While there was a lot of noise made over this past week about the speedier iPhone released by Apple, much of the mainstream media happily and lazily glazed over the big new feature this time around.  That’s of course the new App Store available on all iPhones as well as the iPod Touch.  

Ever since the original iPhone was released almost exactly a year ago, advanced users and developers had been clamoring for access to development tools to the new platform.  Apple gave them just that earlier this year, allowing for third party applications to be distributed.  Now that they’re available, it’s easy to see why there was such a fuss for them.  Some of them are simply pretty amazing.  However some of them border on the absurd, so you might want to do a little research before diving in.  Hopefully, we here at Nightly can help you out on that front with a quick run down of the good, the bad, and the silly apps available.

The Good

The app that has quickly become agreed upon as the best available so far is the free Remote feature from Apple.  If you are on a local WiFi network and have a computer running iTunes available, you can use this app to turn your iPhone or Touch into a remote control.  You can also use it to identical functionality if you have an Apple TV.  This easily trumps what the flimsy Apple Remote can do, and gives you a great look of what you have available.

Also considered a killer app is the one from Pandora.  After a quick sign up and orientation process, this cool little program allows you to create your own radio stations based on your favorite artists.  On 3G or WiFi, the audio quality is nearly as good as any other music files you may have on your device.  Plus if you run across tracks you may not like, you can tell Pandora this and you won’t hear similar songs again on that particular station.  Best of all, it’s absolutely free.

The Bad

Quite coincidentally, some of the lesser apps available come from some of the names that you may not have expected them from.  Namely, New York Times and Google.  The New York Times app allows you to look through some of their top stories, which sounds great initially. However, the app runs noticeably slow and unfortunately displays a huge ad on your screen whenever you view a full story.  As for Google’s app, it interestingly has far less functionality than is available on their mobile site optimized for iPhones.  You can’t help but get the feeling that it was thrown together at the last minute, and was of course not rejected by Apple due to the fact that it was in fact Google creating it.  Both of these apps leave a lot to be desired, and hopefully will be updated in the future.

The Silly

While these apps might not be definable as “great” by any stretch of the imagination, they are just kooky enough to warrant at least trying out.  First off is PhoneSaber, which basically turns your device into a lightsaber.  You can choose the color of your saber, and the device will make appropriate whooshing sounds as you wave it around.  Absolutely pointless, but still a lot of fun.  Another good example is iPint, which turns the device into a “virtual” beer after playing a quick and easy game.  And of course, World9, which senses quick movements and makes appropriate NES quality jump sounds.  These apps are all honestly stupid, but are at least worth a quick download for a good laugh.

The great part of all of this is that this will really be the tip of the iceberg.  Apple is adding new apps every day, which seem to be democratically sifted out to reveal the great ones by the community around it.  On that note, If you find a great app we haven’t mentioned, feel free to let us know about it in our Sci / Tech forum.

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