Mac|Life - June 2009

>>> start Feed your mind, feast your eyes
iPHONE 3.0
Road Map to oBsoLEscEncE

iPhone 3.0 will boast more than 100 new features—but what about the third-party apps that bring you those features right now? The new features announced at Apple’s March 17 iPhone 3.0 software preview are exciting, no doubt. (Cut and paste, what- what, give it up!) But we know a few people who probably aren’t looking forward to some of the functionality that Apple is baking into its phone’s new OS: The developers of these apps.

But don’t count them out just yet. As we saw when Apple added Facebook- and Flickr-posting support to iPhoto ’09 (which paled in comparison to what third-party plug-ins already offered), sometimes even Apple can’t beat smaller developers at their own game.—Susie Ochs

NEW FEATURE: Voice recording
AFFEc TEd Apps: Audio Recorder 2,
Easy Recorder, iRec Voice Recorder,
i Talk Recorder, iRecorder Pro, Record,
Recorder, Record Me, Recorder Pro,
SpeakEasy, QuickVoice, Ultimate Voice
Recorder, Voice Record, Voxie Pro
Recorder, VR+ Voice Messenger, and
tons more
sURvivAl sTRATEgiEs: We don’t
know exactly what features Apple’s
announced native Voice Memos app
will have, but third-party apps can still
stand out by building in extras—VR+
Voice Messenger ($1.99), for example,
lets you email your recordings to
multiple recipients at once or post them
directly to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,
and Blogger.

VR+ Voice Messenger lets you “talk” to Twitter.

NEW FEATURE: Landscape keyboard
support
AFFEc TEd Apps: Big Diary and Notes
Big Keyboard Email, SMS Landscape
Big Keyboard, iMail, Touch Type, SMS
Big Keyboard Deluxe, ReplyButler, Wide
Email, and more
sURvivAl sTRATEgiEs: Apple is
adding landscape keyboard support
to Mail, SMS (now called Messages),
and Notes, by popular demand. So, if
all an app does is give you the wider
keyboard, it might be sunk. ReplyButler
($1.99) has a great idea, providing
prewritten text snippets (“running
late,” “on a call,” “meeting canceled,”
and so on) you can use to quickly patch
together an email reply—and it has the
wide keyboard too.

ReplyButler practically writes email for you

NEW FEATURE: MMS AFFEc TEd Apps: Get MMS, Fetch MMS, MMS Buddy, i Text, MMS Rescue, Quip, Mobile Media Share, MMS, Free Photo Texting, MMS Viewer, tex Ture MMS, MMS Meister, iSendMMS 2009, and more sURvivAl s TRATEgiEs: AT&T will finally let iPhone 3G owners receive proper MMS messages (MMS stands for multimedia messaging service and handles photos, videos, sounds, and so on, sent directly to phones like an SMS, or short message service, text message), but that feature won’t be retroactive to the original iPhone. So all the apps that handle viewing and sending these MMS messages will still work just fine on the original phone, with no competition from Apple.