The iPhone Application Store - more thoughts

Right after the 3G phone came out I did a short post on the Application store. I've now had a couple of more weeks of experience with it and continue to be pleased. The applications range from silly (a reimplementation of Jared - El Carnicero del Cancion - the butcher of song - which was a wonderful little app written for the main Mac platform several years ago) to the very useful (the image here is a networking tool called Loopt - which I use almost daily). I have probably spent about $25 on applications thus far. All are reasonably priced.

Apple now has about 75 pages of applications on its site (I am not sure how many files that is). Many of those are free. One that I discovered in this review is called Files which allows you to drag and drop files on to the phone. ($7.99).

Some other smart phone users have claimed that the Application store is nothing new. For example, the Windows Mobile platform has a lot of applications. But the claims ring a bit false. I have downloaded 21 applications to my phone at this point. There are a couple of those that I will probably drop at some point - which were either funny or simple and I have not found useful. I expect that of the three networking tools I have found I will probably not keep all three.

But to get your Windows Mobile phone to have full functionality might cost several times what it has cost me to add things to my iPhone. One writer claimed that many of the Windows Mobile applications which cost something are unnecessary on the iPhone.

Among the clear hits I have found that I really like are:
G-Park - which allows you to refind your car after you park it by using the GPS. It also allows you to leave notes. For someone who travels - this is a must.
There are a couple of restaurant guides for specific cities (The Washington Post's DC guide) and others. They look pretty good.
Ibeer - this is a totally useless, sophomoric toy - but loads of fun.
Labyrinth- Don't buy the light version the full one has loads of levels and is very challenging
Google - this is a simple mobile implementation of Google's various tools - well done.