The missing iPhone apps... are appearing
Henny makes beat on iPhone 3G using Beatmaker!!! from Henny on Vimeo
Someone linked to my post last month about what I viewed as "missing" iPhone apps, and it dawned on me I should do quick a follow up, as there's actually been a ton of new apps introduced over the past month.
First, all the geeky types of apps I wanted are now available: both VNC and Windows Remote Desktop clients from MochaSoft, an IRC chat app ("Rooms"), a multi-chat app which includes Jabber ("Palringo"), and several SSH clients as well. The geek contingent, it seems, has come out in force which is nice.
That's not to say the iPhone is on par with smartphones with Symbian or Windows Mobile yet: There's still no VoIP like Skype, no high-end camera apps, and no video. Not sure when we'll see this stuff - though I can't imagine it'll be too long before Apple gets a clue about video at least.
At the bottom of my post, I also said, "I do have to say that there's apps for the iPhone that I *haven't* seen on any of the other smartphones out there even with years head start." Well, I have to say I found at least one of those as well - I mean, there's always cool new games on every platform, but the app I'm talking about is Intua BeatMaker. I included a video of it above, and I have to say that it's pretty incredible. The complexity of it is something that I really can't imagine being done on many other phones. It's quite surprising - check out the video to see what I mean.
It'd be interesting to see if Apple can keep this developer momentum going - the promise of riches, I'm sure, will help but at some point there's just going to be *too many* apps out there. Already there's sort of a wild daily up and down pattern for new apps. Tapulous, for example, touted how it had the number one free app shortly after the iPhone 2.0 launch, only to now be ranked down in the 30s and falling a few short weeks later. I'm curious to see if some clear leaders with longer-lasting rankings appear soon, or if things stay in flux for the foreseeable future.
-Russ