bigevilempire

The iTune store launched the App Store earlier but in order to download the apps onto the iPhone, you will need the latest iTunes 7.7 as well as the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade. Apple has yet to officially release the upgrade so when I saw an unofficial link posted in a TechCrunch article, I knew I had to take the plunge!

The software upgrade was a breeze and extremely smooth. Before the upgrade began, there was a one-time media backup of the data on my iPhone. After the iPhone was successfully upgraded, I was given the choice of restoring the previous backup data. My only hiccup was that I picked the option of treating it as a new iPhone rather than restoring the backup. Oops.

After months of anticipation, the excruciating wait has ended and I finally get my chance to try out the iPhone native applications that I have been hearing about.

I wasted no time in downloading 4 free apps: Twitterific, NYTimes, NetNewsWire and Yelp.

Twitterific looks gorgeous and the familiar chirping alert of new tweets was music to my ears. Well deserving of its "Best iPhone Social Networking Application" award in the Apple Design Awards 2008, the interface is really nice and polished despite having inline advertisements. The ads would be removed if you buy the app.

It would have been more ideal if Twitterific can just run in the background and chirp when there are new tweets instead of having the user do a manual refresh. The app was also noticeably slow when I tried to scroll down the list of tweets. The animation definitely takes a toll on the processing power of the phone.

NYTimes is a news application for The New York Times. It is not surprising that there is nothing spectacular about this app, it has a iPhone-friendly layout and has the expected features for a news app. NetNewsWire was similar in that aspect, allowing users to read their RSS feeds while on the move.

The Yelp iPhone app was a big winner for me. Ever since I moved to the States, I have been relying on Yelp and mobile Yelp to check out good restaurants and food places. The native app version of Yelp does not disappoint. It displays a comprehensive list of restaurants and various services such as gas stations, banks etc. based on your location.

Browsing deeper through the list allows you to pull up the address and contact details of the place. Booking a restaurant or making dental appointments has never been easier. The best feature about the app is that, similar to the Yelp website, you can see the reviews and ratings contributed by users for the restaurant or service.

The location-awareness feature is ideal for this app. Bundle that with a simple yet effective interface, the Yelp app is a winner.

Ever though I only tested 4 iPhone apps, I am totally blown away by the overall experience right from the upgrading process. The number of apps in the App Store is notably impressive considering that Apple just launched it. More importantly, despite the quantity, the quality of the apps by far seems decent and fairly priced. For more information on the App Store, John Gruber shares his observations of his day one in the App Store.

True to any Apple application, all the native iPhone apps share a unified UI that users are already familiar with. The entire platform is really well thought out, from the hardware, developers and most importantly the ecosystem to release the applications. Users have a centralized platform to try and buy apps. Likewise, developers can leverage on the platform to distribute their apps on a ubiquitous device and have the e-commerce aspect of the sales taken care of. In my opinion, the iTunes Store platform is the strongest factor behind the success of the iPhone.

It may not be perfect but so far, the iPhone 2.0 firmware upgrade and the apps do not disappoint.