I was never someone who was impressed with iconfactory’s Twitterrific for iPhone and iPod Touch. I know it was the app for twitterers with these devices but it just didn’t win me over. I started using and enjoying another twitter app. But when I tried out a recent release of an updated Twitterrific 2.0, I gained new respect for this app. Support for multiple accounts, the ability to follow and unfollow in the app, the ability to search, the trends feature so you can keep up with the latest popular topics in twitterworld, and things like direct messages, mentions, and marked tweets being away from your main page unless you press the funnel icon to bring them up, are some of the things I really appreciate about Twitterrific.

When you highlight a tweet, you can click on the asterisk an the bottom and that brings up your action menu. Your options then include posting a new tweet with a link to the selected tweet, retweeting, viewing the poster’s timeline (author), checking out the poster’s user information, marking the tweet, setting it as a favorite, deleting it, and seeing the entire conversation the tweet is part of.

On the Source page, is a settings button that allows you to really personalize Twitterrific by giving you the chance to program such things as what clicking on a poster’s avatar will do, what a tap or double tap will do, which photo site you want to use for pics, how many tweets to load, and even the ability to integrate Instapaper (to save web pages to read later). All these things make Twitterrific a really customizable app.

Twitterrific is $3.99 to buy but the ads in the free version are not intrusive. I’ve paid for mine because I want to support this kind of development of great software. Call me a convert but now Twitterific is my twitter app of choice.

The Good: Just about everything and the ads in the free version are not at all tough to take.

The bad: As a reviewer, I hate having nothing to put here but as a user, it’s a great thing.

The bottom line: Twitterific is a superb app that is customizable and has almost everything a twitterer could want.

Download Twitterrific from iTunes

Download Twitterrific Premium from iTunes

I’ve had the iCatchall app by Michael Burford’s Headlight Software, for a while now. I’m pretty sure I got it when it was free at the App Store. Now it’s 99 cents but it’s 99 cents for what is now 24 applications in this one. Now, not all the apps are important or useful or even beyond being highlighted in our WTF apps of the week as individual apps (Flaming Balls of Fire?) but there are some useful ones and  the small kids in my life like some of the other ones too. When I got it, iCatchall was 16 apps in one. Now, as I said, it’s 24 apps. So, for your 99 cents you get apps continually added on. The apps even include the kitchen sink, or at least a game called the kitchen sink which I actually had as an individual app on my iPod Touch but removed once I got iCatchall. Almost all of theapps included in iCatchall are for sale at the App Store and many of them involve shelling out some money. Contact Clone and File Storage alone are worth the cost of this app but if you ever have the urge to listen to a fart, there’s one in iCatchall. Need a flashlight? iCatchall has one. Digital clock? Got one. Lunar calendar? Massager? Roll the dice? Got them too. You get the point. Check out the full list of apps on their site. There’s a whole lot of stuff in this one, reasonably priced app and if you don’t want the fart stuff, you can just buy iCatchall Tools which has the useful stuff without all the fun (but also for 99 cents so why wouldn’t you just get the complete version–you never know when a kid nearby could be occupied by playing with dice or listening to a fart).

The good: 24 apps in one and more added from time to time. You never know what will be next.

The bad: I’ve had a few crashes, but that gets better with each update and there are some pointless apps.

The bottom line: A great app that provides a wide variety of uses and saves you loads of money and icon space by combining them into one app. If I had the choice of only one app on my iPod Touch, it would be iCatchall.

Download iCatchall from the App Store

There are lots of pretty useless, tasteless, or crappy apps out there for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Some are free and some you have to fork out money for. Either way, these are apps that make us ask WTF? (All app links are to the iTunes App Store)

PushUp Counter
This one was originally 99 cents but at least now it’s free. The idea is to lay your iPhone or iPod Touch on the floor and then do pushups, touching your nose on the device each time so it will be counted. Man, that would be funny to watch. So if you have a lot of trouble counting, get this app and touch it with your nose.

iPregnancy Test
I have been bored before–hours spent in waiting rooms, long car rides as a passenger, you get the point. But I have never, and don’t expect I will ever be bored enough to think “wouldn’t it be great if I could use my iPod Touch to pretend to take a pregnancy test, you know, the fake pregnancy test app that I paid 99 cents for”. The app’s description says ” You get ALL the fun of pretending to see if your pregnant with NONE of the downsides! What more could anyone ask for!? ” Um, something I could use for um something, maybe.

Comeback Kid
Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George came up with the perfect comeback AFTER the opportunity had passed and then tried everything to setup a situation so he could use the comeback but he just looked pathetic. This is the iPhone equivalent of that. The app’s description says ” Every once in awhile, you just want to be wittier than the person you are talking to. ” And to do that, it suggests that when someone insults you, you should “open this app up and shake it or tap it until you find the perfect comeback. Every time you shake it (or tap) a new comeback shows up like magic. .. Then, to give you the utmost impact, hit a sound button and get a drum roll, a theater full of laughter or a cool cat call. Score! You did it.” Yeah, that will impress people–shake your iPhone a few times after you’ve been insulted, then say what the iPhone tells you to, and make your iPhone laugh at your comeback. Wouldn’t you be impressed?

iKissMe
You know those days when you’re feeling down and worthless? Maybe you’ve had a bad day at work or your girlfriend has broken up with you or you’re just feeling extra low for no apparent reason. Feel better by reminding yourself that you didn’t pay $4.99 for this application so you could press your lips against the screen of your iPhone and hear and “feel” a kiss. You feel better already, don’t you?

Vomit
Hey, hey, check this out. I’m going to pretend to vomit in order to fool my friends over there. So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to bend over and put my iPhone, with this vomit app open, under my mouth and then I’m going to do like the instructions say and “make gut-wrenching sounds” but if I had an iPod Touch I’d have to shake the Touch while I was pretending to vomit. And my friends will totally believe I’m puking because, well, because they must be idiots. I mean they were even impressed with my comeback that I couldn’t come up with until I’d shaken my iPhone sixteen times, and they played along when I did my fake pregnancy test, even though I’m a guy,  and they didn’t think I was weird when I was kissing my iPhone or poking it with my nose. Anyway, cool trick, huh?

A company has come out with a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch and guess what, it has sounds like farts and stuff. Not really newsworthy except if you know how they finally got this app released and also the relevance of the week in which it was released.

Alkali Media made up a soundboard type app called Crudebox. It had what Alkali calls “16 high-quality and mildly disgusting sounds” but, as they point out, no worse than many similar apps in the App Store. But Apple turned them down, citing Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:”Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.” So, they took out the sound of a female moaning and replaced it with the Boing of a spring and resubmitted again. Again they were turned down but they didn’t quite know what was objectionable (Apple doesn’t provide such info). Then they decided to change the graphics to a happier theme and make the names of their sounds nicer. Like Wet Fart became Big Toot and Fart became Toot (because you know the word “fart” is sooooo objectionable in the App Store). They also gave a nudge and a wink to Apple and called it PrudeBox. And you know what? Yeah, that’s right. Apple approved it.

And this approval happening this week is particularly significant because it’s both the week the billionth app was downloaded from the App Store and the week that Krapps.com started the Baby Shaker app story. The Baby Shaker app let you shake a crying baby to stop it from crying and then red Xs appeared in its eyes. Ugh. But once Krapps.com highlighted it, news organziations scooped up the story and ran with it. Apple removed the app with an apology that admitted the app was offensive and should not have been approved. But it was approved! And so have lots of apps with questionable content. But CrudeBox was too offensive? Well, PrudeBox is not, apparently. And while it may not exactly be our kind of app, it is just as good as any other soundboard app out there and bravo Alkali Media for pointing out a perfect example of how the app store approvals seem so very unbalanced.

Ah, we love alliteration. So check out the new poll in the sidebar. Tell us which pinball game for the iPod Touch or iPhone is your favorite. And if we missed one, please let us know.

There are a lot of reasons apps are placed on sale at the App Store. Christmas was huge, Valentine’s Day was big and even Earth Day is finding itself the sudden motivation for iPhone app developers to drop their prices. But maybe the best is Gameprom’s reason to drop the price of their Wild West Pinball from $2.99 to 99 cents–Grandmom’s birthday. I love this but not as much as I love Wild West Pinball for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Wild West Pinball starts with a flyover of the table and the instructions to tap the screen to play. Once you tap the screen, the rest is pretty straightforward. It’s pinball. Pull back on the spring to release the ball then tap anywhere on the right of your screen to move the right flipper and anywhere on the left for the left flipper. Along the way you’ll get as close to playing real pinball as you can on this device. No lag, great sounds, no fancy digital effects, just clean, realistic pinball fun. When you finish up you can check the global leaderboard and see how your score stacks up (see my high score below). My one drawback is the lack of instructions. Don’t get me wrong, I really like not having to go through a menu to start the game but a little “i” somewhere so you could find out about things like how to kill Dirty Harry and how you can pause the game (tap on electronic scoreboard on the top of the screen) or how to get back to the game once the leaderboard has been displayed (flick back to the game screen) would be good. There are some instructions in the app description at the App Store but it would be handy to have them somewhere in the game. All in all, Wild West pinball is the perfect pinball game experience for the iPhone or iPod Touch. And until May 1st, you can get it for the low price of 99 cents. If you like real pinball, grab it now!

The good: Clean, simple, 3D graphics; no lag in graphics; realistic sound; global leaderboard.
The bad: No help options.
The bottom line: Fantastic pinball game that could provide the user a little help along the way.

Download Wild West Pinball from the App Store

There are lots of pretty useless, tasteless, or crappy apps out there for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Some are free and some you have to fork out money for. Either way, these are apps that make us ask WTF? (All app links are to the iTunes App Store)

Peep Show-Sexy Slots
This one is a double-whammy. Besides being a pretty sad, sexist app for people so pathetic that they need to look at scantily clad women on their iPhone and pay 99 cents for it, it’s the category of this app that really irks me. Most of the ridiculous apps out there are at least classified as “Entertainment”. True, they make it hard for anyone to find the apps in that category that may actually entertain, but they at least call them as they see them. Peep Show calls itself a game and is placed in the game category. It’s called a game because in order to “play” (the quotes are the developers, not mine), you have to shake the iPhone or iPod Touch to get your quarter in the slot so that more of the woman can be revealed. WTF?!

iControl Her
Pssst, want a quick way to lose your iPhone? Check this out. Next time your girlfriend is angry because you don’t pay enough attention to her or is hurt because you stayed out late the night before and is trying to express how she feels, whip out the old iPhone or iPod Touch, start the iControl Her app, point the device at her, then laugh. Go ahead. See what a high heel can do to a device worth hundreds of dollars. I love how the description says it “Feels like and operate just like a remote”. You know, except that it feels like an iPhone or iPod Touch and it doesn’t really operate like a remote. And this one is not classified as entertainment either. Nope, this is a lifestyle app, as in it is part of your lifestyle to pay two bucks for something this stupid.

iLeprosy
Just when you thought there was nothing left to put a lowercase “i” in front of, along comes iLeprosy. In order to miss work or school you choose from twenty disgusting images to mar your face then send the picture to your boss. Yup, that’s going to work.

Dear Boss, I won’t be in today because I have leprosy. Check out the attached picture for proof. I’ll see you tomorrow when I’m sure I’ll be ready to wait tables again.
Signed,
An Idiot

And you only coughed up 99 cents for it.

Apgar Score
There are some pretty good iPhone and iPod Touch apps for medical professionals out there. And then there are some that make me wonder if they would ever be used. I mean, take something like calculating an Apgar Score for a newborn. Apgar is an assessment on a newborn baby based on appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration. I’m not sure if a medical professional, used to calculating this routine assessment would bother pulling out the iPhone to do it. I doubt it. But it’s more the app’s description that makes me wonder WTF. First of all it says that the app “eliminates all the guess work”. Let’s hope there’s no guessing going on when assessing the condition of a newborn. Then the app kindly tells us to “Remember that the Apgar score is a method for evaluating the general condition of an infant at birth.” which I’m hoping anyone trusted with creating an Apgar score would already know.

SnoopDogg
I often wonder what would Snoop Dogg say about something? And when I do, I don’t want to have to use my iPhone to google Snoop Dog quotes to find something profound like “Britney would make a better prostitute than Christina. She’s thicker.” Nope, I want an app dedicated to such pearls of wisdom and I want to pay $4.99 for it. Ah, I know I’m hatin’ on this. Maybe I shouldn’t. What would Snoop say? “We want people who hate to lose, like myself. Now marinate on that.” You said, it, Snoop, you said it.

There are lots of pretty useless, tasteless, or crappy apps out there for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Some are free and some you have to fork out money for. Either way, these are apps that make us ask WTF? (All app links are to the iTunes App Store)

Farthoven
I could do a WTF fart app of the week here but some stand out. Farthoven is actually a bit of a different one but why someone would want to pay $1.99 to play Happy Birthday that sounds likev diarrhea is beyond me. If you do, Farthoven is your app.

(Note by Apps Editor: After the iPhone/iPod Touch editor submitted this post to me, I discovered that there is a Farthoven lite version which is free and has less songs and recording abilities than the paid version. I still agree with the WTF but at least you can try it out for free.)
 

Awesome Ball
Bounce a ball in a box. This is a free app but this falls in the time is more valuable than money category as in you’ll be wasting yours to download this app.

AntiSnore - The Snore Killer
I know it’s just week three of our WTF apps of the week but this one is the champ as the one that made me scratch my head the most so far. Actually, it kinda scared me and I’ll tell you why. Don’t get me wrong, an anti-snoring device is a good thing in my books since I snore myself. So I was intrigued when I saw this 99-cent app. It’s a smart use of the accelerometer but the devil is in the details and the details of this one include that to use it you should strap your iPhone to your arm or leg! While you sleep!  The idea is that once you snore loud enough, at a level you have set in the app, the iPhone will vibrate and wake you. I see two problems: first, if I’m snoring, that means I’m having a good old sleep and no vibration will wake me up. Second, I have to strap my expensive iPhone to my arm or my leg while I am sleeping, where I routinely roll onto my leg or lie on my arm. I’ll be honest, I didn’t try doing this as I don’t want to break my iPhone. Personally, since the app does a nice job of recording snoring sounds while you sleep and provides detailed graphs and a database of sessions you’ve recorded, I think they should repackage this as a Snore Studier or Snore Recorder you can put on your bedside table or headboard and avoid the idea of someone sleeping with their iPhone stuck to their leg with gauze wrap. As a “snore killer” I say WTF?!

iStud: Ultimate Stud Finder
Maybe I’m just in a good mood this week and feel the need to help but I’m going to give some more unsolicited advice, this time to the developers of iStud, and suggest they rename this app the AntiStud. Let’s face it, any dweeb who tries to impress a girl by pretending to use this device to find a stud in a wall, then actually lets it discover that he is the stud it finds, probably is actually not a stud. They do warn you about that by telling you it’s not an actual stud finder. But hey, at 99 cents, you can test my theory out yourself, but you should probably question the sanity of any girl this impresses.

The Pee Factory
Really, they should just have a new category at the App Store called Bodily Functions (see, more free advice). Still, from time to time I might include one or two in this weekly roundup and this week it was Farthoven and now The Pee Factory. The first line in their own description is “NOW AVAILABLE after months of being banned from the App Store!!”. If that appeals to you or if you think you can make your friends think you’re peeing on their couch from the pretty weak sound coming from your iPhone or iPod Touch, then you deserve to pay 99 cents for this baby.

Now, I know that not every developer has as happy an ending as the ones included in the New York Times article, The iPhone Gold Rush, reposted here by CNET news, but it’s nice to know some people are finding their way. Success stories are always possible and great to read about.

There are lots of pretty useless, tasteless, or crappy apps out there for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Some are free and some you have to fork out money for. Either way, these are apps that make us ask WTF? (All app links are to the iTunes App Store)

Benny Boulder
What could be more pathetic than having a pet rock? Having a pet rock for your iPhone or iPod Touch. What could be even more pathetic than that? Spending 99 cents for it. (Although I will admit that Benny is a little cute but not 99 cents cute.)

iShake Dog
There are plenty of apps out there to help you relax. From those that claim to massage you to those that have soothing sounds and even some that let you clip plants to different shapes. But someone thinks that watching a dog shake would be relaxing. Actually, it’s just watching the dog’s head move a little but you know, even if the animation was great, is it ever relaxing to watch a dog shake himself? If my dog shakes himself it usually means that he is wet and/or muddy and he is probably going to make me wet and/or muddy.  Makes me say WTF, but if you think you’d like it, the app is 99 cents.

CoffeeColors
So, you love your coffee and you need to make it exactly right. So, here’s what you do. You buy this app for 99 cents and then you pick a color that you’d like your coffee to be, you know, how it should look with exactly the right amount of cream or half and half in it. What? The strength of the coffee can change the color? What? You think you might look silly holding your iPhone and checking the color of your coffee against it as you slowly add cream? Hmm. Well, I guess you could use your iPhone camera and take a picture of the perfect color of coffee for you but then you still have that whole looking silly while comparing your coffee to a picture on your iPhone. So, um, never mind. Maybe you could just try to remember how much cream to put in your coffee. Or measure it in teaspoons (there must be an app for that).

AlmondEmulator
I don’t know about you, but I frequently have the urge to taste, smell, see, hear or touch an almond and I find it inconvenient to have to go out and buy them. Now I can have an app that simulates the smell, feel, taste, look, and even the sound of an almond. This is obviously a WTF app but you have to appreciate the reviews on the App Store for this crazy app that at least is free.

Angry Cat
So, now you’ve got a nice dog you can shake, a pet boulder, the perfect color coffee, and the sounds of almonds at your fingertips. Everything is just a little too relaxed, isn’t it? You need something angry, something to mix things up. Then look no more because for 99 cents you can have Angry Cat, the angry cat simulator.  Again, you have to appreciate the reviews on the App Store for this app where you can poke, rub, and generally make this poor wet cat more and more irritated until the ferocious claws come out and the vicious cat sounds emit from your iPod Touch.

Now, if we could only get the angry cat and the iShake Dog together.