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Here's an article written by Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus. He is leading authority on Mac OS X, the author of more than 50 books including iPhone For Dummies 3d Edition, and a Mac consultant, troubleshooter, and trainer. Visit his Web site at www.boblevitus.com; e-mail comments to doc@boblevitus.com. Read his article below.
With more than 85,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod touch, there is almost certainly an app for whatever it is you love. I've been working on a new book that will feature descriptions of the best apps in more than a dozen categories and have been spending a lot of quality time testing various ones. Here are a few that really impressed me:
I love to read, so a couple of my very favorite apps are Comics and Stanza, which are both free. Comics gives you access to a huge comic book library-store, plus a great interface for reading them. It comes with over 50 free comics, with thousands more available for a buck or two.
Stanza is an award-winning app for eBooks. The Stanza store lets you choose from more than 50,000 contemporary books at prices well below the printed versions, plus access to another 50,000 free classics and recent original works.
You'll never run out of reading material with one or both of these on your iPhone or iPod touch.
I also like to shoot digital photos and movies with my iPhone 3GS, so I am enthralled with ReelDirector ($7.99) and Photogene ($2.99). ReelDirector is a way-cool video-editing app for your iPhone 3GS. You can rearrange clips on a timeline, choose from 27 beautiful transitions, add fade-in and fade-out effects, and create great-looking titles and credits. Photogene ($2.99) helps you improve digital photos with a terrific array of useful tools such as cropping, sharpening, color and gamma correction, exposure and contrast controls, straightening, rotating, cartoon text bubbles, special effects like pencil, sepia-tone, and heat-map, plus a sweet selection of frames in a variety of shapes and sizes. And both apps feature thoughtfully designed user interfaces that make using them easy and fun.
I love music and played The Beatles: Rock Band on my son's Xbox until my fingers bled. So it's no surprise that I'm totally hooked on the RockBand iPhone app ($9.99). If you've ever played the Beatles or any of the other Rock Band games for Xbox, PS3, or Wii, the iPhone rendition is just like them but on a smaller screen.
There are lots of knock-offs of Rock Band in the App store but none of them is as polished and fun as the real thing.
Finally, though the 2009 baseball season is drawing to a close, the MLB.com At Bat app ($9.99) rocks. With streaming video over WiFi or 3G, multiple camera angles, live audio feeds, condensed games, and more, it's a must-have for baseball fans.
