Apps I miss on my iPhone…

What are the key Applications I found missing on my iPhone? A ‘Password Vault’, ‘ToDo List’, and a decent ‘RSS Reader’. I imagine eventually the promised SDK for third-party Apps or Apple themselves will eventually fully plug these gaps, but in the mean time, here’s how I’m getting by…

Ok - I confess: I do have third-party Apps installed on my iPhone. This means I have installed ‘Installer 3.0‘ on my ‘jailbroken’ phone and downloaded the missing Apps (or at least interim stop-gaps) I need to meet the missing functionality. However, there are some alternatives available as well as the third-party Apps.

Password Vault

While there is a reasonable third-party App to do this (Lockbox), it does not currently synchronise with any companion application on my Laptop - which removes a good deal of its value. Previously I was using Dataviz’s Password Plus with my Plam Treo 650 - and this was an excellent combination.

However, products like 1Password and Password Wallet now have versions that can export a password-protected bundle to a special bookmark (actually an encrypted local webpage) in Safari that can then be synchronized to your iPhone with iTunes. This is a rather ingenious way of getting the encrypted data onto the iPhone (in a supported manner - the only draw-back is that you can’t update or add records from the phone).

I am leaning towards ‘1Password’ this stage as it general it seems to be the superior product… although ‘Password Wallet’ was been better at importing CSV file data from my old ‘Password Plus’ data export.

ToDo List

There are a number of WebApps for the iPhone that allow you to have a readily accessible ToDoList on the Web - obviously requiring Internet connectivity. To me, this just doesn’t cut it. I need a ToDo list on my Phone - accessible anytime, anywhere (i.e. offline). So, the only alternative I have found so far is the ‘Mobile ToDoList‘ third-party App. This works - although of course, there is currently no synchronisation with the ToDo List in iCal on my Laptop - but at least I am reminded about the things I need to get done.

RSS Reader

If you set Safari as your default RSS Reader (on a Mac at least), your RSS feeds Bookmarks will be synchronised to your iPhone - but again , this requires Internet Connectivity to access the feed. Instead, I am currently using the ‘Mobile RSS‘ third-party App. - which gives me full offline capability.

So, overall - 2/3 on my ‘must-have’ Apps are provided currently by un-supported third-party applications. And while everything works, none are ideal…yet. Bring on the Apple-supported iPhone Application SDK!