I have the iTouch and want the iPhone. I can only acess email, forums and net if I have wifi available. I love all the apps though and don't know what I did before I had it.
Kate

Lol so true. I resisted so long saying all I need is a bAsic phone and texting. But now I find I m actually more efficient cause I can get new assignments and go straight there instead of having to run home, check my fax or email, mapquest where I have to go etc. I feel like those parents that Twitter on the commercial lol it s really just so much fun too

Marcia recently got an iPhone and she's hooked too. We trade info on favorite apps. If you are into bird ID like she is, you should check out the bird apps. I have one of the free or 1.99 ones and even that is amazing in it's sounds quality. My cats go crazy when I play the bird sounds!

I'm a big fan of books on tape, so rather than a lot of music I always have several full length novels from audible.com loaded on mine. Can't imagine driving to work without a book playing!

Here are a few of my favorite apps. Most were free, $0.99, or $1.99.

There's a wonderful Weight Watchers app, called iWatchr, that helps me calculate and track points.

iZenGarden and Koi Pond are restful and ZenBound is an entrancing game. In ZenBound beautiful cherry blossoms open along a tree branch to chart your progress. New levels are added all the time with free updates.

Best game ever is Enigmo.

If you like solitare, you need to get TriniTower (addictive!) and CardShark Lite (several standard solitares are free; for a price you get more games).

I love Crossswords, with daily automatic downloads of various newspapers crossword puzzles. Also AWSudoku!

Racer games are plentiful and I'm not coordinated enough to do well at any of them, but if you want just one try Low Grav Lite.

If you suffer from ringing in your ears or just have trouble sleeping, you'll want to check out WhiteNoise. The sounds are crystal clear and the pictures are beautiful. The purring cat and the boat swaying in water are awesome.

Classics is several classic books with full text. The pages turn like an actual book, with the flick of your finger. It's not at all cumbersome to use and it's great to have on your iPhone for those times you get stuck in a line or at the dentist's office. When you stop reading it puts a bookmark in your place so the next time you open the book you are right where you left off. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol and Dracula are just a few of the 23 books you get with it!

What's On is like carrying a TV Guide with you. You set it for your location and it gives you every TV show, by hour and channel. You can set alarms so you don't miss favorite shows. Very handy.

Flixster and NowPlaying do the same for movies - set your current location and find movies, theaters and start times.

UrbanSpoon is a restaurant finder - great if you travel and don't know where to get a good Pud Thai in the city you're in! Rates restaurants by type of food and level of expense.

Also good for travelers is Currency, for up to the minute currency exchange rates.

These are all fun and I'm glad I have them but I don't use them often: Stars, Planets, Shoes, Bags, Dice, MazeFinger, Zillow, Magic8Ball, Labyrinth, Realmaze3D.

I use Carpenter for a variety of things. Handy level device, ruler, tiltmeter, etc. I use this app more often than I expected to!

If you like to play with colors (I'm a quilter) you'll like ColorOven. Kind of like Adobe's Kuler program.

I use ToDo as one of my 4 stationary (always visible) apps. Easy access to my To Do lists for home, work, garden, quilting projects, etc. A little number icon shows you how many lists you have!

Do you know that if you hold your finger on an icon they'll all start to wiggle? Once that happens you can move them around to group apps you use more often or to put similar apps all on one page. By dragging an app from the stationary 4 on the bottom you'll make room to put something there you want to see and use daily. As they are wiggling you'll see a little "x" by some apps; those are the ones you can delete if you aren't using them. If you hit an x by mistake it will ask if you really want to delete it so don't worry that you'll accidentally get rid of something you want. Click back on the home button to set the icons and stop the wiggling.

Anyone else have favorite apps? There are millions (ok, maybe hundreds) so it's hard to keep up with everything available!

Kate

Hi, Wanna Run! Congratulations on your iPhone. It was something I didn't know I wanted, either, until I got mine. Now I can't bear the thought of not having one!

My land lines were constantly out of service, and they would send out repairmen over and over, only to have them go down in two weeks. I had a basic cell phone, too. Finally, I got mad and decided I was going to cancel the land lines and go get a GOOD cell phone, and that would just be IT. I already had AT&T cell phone service, so I stopped by their kiosk at the mall...and fell in LUUUUV.

I adore all the ringtones you can download, and I've learned how to make my own from snippets of favorite CD's. My default ringtone is the opening music from the HBO series, True Blood. ("Bad Things," by Jace Everett...it's so cool.) I found tutorials on how to make my own and spent a whole afternoon getting different ones to personalize for certain callers.

I don't have nearly as many apps as Kate, though I do have a lot of the ones she mentioned. Since I'm back on Weight Watchers, I couldn't do without iWatcher. I also found the best birding field guide, EVER. (iBird South) It cost me $10 and was worth every penny. It not only has tons of info on each species, range maps, line drawings AND photos, but it plays their bird calls, too. It's so cool to always have my bird ID info with me when I'm out anywhere.

That is the only app I paid more than $.99 for, I think. I don't do many games, but I do like Card Shark. (Everyone needs a game of solitaire for killing time now and then.) I also have a little game called Ant Hill. When I'm really mad at the fire ants in the yard, I come in, pull that up and spend fifteen minutes or so dropping land mines on them, just to hear 'em squeal.

Unlike Kate, I don't care for audio books, but I do read all the time, so I got Classics, which she mentioned. (I'm finally reading Call Of The Wild, which I somehow missed in school). I read regular books at home, but in the waiting room or in line, I pull that up and read another chapter or two in it. And there are several others in there I plan to read, as well.

I have another book one called Stanza, and I can download books from from several different bookstores into that, at a price. You pay for the books, of course, but not as much as a "real" book. I haven't used it yet, but I plan to.

I found a free wildflower ID book called iPlant. It's not REAL comprehensive, but it was free, and I HAVE used it a few times with success.

I like Nightstand, which is a great travel clock with several options, and free. I like Just Light, which is a terrific little flashlight. There is an app called iStat which lets you free up memory when things start to slow down a bit. It shows a pie chart of how much free memory you have available and with one click it dumps stuff (from a cache file, probably) and improves performance. It's free, too.

I have a good dictionary and iWiki, Showtimes for local movie times, completely with synopsis of the film and reviews, and a real favorite, iTranslate. In that one, you can pick your From language and your To language, type in a phrase and it translates it for you. There are 42 languages to choose from. (If you want to call someone a jerk in Swahili, it's there!)

We are AAA members, and I found a Discounts program that does a bunch of stuff, including tracking where you are and telling you what hotels, etc, in that area offer AAA discounts. But it also has a one touch button to call for your AAA roadside assistance, and because of the GPS feature, it can send a tow truck, etc, straight to you, from the nearest garage. Cool!!

I love changing my wallpaper daily, and have an app that has hundreds of scenic photos to choose from, plus I use my own photos, as well. The camera is actually pretty darn good, too. It's a feature I just love, because I don't have to remember to take my regular camera along with me.

There is a Voice Memo app that I didn't download, but that wasn't on the phone when I got it, so I'm guessing they have upgraded to include it, and it was installed automatically the last time I synched the phone. You can leave messages for yourself there, and it's a lot faster than typing on the tiny keyboard.

Oh, yeah...synching...they did NOT explain that to me when I got it, and it was a couple of days before I found out you need to do that regularly. And that's how you add everything. They never even told me I NEEDED to have iTunes installed on my computer to make everything work properly. But I blundered my way along until I figured it all out.

There is an app called Wallpaper Maker that lets you add text to your phone's wallpaper. You can put a contact number on there if you want, in case you lose it, and someone HONEST actually finds it. I'm nervous about doing that, but it is fun to add captions to family photos, etc, and use those as wallpapers. I made one with my dogs and a saying under them.

Have2Eat is a restaurant finder that will give you a list of restaurants in your area, with info on them, wherever you happen to be. And I forgot, the Showtimes movie finder does that, too. So if you are out of town and want to go to a movie, it will tell you what's playing THERE.

Another useful one is WhitePages. It's a phone directory, and saves you the charge of calling 411 for a number. Plus, it gives you a location map of the business or person you are searching for.

This device is so amazing, I can't believe it. It's an entire computer in your pocket. I hope you love yours as much as I love mine. Nicki's says I'm obnoxious about it!
Hahaha. So I downloaded a ringtone that has a girl with a really obnoxious voice saying, "Look, Everybody. I have an iPhone...and someone is CALLING me on it!" Hahaha. I set it to say that when SHE calls me!

Have fun!

Hugs,
Marcia

I think they call that "appnoxious"! lol

You guys crack me up! I'm gonna call you techo-geek-gardeners. LOL
I just have a Razor and just recently discovered that it has a camera. LOL
I'm off to google iPhone.
Have fun with your phones ladies.

Hi, Marion! You really don't have to be a techno-geek to use the iPhone...it's VERY user-friendly. Nice little icons for the apps so you can find what you want instantly. The hardest part for me was the original set up and learning to plug it into the computer and let iTunes update it. (It will do it automatically.)

Making your own ringtones is a whole 'nuther thing, and totally unnecessary for anyone except people like me who want to use specific songs. It comes with a whole bunch of ringtones already installed and ready to select.

I highly recommend having one. If you try it, you'll wonder what you ever did without it. Sitting at lunch the other day, we were trying to think of an actor's name from a movie. I pulled out my iPhone, hit the browser and looked up the movie, which listed everyone in it, with links to their individual pages. Voila. We had our answer in 30 seconds. Did the same with trying to place who was singing a certain song we heard. Opened the GPS to find an address we were heading for. Added our next lunch date to the calendar. Took pictures of some gorgeous bougainvilleas. Played solitaire in the doctor's waiting room yesterday. And oh, yeah...I made several phone calls, too! Hahaha.

Coming home from Target, I saw a hawk on the wire, and couldn't remember if it was a Cooper's or a Sharp-shinned, so I pulled over, opened up iBirds and looked at the paintings and photos, and voila...I had an ID.

All from my PHONE.

And by cancelling my land line and replacing my old cell service with the iPhone, I am actually paying less per month than I was for those two combined. About $80, including the internet fee. My land line was $55 a month, and my regular cell was $52.

I swear, it's a miraculous little thing. It makes my life BETTER...and lots more FUN!!

Try it...you'll like it. No, you'll LOVE it!

Marcia

You all are holding my computer in your hand .
Been a Mac fan since the early 80's .
I do not have access to high speed internet so cannot support an iPhone - which just about kills me .
All the rest of my family - who do not live with me - have iPhones so I know the art of the possible .
It truly is mind boggling what can be done with that tiny little device .
Enjoy your phones !

We were sitting by the pool eating lunch today when we started talking about going to see a movie. Jim pulled out the iPhone, found the movie time at our nearest theater, and bought the tickets. All we had to do was pick them up when we got there. We were driving home after the movie and heard a song we liked on the radio so we used the Shazam app and the iPhone told us what the song was! We were talking about the movie (Julie&Julia - wonderful!) and wondered if Amazon.com had a used copy of Julia Child's French cookbook; found it using the iPhone (and also found out it was expensive!).

Yes, I'm a techno geek and proud of it. I love this stuff!

Hi Kate, Marcia, Marion & Gator!

I am sooo addicted. I had been resisting forever but now I'm trying to figure out how I lived without it lol. Thanks for all the tips on the different apps and things. It's funny cause I had just accidently did the wiggly app thing and was like what the heck? Then I read your post and was all to happy to re-arrange my desktop (is that what it's called on the iphone?) So far the only apps I've added have been facebook, bump, runkeeper free, lose it, urbanspoon, and distance meter. One of these days I'm going to add couch to 5 K so I get motivated to get off the couch and start running again lol. I am so going to have to check out all those other apps!!! Only thing is I'm a little distracted the last couple of days...I just got a new MacBook lol!

Here's a fun thing to know if you ever use your iPodiPhone to listen to music or books. Rather than click it, then do the slide thing on the desktop to open it, then click on the pause button when it shows up, you can use this shortcut:
If the screen is dark, click once on the 'home' button (that's the round one towards the bottom). Then double click the home button. A volume and pause control will open up for the application you have running!
I don't have the iPhone so I use this feature all the time when my regular phone rings. I can pause the book I'm listening too quickly and still get to my phone before it goes to voice mail.

Kate