This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

What would be REALLY great is an elegant Basecamp iPhone app. I find myself having to deal with BC on the iPhone a lot – and it would be great to be able to use it as an interface when ticking off to-dos and other fun stuff.

I really want to see some 37signals apps! Basecamp and Highrise especially!

Whoever builds an SSH client for iPhone has my money for sure. I second the need for a Basecamp/Highrise app.

This is genius how they overcame the lack of bluetooth or infrared technologies for communication on the iphone: http://tapulous.com/friendbook/

I’d pay nearly anything for a really well done VNC /Screen Sharing app.

I’m stoked for the racecar game that they showed off at MacWorld. Tilting the phone to steer the car is a great idea. But I’m really stoked about gaming on the iPhone overall – I think it’s gonna be pretty swell.

Always having a guitar tuner and metronome in my pocket is a great case of problems I didn’t really know I had suddenly getting solved.

Manage your Basecamp projects. On your iPhone.

http://www.outpostapp.com/

I want the Highrise app, badly. ;-)

@Sean I’ll second that. Managing servers from the iPhone would indeed be large amounts of awesome in my book!

Second on the Highrise app.

Also, if 37signals was worried about creating apps that live on the client, instead of the server, the App Store makes it really easy to push new versions to the clients….........

I’d like to see a GPS tracking app. Maybe in conjunction with google maps or just for collecting data. So that you can do a bike tour or a hike and then later watch the track you’ve taken, see the profile of the tour, your velocity etc.

I’m actually very excited for the Pandora app. One of my favorite web apps; simple, easy, fun, super useful. Glad to have it mobile!

I’m with Matt. I want Pandora on iPhone, but the Pandora site uses Flash for their music delivery, so we’ll have to wait for an iPhone version of Flash I think.

I meant to say that I’m with Eric!

@Matthew: Friend Book looks fantastic, I’ve really missed an on-the-fly method of sending contacts on my iPhone. I can’t find it in the Irish App Store though, possibly only on the US one?

I wish PayPal would release their Application internationally. It’s sad how companies region-locks their software when they do business in other countries and there’s no good reason for them not selling in those other countries.

/sigh

Adium really needs to write an iPhone app. I’d definitely part with some cash for that.

Yeah, the Adium guys are working on it, but it isn’t a priority, the 10.5 requirement and the switch to the UIKit makes it a lot of work for them. I am going to try and take the bar code scanner code from http://www.bruji.com/cocoa/barcode.html and see if I can’t tie that in with an Amazon search so I can look up reviews of products from anywhere easily. I’m sure there are real developers doing something similar already, just look at how many apps are at launch. Compared to other “phone” platforms, this has to be the easiest to develop for right?

@sloan -

The ability to scan any bar coded product and get reviews/info on it instantly would be a great application. Very helpful when shopping for consumer products.

Holy crap… the Remote app is the sweetest thing ever made when you use it with the AppleTV. It eliminates the need to have the TV on, and frankly it’s a much faster interface. That is absolutely great stuff (once you get the new version of software for the AppleTV, anyway).

This is awesome stuff. Also looking forward to the creativity Android will unleash.

Did anyone else find the iPhone Apps Store hugely disappointing? –Especially design-wise? Not the store itself but the horribly-designed apps and icons for each. Most apps (and icons) looked incredibly juvenile, and this after all the coaching and mentoring Apple provided with their iPhone Developer Connection: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/ This is an awesome resource that provides a plethora of videos, tutorials, and everything else you could possibly ask for that made it almost impossible to design a poor UI. Apple also set the standard and the example with super simplistic, colorful eye-candy icons and well-thought-out interfaces but still, developers delivered too many interfaces like the much-maligned TripLog where the most basic UI rules such as button size, alignment, spacing, and color were completely disregarded.

What gives?

Did these developers watch the videos, read the docs or take notes on how to design for the iPhone? Perhaps Apple’s resources gave developers enough confidence to go it alone without any UI designers on board? I wasn’t impressed.

I don’t know Andrew, where’s your effort? What have you done?

To Andrew’s point, Apple did do a great job of writing up specs, interface guidelines, etc. ... but if they were going for standard layouts, they could have offered a basic stylesheet / colophon / CSS file. Knowing that the default font should be 17px bold Helvetica is nice, but there are so many elements that don’t have written-up specs, it leaves developers trying to recreate it without a real guide.

Maybe there is some documentation that I haven’t seen,but I think I’ve looked at all of the HIG / developing for Safari on iPhone PDFs and videos from the Developer site. If any of you have seen a CSS file like that, I’d love to know about it. There’s always IUI , but I’d love something official, from Apple.

there are lots of apps made my developers without much backing, they are doing everything themselves and it shows. many of them can still create useful, though not pretty, applications.

@ jeff – the remote app is cool, we have an Apple TV and love using iTunes on our laptops to control it directly instead of turning on the TV and using the remote. it works like a music remote that way (though you cannot select videos). i also like hooking my laptop to speakers in one room and select the Apple TV to play as well so that i have synchronized music throughout the house.

My iPhone App is coming! And it’s sweet! Thanks for asking!

Regarding the quality of the apps, please remember that we’re talking about a new device, new form factor, new user interface (not to mention a new programming language)... and (unless you count jailbroken iPhones) the developers have had access to the SDK for about a half a year, all without any extensive user feedback.

Compare this period to the first few years of applications for the desktop computer. While the iPhone lends itself to more graphically enticing programs than DOS , it’s all still new. The real test of the platform will be how the applications morph over the coming months and years as developers familiarize themselves with the platform. I have a feeling that we’ll see the real explosion of creativity, innovation, and standardization start now.

@ justin – i know it is a new programming language to some people, but Objective-C has been around a long time and if you know C and C+ , it is really close, in fact you can write code in C or C + if you want. the interface builder though has nothing to do with the language really and it comes down to a lot of programmers needing to simply read a few books on UI design and to get feedback to make their interfaces better. i would bet the best interfaces are the ones that went through some kind of testing, whether just internal guerilla testing or whatever. the capabilities of the platform though SHOULD be better exploited over time as programmers learn what the platform offers.

While the iPhone lends itself to more graphically enticing programs than DOS , it’s all still new

You mean than a Hercules graphic card.

That OmniFocus is what I’ve been thinking about doing for awhile now. But is GPS always on with the iPhone? Is the phone always location aware? If you can remember to turn on the GPS before you walk into the store, why not just remember to pull up your to-do list?

..that aside, this is why I need someone who can actually execute some of the ideas I have. I’m too lazy.