iPhone - Best replacement and additional software

I'm starting this thread to create an index of replacement software (that replaces default apps) as well as to index some other popular app categories. Softare can come from the App Store or side-load stores requiring Jailbreak.

If anyone has any app recommendations, please let me know. I'll be including multiple apps per category for now, but will then thin it out to a maximum of 1 or 2 per category.

Apps must perform and look great. Form and function must blend and work together. No ugly apps, no bug-ridden apps.

The first four categories of "replacements" are default apps which I think need to be replaced the most of all, since Apple's provided solutions are simply underwhelming.

Replacements for Default apps:
==========================

Music Player
- $: My Artists: http://www.macstories.net/iphone/my-artists-review/
- $3: Amp Music Player: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amp-music-player/id372165479?mt=8

Video Player
- VLC

Camera
- $: ClearCam (haven't checked out yet)
- $: Camera Plus Pro (haven't checked out yet) - these two seem like the best of what's available though
- $: ProCamera

Map program with offline maps (with GPS support, non navigating)
- $: Galileo - you can build your own maps offline and then copy them over (slow but versatile to do)

Calculator
-

Clock/Alarm
- $: Clock Pro
- Still looking (there's a lot of garbage in this category)

Web Browser
- Mercury Web Browser

Contacts - must use the native contacts DB and sync with Address Book, Google, etc...
- $: ABContacts (this one looks the best so far - still have to download it - supports alternate phone/sms programs instead of using built-in ones)

Notes
- Evernote (I don't like the iPhone client as much as I like the desktop version)

Calendar - must sync with iCal/CalDav/Google, etc..
- Calvetica - super clean/minimalist UI, has promise, needs more updating yet though.
- miCal - looks very full featured - this is the one I'm leaning toward


New Apps
=========

Voip (SIP Support)
- Fring
- $: Bria iPhone Edition
- $: Media5 Voip
- $: WiFone
- $: SessionTalk SIP

SMS / MMS - over data connection
- $: Messagey (US and Canada only supposedly - works by sending over email, so it doesn't work well sending to Rogers or Fido customers in Canada)
- $: Messenger for Google Voice
- SMS GV Extension - jailbreak hack to use built-in Message app through Google Voice

Visual Voice Mail
- $: Visible Voice Mail - works with any VM system that can send messages to email address

Digital Wallet (passwords/cards/banking, etc.)
- 1Password

Bluetooth File Transfer
-

GPS Navigation (turn by turn software - maps must be fully offline)
- TomTom - looks/works great so far
- Navigon - looks/works great so far

Document scanning (must support integration with other services)
- JotNot Scanner Pro: http://www.appolicious.com/finance/apps/47331-jotnot-scanner-pro-mobitech-3000-llc
- Readdle Scanner Pro

Reference
- $: AllofWiki - download offline copy of WikiPedia
- $: Oxford Deluxe English Dictionary 2nd Edition
- $: Audubon field guides for wildlife - I wish they covered more than North America

Local music streaming
- $: Squeezecast - stream music from your Squeezebox Server (turns iPhone into a Squeezebox)
- $: iPeng - Squeezebox controller/browser - can also be used to control Squeezecast (ideal)

Sketching/Drawing
- Adobe Ideas
- $: Sketchbook Mobile
- $: Layers
- $: miniDraw Plus

Photo editing/manipulation
- $: Photogene (so far it's the only one I've found worth adding to wishlist)

Unit conversion
- $: Convert

Shopping lists and comparisons
- CompareMe - price/unit/volume price shopping comparison tool
- $: Grocery Gadget - advanced grocery list app
- ShopShop - simple/basic list app

Tip calculator
- $: Tipulator

Sound/audio utilities
- SoundHoud -(supposed to also include a player) identify music by audio sampling or humming: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/soundhound/id355554941?mt=8

Shipping/receiving
- $: Deliveries - great little app for keeping track of packages, supports a lot of mail/courier co's.


Services or Service Enhancements:
==============================

Improved Syncing
- WiFi Sync: http://www.getwifisync.com/

Locate/lock/spy lost/stolen iPhone:
- iLocalis (Jailbreak - 5euro per year): http://ilocalis.com/index.php

Filesystem access
- Netatalk (Jailbreak) - allows browsing iPhone filesystem from the desktop as a drive
- iFile - file browser for on-iPhone use
- OpenSSH - allows SSH/SFTP access TO your iPhone

Themes and UI modification - these are all Jailbreak
- Winterboard - the base framework/control panel for all UI mods
- SBSettings - quickly access common settings like enable/disable data, etc. (use the SBMatte theme with this)
- LockInfo - modify and add information to the lock screen (needs to be skinned for best look)
- Five Icon Dock - show 5 icons in the dock instead of 4
- Five Icon Switcher - set the number of icons in the task switcher

I'm going to have to see about editing the first post again - currently editing time has expired...

And um, yeah, the ratio of crap:good in the app store is about 9:1 at the very least.

Dictionary/reference: AllofWiki Offline - entire Wikipedia on your iDevice, with regular updates.

Offmaps is off the table - the idea is sound, but the execution is just frustrating and somewhat deceptive. 1. You can download "maps" for free. 2. You have to pay for "guides" which has all the POI information. 3. You can't access the maps you've gotten for free from the UI unless you buy the guides. Useless.

On top of that, even though it uses Open Maps which has pretty much the whole world mapped out, you can only download specific cities/regions. Downloads are limited to a specific byte count so you never know how detailed your map will be. If a map has a of streets and other things which may inflate its download size, it means you're not likely going to be able to zoom in very far. Again, useless. For an "offline" program, you can only perform map downloads on the iPhone itself. It'd be nice (and super simple) to allow map downloads from their website and then just use iTunes to sync the maps. That would also give you a way to back up maps. Right now you can't do that so you can lose all your maps when performing an update - which has happened to reviewers.

Still looking for a decent offline map program. It might just end up having to be a full navigation app, since the good ones store the full map data for the regions they cover, which is going to be anywhere from a whole country to a whole continent for most of them.

OffMaps is the best global offline mapping app that I have found.

For the UK there is UK Map, which uses the Ordnance Survey data and is therefore better than the OSM data. You still have to select areas to download on the phone though (not limited on download size).

That of course is UK only.

For the rest of Europe I also have TomTom, though of course that only gives you road mapping.

As I say OffMaps is the best global one I've found, though it has been a few months since I trawled the app store looking for alternatives.

Any likely alternatives are highly likely to be OSM based anyway.

I should say that OffMaps is usable despite its flaws. If I'm off somewhere outside the UK I'll always make sure I download the area on OffMaps before I go.

I'd far rather have OffMaps available than nothing if I don't have (or can't afford to use) a data connection...

How do you access the maps you've downloaded in Offmaps if you don't also download the guide?

I've also just installed Galileo Offline maps which seems like it's more capable and can source maps from different providers. However, the process of generating those maps and compressing them must be done from a client app running on your Mac or PC - and it's remarkably slow. I have to take a better look at it to see if certain options can be set to speed up the compilation because the small region I defined the other night was going to take over 24 hours to complete.

I'm not fond of TomTom's software and there seem to be better alternatives available with both better navigation and better map presentation, including Navigon. Apple should really have thought ahead and snapped up one of the mapping/GIS companies instead of leaving the two biggest/well known to be scooped up by TomTom (TeleAtlas) and Nokia (NavTeq). Google now have their own data and Apple is left out in the cold when it comes to mapping/location, IMO.

All in all I'm finding that my early estimation of 9:1 crap:good is actually more like 1000:1. Usually even the good/best stuff has issues. Most people just write shite code and don't have high enough standards for design and quality.

I've never had a problem downloading and using the map data in OffMaps:

- position the map where you want to download the maps for
- tap on the centre button on the toolbar
- select download map only
- drag out an area
- adjust the slider for detail required
- tap on start download
- wait
- tap on close when complete

That's, I now have the data cached on the phone (as proved by putting it into airplane mode and killing the app/restarting it).

Don't base your view of the iPhone TomTom software on the reviews out there. They are mostly (if not all) based on the early versions of it. There have been updates since which have improved it a great deal.

I've used the TomTom software on my brother's iPhone, on Palm Treo and on their own stand-alone units. Not as good as Garmin's and Garmin's isn't very good.

Back to OffMaps...

Ok, I forgot that you could also do that manual marking of the map with a square and then download that specific area. The UI leaves a lot to be desired... I'd really like to be able to select a point and then pick a radius personally. Or simply pick a state/province/country.

This same method is what some people complained about in negative comments regarding another program. Strange that they don't complain about it here.

I'm downloading a manual region now. But I'm pretty sure to use it I'll have to create a bookmark for it. When you download one of the predefined cities (map only) there's no way to select it. I suppose you could scroll around the map and then locate the area to make a bookmark. That kind of sucks for offline viewing. When you're actually at the location GPS will obviously center you on the map and that won't be an issue for THAT location.

I've bought the program and I suppose I won't delete it. But I'm not happy with how it works - which wasn't at all obvious from the free city downloads nor the author's web site. It implied a whole other level of functionality that simply doesn't exist without buying individual guides.

If the guides were a bit better (San Fran's was sparse and so too was Lisbon's) I wouldn't actually mind paying for all of them if a flat-fee were available. As it stands, the author doesn't even list the price of tokens on his site from what I've seen. I haven't found that info anywhere, but I haven't yet clicked the link to buy them - I suppose he'll have to show it there.

The GPS apps aren't cheap and there's no one app that will do the whole world unfortunately. At least not that I know of. I suspect it's not possible to do in-app purchase and then complete the download via iTunes, is it? Apple really need to work this delivery system out, because to me it would make much more sense to sell the GPS apps super-cheap or give them away for free with a minimal feature set and then be able to buy additional maps. Or at the very least buy one or two countries as they're deployed now and then add more without creating additional icons in the springboard.

I've already downloaded close to 150MB of the Greater Toronto Area - in fact a nice square of the Golden Horseshoe, which includes the area of land along the shores of the North West of Lake Ontario. The detail doesn't go down to residential street level. Aren't these maps supposed to be made up of vector plots?

To get good detail of the GTA, it would either take long enough to get frustrated by the program until such time as I made a $1000 offense (smashing the iPhone). Or three months of patient scrolling, marking and downloading.

Oh, and you can't search for any street names no matter what level of detail you've downloaded or if you're on/offline. It only searched its pay guides. And I don't think it searches those for street names either.

I'd like to revise what I said earlier. Not useless, but... NEXT to useless. Absolutely shite UI and poorly designed functionality.

By far the best app I've ever downloaded is Service Bell. It does exactly what it says it does and does it very well. It shows an image of a desk bell and you can tap it to ring it. That's it.

All the OSM iPhone apps that I have seen use the rendered tiles rather than then base vector data.

I suspect this is because all the various map rendering code that is out there to use is GPL and so they can't just use that to render the maps on the device. And it would take someone a lot of time and effort to create their own (half decent) map renderer. It is a very hard thing to get right.

Whereas they can use one of the GPL map back ends to render to tiles very easily.

Also, the OSM data, even in base vector form is huge, like 170GB huge.

There is definitely a lot of crap on the app store nowadays, but there is still plenty of good stuff. Apps I consider to be very good or excellent:

- TomTom - clearly Bruno disagrees on this one
- Thing - simple, effective "lists of things organiser"
- Byline - good RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader
- Twitter - an example of excellent UI design (I can't say the same for the iPad app)
- Words With Friends - well designed attractive alternative to the awful official Scrabble app
- Weather Pro - excellent weather app with detailed forecasts, graphs, rain radar and satellite images
- iPeng - the must have app for Squeezebox users
- ShopShop - handy shopping list app, with the vital feature "email list to my other half" feature
- Air Video - excellent combination of a PC side server app (Windows and Mac) that transcodes any video you throw at it for playback on the phone
- Facebook - useless if you aren't into Facebook, but a good example of app design
- Starmap - a beautiful star finder app
- iSSH - a well thought out ssh client that actually comes in handy occasionally
- Line Art and Little Uzu - pointless but beautiful
- Flight Control - the perfect example of a game that just wouldn't work without a touch UI

Since last posting I've noticed that the OSM programs use bitmap tiles. Ouch. That's why their maps are enormous versus the likes of TomTom and Navigon.

I've found some ways to get more manageable map creation times with Galileo's Mobile Atlas Creator. So right now I'm doing a bunch of the area around here.

I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to get a nav app though, even if I won't necessarily need to use it for navigation.

I'm going to look at the other apps you've mentioned. Always looking for something good that does something useful.

Right now I'm still looking to fill in that list I've started. So far I've settled on a clock app and two music apps. Clock Pro (needs to tweaks which I am going to suggest to the author) and the music apps are the ones listed in the first post. They're by far the best and most useful of any music app I've tried. Amp needs a bunch of design fixes and some bug fixes, of which I have some notes to pass to the developer.

Galileo works fairly well. It shows you a map that you have either cached or that you've pre-built and loaded onto the device. It works online, downloading Open Maps, or you can choose from many map sources when building your own, such as Google.

The level of details you include is totally up to you, but it can add significant time (hours) to map creation - downloading tiles AND assembling them. Once you've downloaded tiles they're stored in a tile DB so if you re-use that area of the map, those tiles won't have to be downloaded again when building.

I'm currently generating a map of Portugal and it's currently at over 1.3GB and still have some 15 minutes to go. I's been downloading tiles and generating the map for at least 4 hours now. The detail level of the program goes up to "19" whatever that means. I'm generating with tiles up to level 16, the same I used for a map of the greater Toronto area, up North to Orillia and South East through Buffalo. That map set ended up at over 500MB.

It seems that unless you want to do only a single small city, this is a really heavy amount of data to carry around. It also takes a ton of time to pre-generate what you need, though the results are infinitely better than OffMaps when using Google's tiles.

Probably just zoom levels, Google maps for example has 19 zoom levels.

Did a recent mapping project for a client down to desk level, for a big corporate office relocation project, that zoomed in a bit further than level 19

I'm fairly sure you are outside of Google Map's licence by caching them offline...

I'm fairly sure I don't care. I've never been presented with a licensing agreement from Google as I'm not using any Google products. Last time I checked, Google didn't ask my permission before they used a photo of my house to help sell their mapping service, so we'll just call it even. In any case, it's really between Google and the author of the software. The software also supports Yahoo and Microsoft maps BTW.

I'm just entertaining some tests with these mapping programs. I won't be satisfied with anything so primitive that it uses bitmaps. It's got to be vectors for a real mapping solution, so I'm likely to give Navigon a try. I'm even going to give TomTom another shot since I've been reading about their recent software improvements and updated maps.

But... I came back here to mention another one of my cream f the crop programs. This one is actually quite functional and I just remembered about it today, even though it was long ago on my to-buy list. "Deliveries" from JuneCloud. I've been using their Mac OS widget for most of the year and this is able to sync using a web login to their site.

None (ok, navigon seems well received too - we have both and we both prefer TomTom) of the other paid nav applications come anywhere near close to TomTom, TomTom just looks, works and behaves how you expect an iPhone application to.

I really detest the applications which use their own UI, take for instance "sygic aura" - the map view is lovely, it's accelerated 3d and it's super quick...however, once you go into a menu you then realise how awful it actually is.

You pays your money and takes your choice, however, IMHO the smart money is on TomTom.

IMO, Navigon is designed more like an iOS program. TomTom makes use of iOS design paradigms, but mostly it reminds me of their stand-alone products. Lots and lots of menu items which can get a bit confusing.

I've had a quick look at both and they're each quite good in their current incarnations, at least while stationary. TomTom feels a little slower when browsing the map. I like the loupe in TomTom's 2D map browser - it makes it precise to drop the destination exactly where you want it and lets you identify a specific POI. Navigon sort of drops the destination onto whatever is closest to the middle of the screen, however it has logos to identify the different popular POI brands. Funnily enough, it's missing McDonald's while that chain does appear in TomTom. I was just testing with that chain - I've eaten that food once in the past 5 or 6 years.

I do wish that both would do a little more offscreen rendering so that when you scroll the map it's not so slow. None of them is going to win any beauty contests against the bitmap images produced by Google Maps - I especially like Google's shaded representation of major buildings.

[Bitt]
Loupe.
[/Bitt]

No, I mean when you're navigating the menus and you can click on an option that sends you to an identical menu, eventually leading you to another option that takes you back to the top of the first. Wasn't that clear from the original message?

Ah.
Recursion.

While there may be many options in the menus, I fail to see how they could possibly be confusing!

I mean:

Navigate To ->
Mute Sound ->
Night Colours ->
3D Map ->
TomTom Shop ->
Advanced Planning ->
Browse Map->
Help Me ->
Manage Favourites ->
Call POI ->
TomTom News ->
Change Settings ->

(and just for illustrations sake, the Navigation sub menu)

Home
Favourite ->
Address ->
Recent Destination ->
Local Search ->
Point of Interest ->
Contact
Photo ->
Postcode ->
Point on Map ->
Coordinates ->

If somebody is somehow confused by those, then they probably shouldn't be allowed to drive. Incidentally, have you tried adding a favourite in navigon, they have a nice button in the tab bar named "favourites", and when you get in there there's a nice button marked "edit" and when you click that you only get the option to delete existing ones, not to add new ones. SWMBO couldn't work out how to add favourites or set the home location, it took me quite a while to find out how to add them, needless to say, she won't use it and went back to TomTom, despite the pretty "panorama view".

At the end of the day it's all down to personal preference, Navigon very often appears in the store heavily discounted and it's a no brainer to purchase it, but when it and TomTom are at their regular prices, I'd buy TomTom every single time.

It's not the individual items on TomTom's menus that are confusing, it's he ease os recursion and being presented with essentially the same menu multiple times and then having to back out of them. Even something like the Demo of your route was infuriating because it just kept looping but didn't indicate that it was, nor did they provide a way to turn it off without again going through a bunch of clicks through the menus. There's definitely a lot more clicking involved in TomTom's app.

The Edit thing is an iOS quirk. Edit is used in a lot of apps simply to allow deletion of list items, not necessarily to add more - the add button is usually available independently of the edit. I haven't tried creating a favorite yet, but I'd assume that you do it while looking at a location and not by clicking on the favorite button in the tab bar - those buttons usually take you to lists of things, they're not function buttons. Those will usually be at the top in an iOS-style app. For better or worse of course, because IMO, Apple's apps are not the end-all and be-all of design. Quite frankly some of the default-style iOS app design is just awful. iPod app for instance.

I think it's perfectly reasonable behavior to expect the demo to endlessly loop and not to be "quit" by accident seeing as the only possible use that I can think of it is as an "attraction mode" in a store, it's certainly not something you'd use in the normal course of operating a sat-nav device.

Recursive menus? I've certainly not come across these in normal use, so I'd imagine that nearly every other "average joe user" has managed to avoid them.

Personally, I like the "explicit" nature of the TomTom menus, if I want to navigate to a postcode, city or street there are explicit options to do so, navigon says "navigate to city" but allows you to enter a post code (zip).

The major reason for choosing TomTom over Navigon in the UK is the traffic information, TomTom obviously have an awful lot of PND devices which are sending information back home, coupled with the normal traffic data sources which they also use, it completely blows away all the other iPhone nav apps - but again, you pay for it, £22 a year vs £15 for a lifetime of navigon traffic.

You have to expect that where you and I may press more buttons and go deeper into menus and options, most users won't all they want to do is press the navigate button, enter their destination and drive away.

I didn't get the impression that the demo view was for in-store display. It's positioned in the menu prominently enough to be considered a test-run of the route to see how it plays out. And I don't mind the fact that it loops, but there should be a much clearer way to stop it looping and get to properly navigating.

I will say that the iPhone version of TomTom is much improved over the stand-alone version I borrowed from a friend back in June. That model might have been a few years old though.

Just the capacitive screen and the touch physics make for a completely different (and better) experience to the actual TomTom units. I get such a shock whenever I use Eryl's TomTom, the interface, just due to those two things, it painful compared to TomTom on the phone.

The only reason I've ever used the demo view was with old TomTom devices that couldn't get a GPS signal when you were inside, for demoing to other people who hadn't seen a GPS navigator before. Not much call for it nowadays...

There seem to be a lot of really great programs on and off the app store, but they're just so difficult and time consuming to find. Like everything other than basic music management, iTunes sucks for apps in every way possible. The store is a dire mess and even managing downloaded apps is an epic fail. Simple things like knowing how much you paid for the app, the vendor's web site, the store page for the app - all unavailable/non-existant.

In my search for some apps to replace stock functionality I'm finding that the biggest piece missing to this puzzle is the GLUE to hold it all together well. Since the iPhone's default apps are hard-set to deal with their respective functions, we need a third-party app to be able to set defaults.

For instance, set the default dialer, default sms program, etc. There's a program out now that allows you to set the default browser, but I haven't been able to find anything for the other seemingly hard-coded aspects of the iPhone.

At this time I haven't done anything with Google Voice on the phone yet. The program GV Mobile currently doesn't have any SIP support, so I'd still be stuck with using two different apps to handle calls. I'm thinking of initially using some other SIp app along with Voip.ms and separately using a GV SMS app with GV for only SMS messaging. And a third app for checking voice mail. It would be nice to have all these integrated - and I'm hoping that's what GV Mobile will eventually be able to do.

You mean you actually find iTunes acceptable for music management? The day I downloaded Copytrans Manager [Thank you, Tony Fabris!] was like the Fourth of July to me, declaring my independence now and forever from iTunes. Every time I use it I marvel at how much faster, how much more intuitive, how much more efficient, just how much better CTM is at music management than iTunes.

Of course, if you want to do things other than music management (like buy songs and stuff) then you'll have to keep iTunes on hand. Too bad...

tanstaafl.

By music management I didn't mean managing and copying music to my iPod or iPhone. It sticks really badly at that too.

But to simply navigate a list of all my music and being able to search for music within my collection, plus making adjustments to tags, it works rather well and it's the best thing available on the Mac. Likely because no one else is taking the time/effort/expense to make something better as the market would be small what with everyone already using iTunes.

It's been getting steadily worse since version 7 however with the exception of the time in 8.x or maybe 9.x where they added the ability to set sorting tags on multiple tracks at once. Version 7 is when the concept of full albums really came about for iTunes and since then Apple has just been making the UI more encumbered with garbage while also removing or crippling what it previously introduced. The new album art list view touted by Steve at the last iTunes event was a giant step backwards from what they already had in iTunes 7. Now you can't see album art on any album/single that has 5 or fewer tracks. Plus unless you have super short album names, those all get truncated as well.

Never mind that you don't actually get to see any album art or change to any view but a plain list when browsing music on an iDevice. And then there's the infernal and multi-hour scan for "gapless" iTunes must do whenever tracks are added.

Every now and then I check out the next purported "iTunes killer" like Songbird or DoubleTwist. I end up deleting them fairly quickly because even the thought of their archives sitting on my drive somewhere gives me chest pains. That's how bad all the other software is (that's available for the Mac). The program you linked looks interesting, but it's Windows only and I'm not that interested in firing up a virtual machine to manage music.

Ok, I've installed some Jailbreak-only software now. Well, a bit more that is..

Winterboard - a theme engine for the spring board. Not making extensive use of it yet and I haven't themed Springbord itself, but I'm using the hooks this provides for a few other things...

SBSettings - a quick pop-up to allow toggling various features/functions that would otherwise be buried in the settings app or in other apps. The default is to swipe on the top menu bar to pull this up. One of its other features is hiding applications, which I've already used to hide the Phone (can't use it with data-only), Messages (can't use it with data-only), Calculator, iPod, Clock, Notes and Stocks default apps. Along with hiding the Winterboard app icon since you can access its settings from the Settings app.

SBMatte theme icons - The only set of icons for SBSettingss that looked better than the originals - other themes are scary ugly. http://www.macthemes.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16793176

OpenSSH - nice being able to get to a command line remotely or use SFTP

iFIle - filesystem exploring right from the iPhone itself.

I want to install something to provide some status on the lock screen in addition to the time. There are a few things I'm looking at and will have to update once I've chosen. - LockInfo it is for now.

Just made some updates to the list in the first post. I'll be filtering down the list over time, but some categories/classes are going to need more than one app.

Just confirmed this today... If you're using iOS 4.0 it is close to mandatory that you also Jailbreak if for one simple reason: Background app management.

iOS 4 does not provide a way (that I know of) to manually quit an application, and unfortunately many app developers completely suck. That's what happens when you have such a popular platform, everyone and their mother suddenly becomes a developer.

(Late) Last night my iPhone was at 100% charge as I removed it from a powered speaker dock as I went to bed. This morning, about 8 hours later, it had no charge left. Just enough to show a red sliver on the battery meter as I tried to power it on.

I'm just about 100% certain this was caused by Squeezecast, an application that acts as a Squeexebox, enabling playback of music from Squeezebox server. The app is insanely buggy and I have no idea how it was approved except for complete lack of testing on Apple's part. It must have continued to consume copious resources even after music playback had stopped.

Under normal conditions you'd have to reboot the phone to get this app out of memory. Having a jailbroken phone however one need only have SBSettings installed with its ability to quit all background processes. Definitely a battery saver.

Doesn't the builtin multi tasking killer remove it from the background ? It certainly kills apps when I use it (I haven't used Squeezecast though).

I didn't mean to imply that all multi-tasking apps were, or were going to be, a problem.

The issue seems that it will only come up when a badly written app is used. TomTom for example, will pop up a notification to tell you it's gong to shut down or go to sleep when you are no longer using it and put it into the background.

If the iOS is itself supposed to shut down apps, then that mechanism is either not working properly or something the app is doing is preventing iOS from shutting it down. Perhaps it's reporting back that it's still in full use, so it doesn't get shut down.

Squeezecast was $6 - not expensive in the grand scheme of things, but quite a premium price for this type of app in the iOS market. It's a pretty basic client and doesn't have much functionality on its own. That's another reason it's so irritating that it's so bloody buggy.

Another nice feature of SBSettings is its ability to list apps currently running in the background. The iOS multi-tasking bar unfortunately lists all recent apps, whether or not they're in the background. It gets crowded pretty quickly.

I'm confused.

The fact that Squeezecast keeps running in the background is a feature. It is supposed to do that so you can keep playing music while doing other things.

Apps that are registered as media players get to continue running in the background.

Or are you saying that you stop the music in Squeezecast and it keeps burning lots of CPU.

You didn't answer my question, does the iOS task bar manage to kill Squeezecast or not ?

P.S. I'm not claiming that the whole multi-tasking bar is the idea solution to how a phone multi-tasking bar UI should work, it just about gets the job done, but it is clearly a v1.0 feature

My iPhone has started using unusual amounts of charge in the last few days, need to work out what is draining it. Might not be third party app multi tasking at fault, I had it in the past at one point with 3.1.1

They shouldn't be burning an entire battery's worth of power while sitting IDLE and not in the foreground though. They should be asleep, not consuming any power at all until activated once again (fast app switching).



That's exactly what I'm saying. I mentioned that I had stopped the music and stopped using the app.

The funny thing is that even when trying to use it normally it will drop the connection to the server on a whim, I wonder if it kept the connection alive al night when I wasn't actually playing anything.



Apparently not. And, without jailbreaking, there's absolutely no way you'd know if it did either. As I mentioned, recent apps are also listed in the bar and there's no way of knowing which are currently being used and consuming CPU, which as just sitting in memory dormant (fast app switching) and which are not in memory at all (simply used recently).

If your phone is jailbroken you should get a detailed process listing and check what's using CPU and memory. I'll be doing this myself later tonight when I have some time.

I guess at least then you'll be able to prove whether or not using the multi-tasking bar is killing the app.

As I hinted to above, it is possible to see that fast battery drain without any third party backgrounded apps involved. Or at least it has been in the past, as well as my 3G doing it for a while (as documented on a thread here somewhere) I've seen it happen occasionally on my wife's 3G as well. I haven't seen it happen since she moved to 3.1.2 though.

Really? I recall you mentioning some quick battery drain issues, but I didn't remember it being over the course of only 6-8 hours - especially without ever touching the phone during that time period.

Ok, it turns out that the iOS "task bar" does allow you to manually quit running apps. If you press and hold on an icon, they'll start to wiggle with a delete badge on them - like when removing or moving items in the springboard. If you click the badge, poof, the app goes away. I tested to make sure Squeezecast actually stopped playing music. I was under the impression that this action on the task bar would only remove the icon but leave the app running - I thought I recall Apple saying that app management was intelligent and happened automatically so you didn't have a manual task killer. Glad I was wrong.

Last night before going to bed I wiped all running tasks using SBSettings and this morning I woke up to a full battery meter. I'll try to test Squeezecast again tonight by starting a stream, stopping it and then putting the phone away for the night.

I take it you didn't read any iOS 4.0 reviews, where this was all covered extensively

I like to experience things myself rather than have everything spoiled by a review. Or more than likely, I probably just forgot, since I bought the iPhone so long after its release.

That said, Squeezecast is still buggy and not a very good app citizen. One thing I do quite like about it (and something Amp doesn't have yet BTW), is its ability to replace the iPod app in the music playback pop-up (left of the task bar).

Now if I can only find out how to prevent the iPod and Phone apps from always auto-launching.

EDIT: Couldn't locate anyone talking about stopping the native apps from auto-launching so I just went in via SFTP and change the bundle identifier on the MobilePhone and MobileMusicPlayer apps - now they won't launch when the device boots. They can still be located and launched with Spotlight though, and they still register for their respective supported URL types. I could have disabled all that with more edits as well, but I don't want to change anything that may create instability or a break a dependency. This is good enough for now.

Thought you knew about closing apps from the taskbar.

What I'm finding troublesome - it seems that all apps now stay active. Even those that don't really need to. (Stanza)

I'm pretty much convinced that the clutter of unclosed apps eventually causes problems. Several times I've seen my touch4 get a little slow/wonkey only to have the problem solved by a restart. The touch2 with ios3 never had that kind of problem.

What you can't tell from the multitasking bar is which apps are actually consuming CPU versus just resident in memory versus not in memory at all.

It's so easy to click a single button in SBSettings to close every open app, versus using the multitasking bar to close one at a time - there could be 10 to 20 apps listed on there.

Tired of looking through reviews trying to piece together an opinion of a number of apps, I've gone on a small shopping spree today and picked up a number of things I want to check out. Tomorrow I'll need to grab a few more apps and then I'll put them through their paces.

Some of the apps I picked up today: ABContacts, GV Mobile +, a couple of camera apps and one more I can't remember right now.

Biggest disappointment so far: GV Mobile+

Not the App's fault I suppose, it's just that Google Voice is sort of a lame duck. I still fail to see the point in it without voip integration. It's basically calling treatments and voice mail - sort of like a simplified PBX I suppose. Something you already get with most VOIP providers.

You can't actually make outgoing calls with Google Voice. Incoming calls must be forwarded to another active number. It saves voice mail to an email-like mailbox and it has SMS.

To me, SMS is the only interesting bit - because everything else I already have with two VOIP providers.

What I CAN fault GV Mobile+ for is its lack of support for other telephony programs on iPhone, such as the many dedicated (branded) and SIP-based VOIP apps. It seems to only want to use the built-in MobilePhone app, which means it's not going to be possible to use it for outgoing calls.

I think I'm just going to spend my time evaluating all the SIP-based software. And instead of GV Mobile+ I can probably get away with an SMS-only app that uses GV to keep things cleaner. GVM+ will be revisited once it gets its promised/announced VOIP support.

Bruno, you knew I was going to defend a Google product

I'm sorry but you're just going to have to take my word for it that Google Voice in general (I have no idea about that app), is in no way a "lame duck." I can't speak to GV Mobile+ but the service its self is fantastic. I use it daily, and it handles all calls to my business number and my cell number, both on the same phone.

I'm amazed how much you downplay the good features of the service, like the voicemail inbox. Maybe it's because you've used Apple/AT&T's visual voicemail, but I don't have access to it. What I do have is Google Voice which does it for free, presents it in a very simple layout that looks just like GMail, and allows me to archive all my messages. I only text using Google Voice, and can respond to people from my phone or computer (using the GV site or a Chrome extension). I can initiate a call directly from the inbox.

The following are some thoughts on the positive features of Google Voice, so there's a record of the good things about it that you either glossed over or didn't bother taking time to discover before dismissing it:

With my webcam's microphone, I can answer calls to my GV number directly on my computer. The call rings on my phone, but also on my desktop.

I can use GV for far cheaper international calls than my carrier charges (I don't use it, but others might).

When a call comes in on my GV line, I can record it with the press of a button (it alerts the caller of the recording), which is good when I'm driving, and the recording is saved in my inbox.

I've had a problem with sales calls in the past couple months. That is, until I remembered that I can easily block calls by going to my GV inbox and identifying it in the call log.

On a day to day basis, I use GV to let me carry the same phone for personal and business calls. For personal calls, I dial out with my cell phone number, and for business I dial out with my GV number (I'm given the choice when I place the call). This is actually less important to me these days because...

I've actually started using my GV number for all calls. The main reason this is possible is because I can assign personalized greetings for each caller or groups of callers. I didn't need to use my GV number for personal calls, but people started wanting to text me (I hate texting), and I don't have a plan with my carrier, so now I just tell people my GV number and I can text for free.

Related to the last two points, some time ago Google added the ability to use GV for your cell number in addition to your GV number. This let me take my carrier out of the loop entirely.

Lastly, I'm actually not the prime target for Google Voice. Initially, the idea of Grand Central (which Google purchased and turned into GV), was to give you two things:

1) a single phone number for all your current phones
2) the freedom to leave your other numbers. There's a few examples I can think of for this.


Those are the big features I can think of for the moment.

Also, why did you decide to try a 3rd party app for GV when the official one FINALLY made it through the ridiculous app store approval process about two weeks ago?


As for VOIP: you are right that Google Voice is not a VOIP service, and this is a strangely pervasive misconception. Every time I hear someone talking about installing it, they say something like "and now I can talk for free!" not understanding that it still uses their minutes. My hope is that one day they'll integrate Gizmo5 into the service, but that's probably far off...

The only people I've seen comment positively about GV are those who don't seem to have any experience with VOIP service or other telephony services offering call treatments.

I can comment on some of the points you made tomorrow when I have some time, but keep in mind that I don't care about using a fake phone from my computer - besides, that's VOIP, and what you're experiencing is likely an offshoot of the Gizmo5 acquisition, even though it may be wrapped in a GV UI. That feature is not part of GV outside of GMail that I know of - certainly not possible to do it with GV from a mobile on a data connection.

BTW, I have no experience with ATT service or Apple's visual voice mail. I have had visual voice mail since 2004 or so using different VOIP services - they have all supported sending voice mail (and even faxes) to email. So you can have whatever UI you want, all depending on your email client (or web mail, including GMail, if that's what you want). The voice messages are just wav files and faxes tifs.

You've explained yourself, so I'm going to leave this argument before I put more fuel on it

All I can tell you is that the service is invaluable to me and does everything I want it to. It has nothing at all to do with whether I've used VOIP services before. If you don't want to use it, that's fine and I respect that. I hope you can understand why it's useful to me.

Matt, I'm not saying it's not useful. I said it was a lame duck. And by all accounts and the hoopla it's (not) getting, my assessment seems to hold water.

Its use is greatly diminished when you already have those capabilities, which a lot of people do. At that point GV doesn't bring much to the table other than redundancy. As mentioned, I did give it props for SMS, which most people will not have with other non-cell-based calling plans. It does also bring potentially "free" routing where not everyone is necessarily with a "free" provider with such options.

I was using it last night, so I'll give you my example.

Using GVM+ I initiated an outgoing call with the "direct dial" option. I called my home number. GVM+ sent me to my regular Phone dialer and popped up some strange number on the screen. So it has to call some random number to connect me to the number I actually want to talk to. I can understand this. GV sets up the call routing on its end and then patches me into a number that its temporarily set aside for my call - that call has been connected to my real destination on their end.

People mention the same thing on incoming calls. That the caller ID they see comes up completely randomly, such that they can no longer use that ID to text or call someone back for instance.

I did hear that the GV client for Android is much better than the official client for iPhone, but I've also heard that the GVM+ I was trying was very good. I just don't see how the experience in Android can get around limitations that others are expressing online.

You mentioned that you could take your carrier out of the loop. How? Since GV doesn't itself have VOIP how can you actually place or receive a call? GV does routing but where will it route the call to/through?

Ok, if you can come up with a use-case for me personally, you'll have accomplished something Google has been unable to. I believe I've mentioned previously that the whole GV thing is convoluted and ambiguous enough that a great many people don't see a use case - or see the wrong one and then get pissed off that it doesn't work that way.

Here's what I have now:

At home I have VOIP with a phone number I've been using for 6 years. It's a coveted (in this area) 416 number. It has call routing if I choose to use it and voicemail delivered to email. I'm using an ATA device to which that number is locked. So to physically bring that number somewhere else I have to move the ATA.

I also have a voip.ms account with (currently) two phone numbers (one US and one Canadian), but I can have however many numbers I want. I can route those any way I like. voip.mshave full SIP support so I route those numbers through completely new hardware, including soft phones and my own PBX if I wanted to.

I have an iPhone with a 3G data-only plan. It is connected to the net anywhere I go, either through WiFi (with a decent support of hotspots) and that 3G connection.

I have a Google Voice account and number. I used a US voip.ms number to register.

I want to use that data-only connection for voice as well - keeping voice costs to a bare minimum. Right now I am testing various voip apps along with my voip.ms sip information.

I can't write much at the moment, but what I'm hearing is "I already have what Google Voice offers, so I don't need it and therefore it's a useless product." That seems a little ridiculous to me. I don't have any other means of getting anything that GV offers me, so GV is a great product (and free, too). And I disagree that tons of people have the features that you're describing.

I also still think that chastising the service for not being VOIP, when it never claimed to be VOIP, is odd.

And no, I don't get the problem where a random number shows up on the caller ID, either for incoming or outgoing calls. I understand why it uses this, and it's never been a problem for me. It really sounds like this is an iPhone issue.

I should have clarified what I meant by "taking my carrier out of the loop" (and you have to ascribe at least SOME context to what I was saying at that point, Bruno). GV essentially lets me use my cell carrier as a dumb pipe. I'm not dependent on them for a cell phone number or a voicemail box (and SMS, of course).

If I have time later I'll make an attempt (which will be in vain) to give you a reason to use GV. But since you already have many of the services it offers, and assume that the majority of everyone else does too (which is not the case), and it's also impossible to convince you of anything at all, I'm not sure if I'll get around to it.

Matt, are you purposefully trying to get me into an argument? You're obviously not getting from my posts what I'm intending.



I've already gone out of my way to specifically say that's not the case. By calling the product a "lame duck" I didn't mean to imply it was useless. I would have said "useless" and some other colorful hyperbole if that's what I'd intended. It's just a non-starter for many people, either because of feature duplication, poor positioning/brand-messaging or even implementation. Forget for a moment that it's also only available to those with US phone numbers.

I will compare it to the Apple TV (previous generations if you will). In the grand scheme of things, it is currently small potatoes, similar to Apple's "hobby" stance on the ATV. It has just not achieved significant mind-share.

A lame duck can still serve the purpose of an otherwise healthy one if what you intend is to eat it.




You have the same possibilities as I or anyone else should you want to. If you don't already have something else, then it may make perfect sense to go with GV - we both agree "free" is nice.



I did no such thing. And you're toeing the same line that I've seen so many other people. What I said was that some (other) people criticize it because they were mistaken about this. I'm fully aware of this aspect and what I've said is that GV is not as strong a solution without VOIP. So they should add it sooner rather than later if they want to make this product a complete solution. I really don't know what Google's motivation is behind GV, so while I've heard VOIP is coming, who knows when or if it will ever actually debut. Or when one might start seeing/hearing targeted ads.



The iPhone experience is mine, but what I'm reading elsewhere is from both iPhone and Android users.




That's fair. But you are dependent on them for minutes. And that's the big piece I want to avoid. Voice is data anyway, so I only want to pay the carrier for a data plan.

I know there are also differences between cell plans in the US and Canada (and the rest of the world) that can make the GV proposition better/worse depending on where you'll be using it, in terms of minute usage and feature duplication.



It won't be in vain if you can spot something I've missed. Again, I find the features useful, but they must also be easy to use and as least convoluted as possible. In the end I don't care how I achieve them if the goals (including price) are satisfied.



I didn't say this either. Just that a lot of people do. Enough that it ends up being a contributor to why GV is not this run-away train of a success story, like say for instance the iPhone, Android, Facebook, etc.



You don't have to convince me of anything. I'm already sold on the idea, I just have to see how fitting GV into the mix can benefit me.

Encountered my first casualty of Jailbreaking.

The newest update to All of Wikipedia has put in some kind of check for Jailbroken devices and the app quits itself if run on such a device.

The developer includes a small note on their app page about it. According to them, most people with Jailbroken devices are pirating their software, and they have to pay for hosting costs for the wiki download, so they've denied access to the app for anyone with such a device.

Currently I'm out $10 for an app that does nothing. I've written to the developer and Apple. To Apple I've requested a refund. To the developer I've tried to enter into a dialog and offered up some suggestions on how they might achieve their goals without using this harsh method - and failing that, a refund.

Jailbreaking itself doesn't allow you to run software with mismatched or no DRM. You'd still have to install additional software that patched parts of the OS to allow that. If they want to check for something, they should check against a patched install daemon as an example.

One of my proposed solutions was to offer legitimate Jailbreak customers an alternative way to prove their copy is legitimate. This can possibly be done in a number of different ways, so let's see if they're willing to explore it.

As a power-user or enthusiast app, I'm sure they must have a large number of legitimate Jailbreak customers.

EDIT: Apple have refunded my purchase. I'm still waiting for a reply from the developer. I do still ant this app and will gladly repurchase it if they can come up with a better solution to their problem.

EDIT2: Developer has replied with some background information and was very pleasant in fact. I believe we'll be able to work this out and I'll no doubt be repurchasing the app. Hopefully the situation will also be able to be resolved for all their legitimate customers with Jailbroken phones.