10 iPhone Apps you should buy

10. Air Mouse Pro, £3.98 – This awesome app lets you use your iPhone to control your computer from afar. Using either the pointer or track-pad mode you can control your Mac or PC’s pointer, and with the keyboard and dedicated media controls you can enter type and flick through your tunes.

This app is particularly handy if you, like me, hook up your Mac or PC to your TV to watch films. You can sit on your sofa and wafting your iPhone in the air summons up your film to the amazement of all those assembled. Even if “all those assembled” is just the cat – he’ll pretend he’s not impressed but he is.

9. LogMeIn £17.99 – This app easily justifies its frankly, pretty hefty, price tag by letting you use your home computer from anywhere in the world (with a decent 3G signal, so not like, Stroud). Download a free software whirligig from www.logmein.com to your home computer and you’re off.

Failing to see the potential of this? Okay. So you’re on your way to a meeting you realize you’ve left your spreadsheets on your home PC, and if you don’t have them Johnson’s going to do a poo, you’re already on your last warning after the incident with the sausage rolls and the Dutch rep at the Christmas party. Fear not, whip out your iPhone, launch LogMeIn, open your email, attach the files, send them to yourself, Bob’s your uncle – Fanny’s your Aunt, you escaped another day without revealing just how ridiculously incompetent you really are.

8. Atomic Clock £0.59 – Okay I realize the geek factor with this app is substantial. But seriously it’s like the MOST accurate clock ever. It uses a special internet protocol to fetch the ultimate mega-exact time from a dedicated Apple Time Server used to synchronize Mac OS X systems.

The on-screen display even mimics the famous Gorgy clocks used in Radio and TV stations – like the one John Humphreys looks at in the Today studio when he says, “It’s coming up to quarter to eight, so that means it time for thought of the day,” and everyone turns off.

Unfortunately you can’t sync the Atomic Clock with your phone’s clock – which is a bit crap.

7. Email ‘n Walk £0.59 – This app keeps you from looking like a numpty. We’ve all been there walking along when we get an email. No way! Rich snogged Lisa at Greg’s house last night even though Rob was there and he totally fancies her and Rich knows and he was really out of order and everything. Or something to that effect. Then, frantically emailing back, you walk into a lamp post.

Email ‘n walk lets you compose emails while using your iPhone’s camera to show you where you’re walking – niftypies! So you can avoid those uncaringly placed pieces street furniture without taking your eyes off your phone.

6. Safe £3.49 – Safe lets you secrete your most private and personal particulars on your iPhone, password protected using 256-bit AES encryption, certified by the NSA for government use and TOP SECRET information.

With pre-designed templates, you can store all your bank and personal details and even if you lose your phone nobody’s getting into it.

Maybe more useful is Safe’s ability to hide photos. You know, those photos. Of your other life? You can hide them, safe in knowledge that nobody snooping in your phone, will find out about your other life in that UB40 tribute band. Oh no, I’ve said it now. On the internet. To everyone. Sozzzz.

5. Intelliscreen £7.59 – For jailbroken bad-lads only I’m afraid. This app lets you view your email and SMS inboxes, weather, RSS feeds and calendar on your front-page without having to unlock your phone.

Need to know more about Jailbreaking? Check out our guide here.

6. Brothers In Arms £5.99 – Easily the best 3rd-person shooter on the iPhone. Brothers In Arms is a must for anyone looking to escape the crush and drudgery of the daily commute, to the altogether more relaxing world of the hellish blood-soaked WWII battlefield.

Sigh – thems were the days.

5. Simplify Music 2 £1.79 – Easily the lamest of the tile designs here, Simplify 2 will, doubtless, end up relegated to the third screen of your springboard. But you’ll probably use it more than your ipod, as it streams music from your home computer’s itunes. Buzz-zing.

With Simplify you no longer need to worry about filling the piddling 8gig of storage on your iphizzle.

4. Tioti TV+ £1.79 – Not only an insanely comprehensive TV guide but also a remote Sky+ controller and an iPlayer viewer! This well thought out app even lets you mark the shows you like and builds you your own ‘Personal Channel’ – compiling a TV schedule that you can see any time on ‘My Tv’.

3. Reader £1.79 – There are lots of RSS and ATOM viewers for the iPhone but certainly none with the feature this little baby packs. Import your feeds from Google reader, Netvibes or my Yahoo!

But the real beauty of this app is its sheer span of options for drilling down into your plethora of blogs and RSSs, browse by categories, date, news items, unread and names.

It won’t however, sync with your blog account, only imports – got that. Imports. Not syncs. So it can import, but it can’t…? Sync. Yes that’s right, well done, clever you.

2. Pocket Lawyer £2.99 – We’ve all been there – it’s 3.30am, you’re face-down on the pavement with an 18 stone copper on your back and you’re screaming, “get off me, I know my rights!” But you don’t. You’ve no clue what you’re rights are. You know the one about right to a fair trial, right to freedom of expression – but not the one about not being sat on by a massive prop-forward for no reason.

But with this cunning little app, reams of useful legislation are but a finger-tap away. Is some morose nerdowell refusing to serve you alcohol at 10 to 12 in your local BP garage; whip this beauty out and shove section 4 clause 11.2 of the Licensing Act 2003 in his stupid face. “Read it beehotch, that’s the law, now give me my Blossom Hill sucka.”

1. PDANet £1.99 – Tethering! Ahh the El Dorado of functionality. Some iPhoners will tell you it doesn’t exist, that it can’t be done. Don’t listen to them, they are the sheep, the drones, the proles, the shit-munchers. It does exist. For those basking in jailbroken liberty tethering is very much a reality.

PDANet lets you use your phone’s 3G or EDGE signal to access the internet on your PC or Mac. Does that sound ace? It is. When you’re in Stroud and you can’t get a WiFi signal for love nor money just tether up to your iPhone and away you go.

It does rinse your battery though, and if you haven’t got an unlimited data contract you might end up losing your home.

10 Paid CR-APPs (see what we’ve done there?)

10. GPS Compass £2.99 – A compass, that doesn’t work – not even remotely. Launch it and without a moment’s hesitation it says, “North – that way” and is almost always absolutely wrong. This app isn’t just useless, it’s dangerous, if you’re lost this thing will get you loster. I know it’s not a word – when I get angry my semantics suffer.

9. Time Crisis £5.99 – I wasn’t expecting much, it didn’t provide much. Tapping a screen to shoot people is just rubbish. It’s not their fault really, they’ve made good stab at it. It works well enough. It’s just that when you’re raining a hail of bullets at people with your thumbs you can’t really see what you’re shooting at. And no one wants to feel like that. Except for American soldiers. Who love it.

8. iBubble Level £0.59 – A spirit level in your phone – what could be better than that? I don’t know; an actual spirit level. The spirit level is a genius invention, this is most certainly not. It’s only really any good if you calibrate it to within an inch of it’s life, which is such a laborious process that by the time you’ve done it, you’ll be within an inch of your life, and that shelf will still be squint and you’ll realize I should have spent a pound on a real spirit level.

7. Fake Calls £0.59 – An application that ‘simulates fake calls’ to give you ‘the perfect excuse to get out of an annoying conversation’. Here is my tutorial on how to do exactly the same thing without having to buy this piece of crap. So, you’re in an annoying conversation with Ian, from accounts, he’s talking about talking his love of adult pop-up books (no not adult like that, adult like subject matter) “Yeah I’ve just got this new one, it’s the Maisons of the Dordogne.” At this point take your phone out of your pocket and say the words, “Sorry I need to take this.” Then leave the room, he’ll assume it was on silent. No need for Fake Calls just good old fashioned cunning. Next week – whistling to hide guilt.

6. iFart £0.59 – Farts are funny! Proper funny, ones that come out of your bum. Not ones that come out of your phone. You also don’t have to pay for the ones that come out of your bum – not a penny, especially not 59 of them.

5. Feng Shui Decision £0.59 – FSD might seem like its making decisions randomly, but it’s not, it’s analysing the Feng Shui of your current surroundings and then selecting the appropriate answer based on that information.

If you’re dumb enough to let ‘the Feng Shui of your current surroundings’ decide a course of action for you, download this, live by it, and see how it takes before your life goes tits-up.

Feng Shui – Feng Shite more like.

4. National Rail Enquiries £4.99 – No platform numbers, inaccurate information and an unjustifiable high price-tag, especially when iRail a free app did exactly the same thing but was then snatched out of the App Store.

Why would anyone pay 5 buff for an application that does something that you can do in Safari quicker, easier, with more accurate information and for free.

3. Glasgow Mini A-Z £5.99 – A whole series of the ‘Mini A-Z’s have popped up, giving you a detailed map of specific cities, at the touch of a screen. The only thing is, there’s already an app that does the exact same thing, does it better, for free and goes beyond the limits of just one city. It’s called Maps.

And if you do find yourself lost in Glasgow, a map will only be third on a list of things you need, a decent pair of running shoes and the will to live being the top two.

2. v.Drummer £1.19 – This piece of cr-app just can’t keep up with my blazing finger beats and with just one set of drum sounds for you hard earned £1.19, you’ll feel right disappointed once you launch this pointless sod.

1. Police Scanner £1.79 – A police scanner, supposedly, although this cynical old hack is more than a bit suspicious of the veracity of these supposed ‘police channels’ and find it even more hard to believe that Apple would let you download a Police Scanner of it’s App Store. Also no UK cops, just yanks cop, bloody moaning fascist yank cops, loads of them, all the time, just moaning, and being fascists and that.