Chris' Top 5 iPhone Apps of 2010

As my iPhone 3G struggles to remain relevant with its below average guts—and has, for that same reason, kept me from buying Plants vs. Zombies—I still have had great fun with all the apps I've found. This holiday season marks my first year with a smart phone. In that year, here is what I have enjoyed the most.

5. UFO on Tape



Although I've only played this game for around twenty minutes total, I love this game. The premise is this: you are on a train with your friend (of unknown ethnicity) and you spot a UFO in the distance on your video camera, which is your iPhone. You hold up your phone as you would a camera and follow the UFO as it dawdles to and fro (wherein lies the challenge) while your friend (from Berlin, France--or Mumbai, Austria) encourages you to keep filming. The UFO animation is fake, but the rest is actual video footage (or at least looks it). The feeling, if I'm not making myself clear, is that it really looks like you are filming a UFO from a moving train. It's very fun, difficult, and 99 cents.

4. Mega Jump

A recent discovery, Mega Jump is a free Doodle Jump that is—sorry—better than Doodle Jump. You guide a not-as-cool-as-the-Doodle-Jumper character up into the sky, using the accelerometer to guide it around the screen, collecting coins and power-ups to keep ascending. Each coin gives you a tiny upward boost, and power-ups launch you higher, or magnetize your character to draw coins inward, or give you boots to run up the side of the screen like NinJump or Gunstar Super Heroes. The music is better because there is music at all. The graphics are more vivid and interesting. But the best part about Mega Jump is the upgrade system. You earn points by playing with which you buy new power-ups, upgrade old ones, unlock stages and characters, and so on. So it's...an action RPG?

No no no no no. But it's great fun.

3. Bebot

Bebot is a virtual instrument. It offers several synthesizers, and includes a Theremin option, too. The multi-touch X-Y axis functionality allows up to four points on the screen at once. Going left to right controls the pitch, while up and down controls different parameters like timbre or volume. The depth of customization is impressive, as well. You can alter the echo patterns and vibrato of the synths, for example. You can choose to view lines on the screen (like keys on a piano) or not. You can even remove pitches altogether so that, no matter where you touch the screen, you'll only play notes of a certain scale that you wish to play, like a major, minor, pentatonic—anything. This is my number three of the year because it is not a gimmick; it is a real instrument.

2. Tilt to Live

The best game I've played on my iPhone is the motion-controlled single screen shooter Tilt to Live. The player controls a tiny chevron who has no internal weapons but instead relies on power-ups to destroy as many red-dot enemies as possible. Homing missiles, local explosions, black holes, etc., float around the screen, waiting to be picked up. Since the original release, more modes and weapons have been added to keep the experience fresh. The main success of this game is the precision of its controls. If accelerometer-controlled ships sounds even slightly unwieldy, check out Tilt to Live and be surprised. Other advantages of the game are its achievement system, its graphics, and its humor. This game is funny. And superb.

1. Netflix

The functionality of Netflix on iOS is a beautiful combination of technologies. Pulling data from the movie-and-TV-database cloud to stream an episode of 30 Rock on my cell phone is the current pinnacle of amazement in the app world. If there is a “killer app” for the iPhone, I think that, right now, it is this.