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Top 10 iPhone Apps

 & Sascha Segan Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

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Apple iPhone

The world's smallest Mac is about to get a lot bigger. Passionate developers have cracked the code to write true native applications for the iPhone, beginning a new era of true binary development for the ground-breaking handheld computer.

There's only one problem: Apple wants to forbid these developers from doing what they do best. Yes, in the iPhone's topsy-turvy world, real software development is forbidden—what developers are supposed to do is put together Web "applications" that can be hit by the phone's Safari browser.

Fortunately, programmers have been pretty ambitious there, too. Web "apps" may not have quite the power and punch of native applications, but they can keep you busy with simple games, let you access gigabytes of music and video, or add instant-messaging to a device that desperately needs it.

One warning: using some of these apps tends to make your iPhone rather toasty warm and completely guts your battery life. If you're streaming a lot of content over Wi-Fi (say, through Glide or Seeqpod) expect to get no more than a few hours' use of your iPhone on a charge.

As we scoped out our top iPhone apps, we kept in mind that we're PC Magazine. So almost everything in our list is Windows compatible. Here are our picks for the Top 10 iPhone Apps—or, in some cases, PC apps to go with your iPhone.

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About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

  • US and Canadian mobile networks
  • Mobile phones released in the US
  • iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
  • Mobile hotspots
  • Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services. 

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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