25 Native iPhone Apps We Hope to See

iPhone Apps We Hope to See, #25-#21

25. Amazon Kindle Client/E-Book Reader

Amazon's Kindle e-book reader is half brilliance and half failure. The brilliant part is Amazon's Internet system, which allows you to search for and buy electronic books or periodicals and download them directly to the company's reader hardware. The failure part is the reader hardware itself, so poorly designed that it practically cries out for Apple to redesign it. Since Apple isn't in the business of doing Amazon's work, how about this instead: Amazon takes its Internet and payment services and sticks them on a piece of hardware with a design that's approximately 1 billion percent better than what Amazon is currently selling. Would people really buy and read books, magazines, and newspapers on their iPhones? If you're Amazon, it's worth a try.

24. Photo Booth

Okay, so this is an Apple application. But we've found that if there's one app on our Macs that people can't resist playing with--particularly if they're of the younger persuasion--it's Photo Booth, OS X's built-in snapshot software. Adding a similar program to the iPhone that lets you apply funny filters and effects to snapshots you take with the iPhone's camera would probably be a big hit. And if Apple doesn't step up to the plate, what's to stop a third-party developer from filling the void?

23. Screen-Shot Utility

Though this one might be of most interest to those of us who spend our time writing about the iPhone, we've noticed that our text reads even better when it's accompanied by images of what's on the iPhone's screen. A screen-shot application would allow us to reproduce such iPhone screens without the muss and fuss of jailbreaking a phone to install a similar Apple-unauthorized tool. And while the benefit to folks in our line of work is clear, we're sure that anyone who might want to include iPhone screen grabs in everything from presentations to QuickTime movies would welcome such a tool as well.

22. Digital Level

Remember that bubble level in the garage, hanging there and mocking you while you're upstairs, 60 feet away, trying to make sure your latest Picasso acquisition is hanging straight on the wall? Thanks to the accelerometers in the iPhone, you actually have a pretty good replacement sitting right in your pocket. An application simply needs to read and display the values from the accelerometers, and you could then see exactly when anything you're trying to hang is level. Sure, it won't replace a professional-grade, 4-foot aluminum level, but for odd jobs around the house, which are you more likely to be carrying when you need it?

21. Airfoil for iPhone

Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil 3 is a terrific tool for streaming any audio that runs through your Mac to an AirPort Express Base Station or Apple TV and its attached audio system. Wouldn't it be lovely to have a similar capability available on your iPhone? We'll answer that question for you: Yes, it would.