iPhone Applications

Matt Miller at ZDNet beat me to the punch about the lack of free trials in the iPhone App Store, but boy have I been thinking that all day. I spent the last 8 hours downloading applications to determine which ones we here at LAPTOP Magazine liked the best. I downloaded tons of stuff, including applications like the MLB At Bat, which costs $4.99, and Moo-Cow-Music’s Band for a hefty $9.99. Granted, I don’t pay out of my own pocket for software, but I racked up a bill of about $75 today in iPhone applications.

Sure, there are loads of free applications—and it turns out some of the best applications are the free ones—such as Facebook and Pandora. But other apps, such as games, can cost anywhere between $2.99 and $20. (LionClock Lite, which God knows what that is, costs $29.99.) Why download a $10 application that you may not even like? This is the reason software companies offer full, or even limited, versions of its software for 15- to 30-day trials. (Plus, it’s a great way to reel in the addicts; after 30 days of playing Bejeweled, you try to live without it.)

So why has Apple decided against free trials? Probably because they want you to pay for a non-refundable game or application. On the other hand, this will probably mean the end user will want to read more reviews of mobile applications, so in the end that keeps the money coming to me, and then I can buy all the iPhone Apps I want.

While working on a post for my favorite iPhone applications, I came across one app that was just too amazing not to talk about right away. Hold on to your seats Star Wars lovers (including you, YouTube Star Wars Kid), because you can turn your iPhone into a PhoneSaber. No, seriously, that’s exactly what TheMacBox calls its application.

We preface this short review by saying the 0.8MB application is free. We did not spend our hard-earned money on becoming mobile Jedi masters. Here’s how it works: as you swing your phone, a range of light saber sound effects come out of the iPhone’s speakers. You can change the color of the saber on the left side. Saber colors include: blue, green, red, purple, and yellow.

When you are not swinging the phone—I mean saber—you get some nice high-tech background noise. But words cannot detail this application. Check out the video of my fight with iPhone lightsaber-wanting Haselton. Read the rest of this entry »