what apps do I want on the iPhone?

Well, I just read through the engadget report on the iPhone SDK and it's

looking pretty good. I'm in the middle of downloading the free SDK, mainly

so that I can have a virtual iPhone to play around with, but last night I

got to thinking about what kind of applications I personally would like to

see on the device.

I live in London, but I frequently travel to Europe. I have friends that I

like to keep in contact with in the US as well. Most UK mobile phone

contracts suck for someone whose social network is evenly distributed across

the world. Data rates through T-Mobile when I go the the mainland are

exorbitant, and I only use my N95 as a camera on such occasions cos I can't

afford to check email or look at maps. The two main problems with mobile

tech in Europe at the moment are:

1. No single european-wide tariff for data and calls. As long as the phone

companies get away with making pots of cash it's going to remain this way,

sigh.

2. No free WiFi, it exists in patches, but it's just shit really. One town

in Ireland was recently blocked from rolling out free municipal wifi by the

EU on the grounds that it was anti-competitive (phone companies might loose

revenue). I guess at some point in the future this will change, but for the

time being it sucks monkeys.

So the apps I want to see are:

1. Offline storage of web content, so that I could process, for example,

feeds or emails, while I am in a high danger zone tariff wise.

2. Offline access to a google-maps kind of an interface. Apparently for the

N95 one can download local sheets for areas that you are visiting and browse

them whilst offline, but the software for doing this is PC only. I could set

up a copy of MS on my mac, but frankly I don't have time. I'd like to be

able to dial in a city that I am about to visit, download maps and related

info, and then have that on the go while I am tootling around the place.

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