iPhone/iPod touch Must Have Apps

[KTrain]

I agree. I'd rather pay for a game that I can play at him own pace, than get something for free and be at the whim of what the developers feel is the balance between playing and in-app purchases.

[Knut]

I would rather haveit suck me in and I pay a set fee up front.

Quit the Simpsons tap game as you really need to spend a bunch of real money to push the game along. And if forget a few days you are behind.

[Russic]

I don't mind the freemium model, but there needs to be a balance. The Simpsons is a good example of how it can be done poorly, as there are things that simply must be purchased. You might get 1 donut (currency) if you play throughout the day, but a big ticket item can be about 200 donuts.

Tiny Tower on the other hand is an example of it done right. You don't have to pay, but the option is there if you'd like to speed things along. A good freemium model to me dangles the carrot juuuust out of reach but at least gives you the impression it's possible to attain.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by Russic

I don't mind the freemium model, but there needs to be a balance. The Simpsons is a good example of how it can be done poorly, as there are things that simply must be purchased. You might get 1 donut (currency) if you play throughout the day, but a big ticket item can be about 200 donuts.

Tiny Tower on the other hand is an example of it done right. You don't have to pay, but the option is there if you'd like to speed things along. A good freemium model to me dangles the carrot juuuust out of reach but at least gives you the impression it's possible to attain.

Good point. Tiny Tower is done well. The Simpsons (which I quit after a day or two) and Ghostbusters (which I'm close to rage quitting any day now) are way out of whack. Want to buy one of the real Ghostbusters to use on your team? They cost 50 power cores. Each. You get 2 power cores for each floor you finish in the game.

[Wood]

The new game Pixel People looks like it has potential for a freemium game. Seems a lot like Tiny Towers expanded into a city builder

Has anyone tried it yet?

[Cheerio]

Temple Run 2 sucks, it takes like 20 seconds for the app to load.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Cheerio

Temple Run 2 sucks, it takes like 20 seconds for the app to load.

On what device?

I made the mistake of downloading Theatrhythm for my iPhone 4 recently. It took around a full minute to load the app, then at least 30 seconds to load a stage (and didn't even have a moving background!). What a disaster. Glad I have the 3DS version!

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Mccree

My wife and I have started playing ticket to ride. It is a really fun game. We share the same iTunes account on both of our iPads. If I purchase the expansion packs thru the in app puchase does my wife also have to purchase the expansion or does she get it automatically since we share the same iTunes account?

My friends got me hooked on playing the "Ticket to Ride" board game. So I thought I would buy the app. Well, it's $5.99. Which is fine if it's a fun game. But the thing is still LOADED DOWN WITH ADS. Mostly for the company's other games or it constantly bugs you to buy the in-app purchases.

But on top of that, the achievements board is dumb-ass. "Play 20,000 games". Who the heck is going to play 20,000 games if each game takes 30 minutes to play? 10,000 hours of playing a game? That's 416 days of your life.... more than a full year dedicated to playing this app. How ridiculous is that? And some of the others are equally unattainable.


BTW - Baldur's Gate is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better after the update from last week.

[Cheerio]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

On what device?

I made the mistake of downloading Theatrhythm for my iPhone 4 recently. It took around a full minute to load the app, then at least 30 seconds to load a stage (and didn't even have a moving background!). What a disaster. Glad I have the 3DS version!

iPhone 4S, Other friends on iPhone 4/4s's have been having the same issue. If I'm gonna play a game on my phone it's just to kill some quick time, and when it takes 20 seconds to load I've lost most of my will to play.

[Superflyer]

If anyone is still playing the Simpsons game I need some neighbors.

My username is superflyer1 I believe.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Superflyer

If anyone is still playing the Simpsons game I need some neighbors.

My username is superflyer1 I believe.

I just added you, origin can be weird though. If you have a friend request from Jonny_P19 that's me.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Good point. Tiny Tower is done well. The Simpsons (which I quit after a day or two) and Ghostbusters (which I'm close to rage quitting any day now) are way out of whack. Want to buy one of the real Ghostbusters to use on your team? They cost 50 power cores. Each. You get 2 power cores for each floor you finish in the game.

25 floors? Now we know how Ray, Egon, Peter and Winston felt climbing Dana's building on that fateful day.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by Russic

25 floors? Now we know how Ray, Egon, Peter and Winston felt climbing Dana's building on that fateful day.

My daughter just spent all my power cores on more energy last night

[Komskies]

Any must have apps that aren't games? I just loaded a $25 gift card onto my app store but don't really have interest in iPhone games.

[KTrain]

What kind of apps are you interested in? Business? Sports? Music? Exercise?

[Komskies]

Probably finance/stock apps, sports, productivity, food (restaurant or cooking), possibly exercise but I find the free Fitday app pretty suitable, general utility apps.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Komskies

Probably finance/stock apps, sports, productivity, food (restaurant or cooking), possibly exercise but I find the free Fitday app pretty suitable, general utility apps.

Most good sports apps are free (I like Yahoo Sportacular myself).

Productivity:
Clear - Incredibly basic todo list app. No sub items under items, just lists that are damn quick to create and actually fun to cross off (it uses colour and sound). I realize it sounds dumb, but whenever I'm feeling like I have too much going on and I need to jot tasks down quickly, it's a go to.

Turboscan: Not the most beautiful app in the world, but it'll use the camera to scan documents as pdfs, then you can email them to yourself. I use it to track my expenses and it sends all my pdfs to a folder in my dropbox, so come tax season I have everything organized into folders (gas, office expenses, etc.).

Fantastical: There are several things I don't like about the calendars app by apple. The daily task area is below the calendar view, so you can only see 2 items. Fantastical lets you switch views from full calendar to a thin strip of days so you can focus on what you have that day, as well as upcoming. In addition, it's far easier to schedule events (you can type something like "lunch with dad tomorrow at Denny's" and it'll fill in the necessary info).

Food:

Paprika - Fantastic recipe management tool. My favourite feature of it is you can throw a url at it and it'll extract the recipe from the page for you, and then you can edit it and add notes.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Komskies

Any must have apps that aren't games? I just loaded a $25 gift card onto my app store but don't really have interest in iPhone games.

Tapatalk and Downcast.

Sent from my SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Komskies

Probably finance/stock apps, sports, productivity, food (restaurant or cooking), possibly exercise but I find the free Fitday app pretty suitable, general utility apps.

StockTouch is a cool app for looking at the various market segments in aggregate - really different than any other finance app available on iOS http://stocktouch.com/

Soulver is a really neat take on calculator - it's really more of a 1 column spreadsheet, including the ability to reference previous results in other lines, define variables, etc. It's often overkill for simple calculations, but so, so, so handy for situations where you are working out a train of thought about something that involves calculations http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/

PDFPen is a bit pricey, but just awesome for marking up/editing/annotating PDF's: http://smilesoftware.com/PDFpen/iPhone/index.html

I use all three (on the iPad, but all three support the iPhone), and consider them best of breed at what they do.

[FanIn80]

Galaxy on Fire 2™ HD is this week's free app in the App Store. Considering it's one of the most downloaded games, even at its usual $10 price point, I'd say free is a pretty good deal.

https://itun.es/ca/2ghUB.i