Attack of the iPhone app launchers
It’s really amazing how quickly iPhone apps have sprung up. I mean, it’s only been about ten days, yet already more than a hundred apps have been created by developers who get no direct profit from the endeavor. So while these apps are great and all, they are hard to manage. Sure, you could just use the iPhone bookmarks feature, but that can be tedious and difficult if you have a lot of apps. So, to answer this problem, a variety of iPhone launcher apps have been created.
There are three iPhone launcher apps that I know of: AppMarks, Mojit, and MockDock. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, while all being very good apps. Appmarks is a great tool because it allows you to add not just iPhone apps, but any web site to its page, which shows icons and names of your different sites. Unfortunately, very few iPhone apps and websites have AppMarks icons, causing AppMarks to resort to getting icons from a site’s favicon, which some iPhone apps lack. AppMarks does require you to register a free account to save your icons. Overall, AppMarks is a very versatile tool and great iPhone launcher.
The next iPhone launcher is Mojit. Mojit is a service that allows you to, after registering a free account, put apps in Mojit’s now very small library onto your homepage. The service work very well, even though many of the iPhone apps I use are not on it, though Mojit says they will add an automatic app submission form soon. The final launcher, MockDock, is very similar to Mojit, requiring a mere email address to register. It also has a selection of iPhone apps about the size of Mojit’s, though many of them are different.
In the end, figuring out which of these launchers is best for you is a matter of taste and which apps you use. I personally like Mojit and AppMaker, though, because neither has all of my apps and displays them well, I really don’t end up using either that often. But hey, they’ll only get better over time.
Category: Software
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Comments (4)
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for your comments about AppMarks. We'd love to hear in greater detail what features you'd like added to make AppMarks more useful to you.
We also wanted to encourage your readers to try out AppMarks at http://appmarks.com and send their feedback to info [at] appmarks [dot] com so we can continue making AppMarks better.
Thanks,
The AppMarks development team
Posted by AppMarks | July 10, 2007 7:54 AM
Hi Aaron,
we have developed yet another app launcher called Gridgets - "a grid for your widgets".
You can try it out at http://gridgets.com.
Widget developers can visit our backpages.
Since all apps have to live inside MobileSafari, we tried to make this launcher as unobtrusive as possible (no branding, no toolbars, etc). We hope that people like the elegance of this approach.
Best,
Werner
Posted by Werner | July 14, 2007 3:11 PM
Here is what I would do if I knew how to code:
1. Login System so not to lose work ever
2. Pre-set browseable library of apps
3. Custom app link ability
4. Custom icon for said app
Basically, add a login system to gridgets, and change the pre-set apps list interface to match mock dock.
Posted by Sauce | July 16, 2007 3:14 PM
I like gridgets the best...but misses two major things...
1. Needs a login so I don't ever lose my setup
2. With that login need to be able to modify the custom apps on s standard browser. Its too time consuming to type all the hyperlinks in on iphone, and if it gets reset, all your valuable finger typing time is lost.
Add a login and I would use it forever.
Posted by Brewster | October 5, 2007 6:22 PM