101 Most Essential iPhone Apps of 2008
Posted 12/09/2008 at 11:56am
| by Mac|Life Staff

85. AIM
Until iChat hits the iPhone, AIM is there to fill our AIM chat cravings.

84. Comic Touch
Add thought and word bubbles to your images. Create your own Far Side comics with pictures of your friends. Of course your friends have to be ducks and cows.

83. mDialog
You can't get MMS messages on your iPhone, but if you sign up for an account at mDialog.com, you can send videos to an iPhone or iPhones that have the mDialog app installed. Other features include public and private channels, feedback, search, favorites, and more.

82. HangTimer
I believe it's time for me to fly: HangTimer uses the accelerometer to measure when skiers and snowboarders become airborne, tracking your hang time, remembering your best jumps, and even serving up cached trail maps and a snow report. If you've got an iPhone 3G, it'll even plot your jumps on Google Maps. Gnarly.

81. MySpace
Finally you can visit your friends MySpace page without their horrible pimpmyspace theme--that incidently makes reading their low-level manifesto impossible--and whatever horrible song they chose that week. Clean and intuative. How MySpace should be.

80. Sextuple Word Challenge
Once you realize that it isn’t the slightest bit risque--despite the pretty girl in the icon--Sextuple Word Challenge will fill your day with jumbled, word-puzzle goodness.

79. Google Earth
Show this off to impress your friends without iPhones. You can navigate around by tilting the iPhone, and tap the Location button to fly to your current location. So cool, so free. Thanks again, Google.

78. Tiny Violin
When something is just so sad, it makes you want to pantomime playing a really, really tiny violin? Now you can play actual sad music with a Tiny Violin on your iPhone. Best 99 cents we've ever spent.

77. MLB At Bat
The official MLB app serves up baseball scores, pitch-by-pitch game-tracking, and even highlight videos. The only bummer is you have to rebuy it every season—but $5/year is more than worth it for true baseball fans.

76. Gas Cubby
Gas Cubby can keep all the data about your car right at your fingertips, including gas mileage, service history, expenses, license and insurance info, and more.

75. Trails
Record, import and export trails of your hikes. The app uses the GPX file format and is importable into a variety of applications.

74. Sol Free
It's Solitaire. It works. It's free. It also provides interesting stats. And did we mention it's Solitaire, it works just peachy-fine, and it's free? Comes with just five games, and not a bajillion like some of the non-free solitaire option. But we repeat: It's Solitaire. It works. And it's free.

73. Evernote
The free Evernote app lets you create text, snapshot, or voice notes easily, which are automatically synced to the Evernote online service and PC or Mac desktop client. Includes geotagging, character recognition for text in snapshots, and more.

72. Star Trigon
A copy of a little-known, six-year-old arcade game, Star Trigon comfortably slips into an iPhone. Tap the screen for your only control, slinging the always-circling, space-faring character out of orbit and towards a new planet.

71. PhotoCalc
The calculators assist intermediate and advanced DSLR photographers, while the wide range of information can upgrade beginners’ skills.