Top Must-Have Apps for the iPhone, and Some Runners-Up | Hacker News Reader

Top Must-Have Apps for the iPhone, and Some Runners-Up

nytimes.com

9 pointsrblion6 comments

I hate the phrase 'must-have'. Of this list of 10, I could imagine getting moderate use of evernote and (maybe) redlaser. The others are of little-to-no use to me at all.

Does anybody really edit their photos on their phone? I sometimes take snapshots straight for Twitter, but I never felt the need to enhance them. They are just snapshots. I have a real camera for other photos.

Just wondering, as photo apps seem to be immensely popular somehow.

>Does anybody really edit their photos on their phone?

I imagine that apps like those are meant for those who want to do REALLY simple things but have no idea what image-editing program to download on their computers or find Photoshop too complicated. Friends of mine love hitting a couple buttons to use sepia filters or make "Ye Olde Timey" photos from the pics they just took.

I "really edit" photos on the iPhone 4. The 5 megapixel camera is good enough, and these two tools are good enough:

Photogene: http://www.i-photogene.com/photogene/main.html

Tiffen Photo fx: http://www.tiffen.com/photofx_homepage.html

The first is a quick crop, gamma, color balance editor. The second is an amazingly complete set of professional photo filters, based on their Photoshop filter suite. The Tiffen suite of filters support layering and masking.

Toy apps like Camera Bag, Hipstamatic, and Instagram are cute but don't allow a photographer any artistic latitude. All photos end up looking like the same half dozen built-in lomo-esque effects.

No Skype, TripIt, Echofon, the Amazon app (with Amazon Remembers), Kindle, Dropbox?

An Angry Birds is an obvious choice given its popularity. Lately, I've been addicated to Virus Strike.

this list seems a little "safe" - none of these are anything that haven't been mentioned countless times in the past. i mean there's a lot else out there that i consider to be "must have". dropbox, teuxdeux, unfuddle, strip, last.fm, & skype immediately come to mind.

Teuxdeux - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/teuxdeux/id384291782?mt=8

Dropbox - https://www.dropbox.com/iphoneapp

Strip Password Manager - http://www.getstrip.com/

Unfuddle - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unfuddle/id374901608

Skype - http://itunes.apple.com/app/skype/id304878510?mt=8

Last.fm - http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+for+iPhone+and+iPod+Touch

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