Install AppTapp + My 7 Favorite iPhone Apps

Posted by Miles Evans on 09/14/07 in Apple, Featured, Fun & Unique, Games

AppTapp is hella cool! I read about this a couple of weeks ago on TUAW and sort of glanced over it because I didn’t have an app happy iPhone until recently. NullRiver (the same guys behind connect360) might be the most famous 3rd party app designers for iPhone and they deserve it. Among other great tools they are behind AppTapp which is an iPhone application that makes loading programs on your iPhone rediculously simple. If you have wanted to testdrive some these great toys for your iPhone you keep reading about, but were put off by some of the DIY stuff involved, this is for you. Actually if you own an iPhone this is still for you.

AppTapp maintains an updated list of 3rd party iPhone apps released by devcelopers. If it’s in the wild you will almost certainly find it here. First dock your iPhone and install AppTapp.

AppTapp Installed

Now on the iPhone simply open Installer.app and install Community Sources which opens the flood gates to all of these homebrew programs. Once it’s done simply click on anything you want to install - AppTapp will automatically connect to the internet, download the program, verify the source, and install it. Removing programs is just as effortless.

My 5 most awesomest must have installs:

Term-vt100 is a terminal like app for all you guys who live in a shell. I found it a bit tough to use but it’s still a must have.
Summerboard extends the springboard (the area holding the apps on the iPhone and allows you to scroll them (because you now have so many!).
Now that you can move your icons around you can use XLauncher to arrange how they appear on the springboard. Cool.
Stumbler helps you to locate and get information on wireless access points. Now who is gonna port KisMac?
Frotz + Zork Z-Code. Remember the interactive fiction games like Zork of our childhood? Go south, take gun, kill bear? Oh yeah, their back and now portable.
FiveDice is a Yahtzee clone which doesn’t work that well yet, but promises to be a killer game on the iPhone. Note to author: multiplayer bluetooth support!
NES, is well an NES emulator, and while it’s mainly a proof of concept I love where this is going.

The AppTapp Installer.app is a free, and recently open source tool, but like any of these programs not sanctioned by the big A it is to be used at your own risk. In this case maybe the risk of not having any fun! Seriously though, Apple VP Greg Joswiak even went so far as to say a software update “will most likely break 3rd party iPhone apps”. (Boooo? - sign this).

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5 Comment(s)

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JD Razor said on

September 14th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

Does this work with the iPod touch as well?

James C said on

September 17th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

@ Miles Evans: If you read the rest of Mr. Joswiak’s comments he said Apple won’t officially support 3rd party apps for the forseeable future because this is thier first attempt with a portable device. They have been making Macs for a long time, are very familiar and comforable with it so they have third party apps. He said they WON’T intentionally break apps but they won’t go out of their way to maintain compatability presently.

That is what he said, verbatium. I didn’t save a link, check around other Mac/Tech news sites; you should find it.

@ JD Razor: Currently not that I know of but supposedly the core operating files are nearly identical so after “AppTapp.app” or a clone is created for the Touch I would bet they should work.

-1

terrell said on

October 29th, 2007 at 10:36 pm

I installed to many apps. Before I installed the launcher,now I can’t find
my app. Installer.please help!

martin said on

March 1st, 2008 at 11:05 pm

yes the jailbreak does work on the ipod touch and also works on 1.1.3 and maybe 1.1.4 (just released to support the sdk) also we will have to see if the sdk will work with jailbroken ipods/iphones and apple will infact support official apps in a matterof weeks ( im sure jailbreakers will find a way to release them for free as apple will charge for them)