other operation the phone is capable of. With the touch of a finger, you can access the keypad, the main menu, call directory, photo gallery and whatever information is stored on it. To type out messages and emails, an onscreen keyboard appears on the touch screen, which you can use to punch in the alphabets. There is also a feature combining a dictionary and predictive text to help out with your typing. The touch-screen keyboard is rather sensitive and in this sense, rather inconvenient -- if you're on the move, for instance, you'll find yourself re-typing words several times over.

An electrical field around the screen allows for very natural, smooth action to browse through the features. The screen of the iPhone is scratch-resistant and 3.5 inches long, easily one of the largest and most stunning displays to be seen on a cellphone so far. The quality of imagery is excellent -- you can zoom in and out of an image using the touch feature with your fingers.

Photographs can be taken using the iPhone's inbuilt 2.0 mega pixel digital camera. The image quality is pretty decent, but there are no settings that can be altered to click photographs -- no flash, no zoom, nothing. It's just a wide-angle camera and that's all there is to it.

You can't shoot video clips on the phone -- either use your network connection and install the video recording programme, which will allow you a measly 4 seconds of recording time, or then pay more to download a compatible software.

The iPhone also has a motion sensor which detects whether the phone is being held upright or horizontally and automatically shifts the image on the screen to the angle you're viewing it from. When you're scrolling through your video clips and photographs on the phone, therefore, you'll find that turning the screen in any direction will not allow the images to flip to the side.

The favourite feature of many iPhone users is the inbuilt iPod, which allows users to transfer songs and other media files to the phone. You can use your PC to make the transfer or access Apple's iTunes programme directly from the phone for the same purpose. Everything you store is available to you at a touch. Also, powered with a hardcore 412 Megahertz processor, the iPhone's performance is fast and a user can multitask very easily -- you can listen to music while accessing your mail or surfing the Internet, for instance. The main catch here is that one way or another, you have to use iTunes. Also, file transfer can be pretty tricky -- don't try to transfer anything from the phone back to your PC without knowing exactly what you're doing. Because it's very likely that you'll end up losing your personal data from your computer!

The iPhone does not offer MMS support either, so there is no way you can transfer photos or any other files to or from other cellphones. It does not pair with any device to swap info other then a Bluetooth headset, which makes you wonder why it has a Bluetooth facility enabled in the first place!

The voice quality of the iPhone is crisp and clear and the hands free set that comes with it works well too. But one thing that's really annoying about making calls is that you have to scroll through your whole directory in alphabetical order to find the number you're looking for � no shortcut here!

Also, your cheek brushing against the touch screen when you're on a call will often accidentally activate the speakerphone. This is both annoying and embarrassing.

Apple claims that there is a sensor on the phone which turns off the screen during a call and thus contact between the cheeks and the screen should not have any effect. In turn, the phone saves on battery life, which is only 8 hours. But humidity often results in the screen remaining active for longer -- in the duration you find that your speakerphone has activated and everybody around is privy to the conversation.

When it comes to games, movies and other add-on utilities, the iPhone has an apparatus called 'Installer', which will help you install almost an programme off the net on your phone. But you will need a constant Internet connection to download and install these softwares, most of which you have to pay for -- otherwise settle for the trial versions.

Given how heavy the iPhone is on features, like a computer, expect yours to hang occasionally. But it's not as simple to fix a frozen iPhone as removing the battery/ power source and restarting, like in other cellphones. You see, the batteries of the iPhone are built-in and there's nothing you can do besides connecting to a PC and rebooting the phone. If you're on the move or a computer is not at hand -- tough luck!

All in all, the iPhone is trendy and different, but not in all ways that are convenient. It looks great and offers a lot of out-of-the-way features, but it is also lacking in some basic ones. Moreover, fixing a defective handset isn't exactly a breeze and every downloadable addition to your phone will come at a price. Add that to the Rs 31,000 bill you're already footing and decide for yourself whether it's worth it.