[Recommend On!] I'm getting an Iphone Touch, Find me good apps

Idoliside

Ok, so my father has decided to get me a Ipod Touch for Xmas, it's already bought and on it's way (before we get comments like "get a zune" or "droid rulez").

What good apps are worth getting. I'm already going to stick Stanza on it for my book reading. Any other useful apps or games worth perusing. I've had a flick through the apps store and find hundreds of inane applications.

GrimReaper

If you're in the UK then this isn't an app so much as a website that's got a version available for the iphone/touch.. BBC iPlayer is very nice on the iphone/touch.

Apps wise, XBMC (not free, it's a remote for XBMC), Remote (used for remotely controlling itunes, appletv etc), the ebay and paypal apps are good if you use ebay and paypal, urbanspoon (good for finding places to eat), aroundme (ditto to urbanspoon but useful for everything)... although urbanspoon and aroundme I guess aren't that useful on a touch unless it's on wifi.

Amazon has an app available too, again.. it's more iphone centric though, like being able to take a photo of something and after uploading to amazon it recognises what the product is.

You're going to face the problem that a lot of the really cool apps (like AroundMe) are very much iphone centric. I faced this problem when I had an ipod touch, i'd go onto the app store and discover an app i'd downloaded only really shined on an iphone.

Idoliside

How so, what used phone features or does the the iphone have something the ipod touch does not? Im under the impression they are the same machine, except the touch just doesn't have the phone features on it.

NailbunnyPD

There are all free:

ShopShop for making multiple shopping lists.
Pandora and Last.fm for streaming music. Also, Y-Rock is a Philly based independent station with an app.
NPR News for, well, NPR News and Podcasts.
The Weather Channel
PhoneFlicks for Netflix
I am split between Now Playing and Flixster for movie listsings. I don't like that Flixster defaults to user ratings instead of Rotten Tomatoes. Users are idiots.
Shazam will listen to a song and tell you what it is.

(edit) The Touch does not have a camera, so you won't be able to take a picture of a product and upload to Amazon or SnapTell.

GrimReaper

Idoliside wrote: »

How so, what used phone features or does the the iphone have something the ipod touch does not? Im under the impression they are the same machine, except the touch just doesn't have the phone features on it.

GPS and the ability to get data anywhere.

For example, AroundMe will get your location (using gps) and then show you various things like nearest shops etc and a map with directions to them.

For example:



Google Maps on 3G is really cool because when going out say on a long walk (I walk the trans pennine trail) I don't have to worry about getting lost.

Here's a quick review of AroundMe I dug out from youtube..

AroundMe review

There are other apps, like barcode scanners.. so for example, in a shop I can use the iphones camera on a product I want to find (for a cheaper price other than the shop), it'll find all online shops that have that product and list by price for example.

RedLaser barcode product finder

I find it sad that the only really cool apps I can really think of are very much iphone apps. (sorry)

Why Apple hasn't put a camera on the touch is a bit silly, it's not as if they cost much to add.

Idoliside

Im not too fussed about things like that. I'm more about fun an entertainment for it. Around my area there isn't a great deal of coverage for that kind of thing. So im not worried about getting local information or weather and the suchlike. Mainly fun things to do on it that are reasonably useful.

NailbunnyPD

GrimReaper wrote: »

I find it sad that the only really cool apps I can really think of are very much iphone apps. (sorry)

Its not sad. Everyone uses theirs a bit differently, and use different apps to accomplish the same thing. I downloaded about 30 apps my first day, but really, I only regularly use the ones I listed above.

You're only losing the phone, GPS and camera. I'm pretty sure everything else is the same, like the accelerometer and performance.

Here's a comparison of features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iPhone_and_iPod_Touch_models#Features

You should still be able to get the weather, it just won't use "your location" from the GPS. You would just plug in the city or zip code.

Xaviar

Really? The iTouch doesn't have GPS? What the hell is it using for "Location Services" then? I've got an iPhone, and my sister has the touch.. She saw the "Location Services" option in the menu, I figured it still had the gps chip, just no way to load maps on the fly..

[edit]
Oh, silly me.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=519463

That's pretty slick too though. From what I can figure from my single source of not-very-reliable research, they sent out a bunch of war-drivers with gps's in the car to grab mac address from wifi routers as they drive down the street and associate them with locations.. If your iTouch can pick up more than one wifi signal (supposedly even if it is faint enough to be unusable) it can send out the mac addresses to the service along with the signal strength and get back a triangulated location.