There are many thousands of apps. Whatever your goal, as
Apple’s erstwhile advertising campaign proclaimed, “There’s an app for that.”
But some apps are simply must-haves—whether for their functionality, their
interface brilliance, or just their entertainment factor. Here are ten apps
your new iPhone shouldn’t be without.
THE GOOGLE WORLD Google Maps is great for getting
transit directions in your local city.
1. Google Maps (free)
When it comes to online mapping services, Apple has made
inroads, but Google still rules. The free Google Mapsapp
gives you more than just maps: It also provides turn-by-turn navigation for
driving, walking, and bicycling, and—Apple Maps’s one major omission—public
transit directions. It’s quick and easy to use, too.
2. Reeder 2 ($5)
Silvio Rizzi’s
Reeder is an RSS reader, and if you’re not yet on the RSS bandwagon,
you should be. The app, which can sync with your favorite RSS services or work
as as a stand-alone reader, presents a simple interface for reading the latest
articles from all your favorite websites. Tap a headline, and the article
slides into view. If the feed in question shows only a summary, Reeder’s built-in
Readability support can help: Reverse-pinch on the text (or tap the Readability button),
and Reeder quickly loads the rest of the article automatically. Tap and hold on
links to bring up a sharing window; Reeder makes it easy to email links, save
links to Instapaper (another great reading app), post links to various social
networks, and more.
3. Vine (free)
TIME TO VINE Your new iPhone has a lot of cool video
features—perfect to showcase on Vine.
Who knew six seconds of video could be so much fun?
Vine is a
social network based around a smartphone app that lets you create and publish
six-second videos that you can share with the world. Vine is easy and fun to
use, and creating and watching Vine videos is strangely addictive.
4. Flickr (free)
Apple’s Shared Streams let you share your photos with your
close contacts, butYahoo’s Flickr service
and app opens that to the world. View images from your friends and fellow
Internet denizens; upload images to your own Flickr account; and
mark photos that make you smile as favorites.
5. Kindle (free)
Your iPhone is a lot smaller than a Kindle, but it can
emulate one pretty well. With the
free Kindle app, you can read ebooks and magazines you’ve purchased from
Amazon’s Kindle bookstore.
Unsurprisingly, the interface is simple: You swipe to turn
pages, tap and hold on a word to see its definition, and tap and drag to
highlight text. You can adjust the color scheme of your virtual book (black
text on a white background, the inverse, or sepia tones), as well as change the
font size. Kindle also lets you search books for specific text, jump to
individual chapters, and post to social networks about favorite passages. Using
Amazon’s Whispernet technology, the app syncs your current page with Kindle
Cloud Reader, Kindle for Mac, Kindle for iPad, and actual hardware Kindles. The
only downside: Apple’s rules prevent Amazon from including a link to its
bookstore; you’ll need to hop over to Safari to buy more books, though this
workaround can make that process a bit less painful.
6. Netflix (free, subscription required)
It feels almost like science fiction when you first use the Netflix app to
stream movies and television shows to your iPhone.
You can browse your Watch Instantly queue, search for other
titles, and begin playing any of them in seconds. Netflix isn’t the iPhone’s
most elegantly implemented app; it feels a bit like a website crammed into an
app with minimal spit and polish. But it does what it’s supposed to do, which
is to let you stream movies—over the Internet! Just remember you’ll need a
decent Internet connection, too.
7. Dropbox (free)
Because it can invisibly sync your files between all your
Macs (and PCs), Dropbox is already magical. Add in the Dropbox
iPhone app, and now you can access your Dropbox-synced files wherever you
are.
EXTRA BACKUP You can even back up your camera roll to
Dropbox.
You don’t necessarily need to be online, either: The Dropbox
app lets you mark individual files as favorites, the latest versions of which
the app caches when you open them. Dropbox can play video and audio files, and
preview text from Microsoft Office and iWork documents. Sharing files from
within Dropbox is snappy: The app emails the recipient a link to a
Dropbox-hosted copy of the file you’re sending, instead of forcing you to wait
for an attachment to upload.
8. Google Search (free)
Siri is great for a lot of queries, but sometimes you need a
search engine with a few more options.
THE BIG ONE Google offers excellent tools on
iOS—including voice and photo search—to help you find what you’re looking for.
Google’s
app offers live vocal transcription and photo search for your queries
as well as traditional text search; in addition, you can view your Google Now
information (similar to Notification Center’s Today view) if you sync the app
with your Google account.
9. Perfect Weather ($3)
If you need a bit more information about your local weather,
turn to Perfect
Weather as a Weather app replacement. The app is gorgeously designed
and offers multiple locations, multiday forecasts and radar maps, rain
predictions, and alerts. It’s a perfect companion for anyone who needs better
weather information without too much data clutter.
MOVE ABOUT At the end of your day, you can see where
you’ve been (and how many steps it took to get there).
10. Moves (free)
Your iPhone is not only an excellent communicator—it can be
a very effective fitness tracker, too. The Moves app is
an innovative way to combine traditional fitness tracking with a visual journal
of your day: It uses your iPhone’s location and directional sensors not only to
tell whether you’ve been sitting, walking, running, biking, or taking
transportation, but also to chart your journey along the way.
At the end of the day, you get a timeline of your day with a
full map of where you’ve been, how long you were there, and what you did during
that time. It’s a nifty way to keep tabs on your fitness—and to keep an
automated diary of your movements while you’re at it.
source: http://www.macworld.com/article/2049247/ten-apps-every-iphone-5s-and-5c-user-should-own.html
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