iCatholicism
Well, I recently purchased my first Apple product, the iPhone 3G, and I was pretty sure I’d like it. But I really like it. I still can’t stand iTunes. I had avoided downloading and using iTunes for any music purposes before getting the phone — for politico-cultural reasons as well as general annoyance — but now with the phone, using iTunes is a must. I can’t understand how the phone itself can be so elegant and iTunes so clunky.
Anyway, when searching for “apps” to download and try, I tried searching for “Catholic” and didn’t get very much. What I did get was mostly pretty bizarre. I’m not sure why one would want to pray the rosary on the iPhone or why one would need an encyclopedia of the popes in one’s pocket at all times. The best Catholic app I’ve seen — and really, the only one useful to me — is Catholic Calendar from Universalis, a free complete liturgical calendar that lets you access today’s, yesterday’s and tomorrow’s Hours, daily readings, and more. (The paid version allows access to the Hours in their entirety.)
Still, most of the apps designed for Catholics are embarrassingly bad. Many of them, though, do look like they’d be popular among the Catholic blogosphere crowd, especially the Heresy Detector app. Interestingly, on the page for the Catholic Calendar app, if you look under the “Customers Also Bought” section you’ll see an app called “iRepublican.” Figures.
Other general apps I’ve found helpful are the Facebook, WordPress, and RssRunner apps. For general music listening, Pandora and Last.fm are great. For songwriters, there are a lot of simple recording apps that are helpful for getting ideas down quick, including the mindblowing 16-track MultiTrack app. For news, the apps for NPR, the New York Times, Democracy Now!, and The Weather Channel are quite good.
For Vox Nova’s iPhone users, have you found any interesting apps for Catholics? 1) What are some of the best? 2) What are some of the worst/most bizarre? 3) What about just generally good apps, not just “Catholic-y” ones?
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iPieta.
Yeah, iPieta is one of the strange ones I was referring to.
Universalis is quite nice. The free Shakespeare app by Readdle is excellent, as is the AA Big Book app–also free. I have to admit to regularly using the Kindle for iPhone app (free) and to buying and reading way too many police procedurals on my phone. But I’ve found the phone handy as a rough and ready research library, as it’s easy to find major philosophical and theological works for free. (I have all of Aquinas, Augustine, Kant, Marx on my phone, for example.)
Also–there are some fairly advanced critical editions of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures out there in app land, but I think they run around $50.
I have seen a drum-set app which I thought was kind of cool.
If you don’t mind a question in return, what are your thoughts on anarchism and technology? I am personally in a place of rejection (texting last year, and FB this week) but I know there are anarchists who embrace certain technologies, especially those that make organization and networking easier. Any thoughts, iphone-related or otherwise?
Glad you’ve seen the light :)
Stanza is a great app for free older books in many languages (so is Wattpad). Navigon (I have USA/CAN and Europe versions) is a fantastic GPS App (for a very cheap but surprisingly good one I recommend Drive Motion X GPS). RedLaser is a bar code scanner for instant price comparisons with on- and offline stores.
Camena will show lyrics of most songs, by name or by what’s playing.
For the theologically inclined, there’s the frequently updated game Pocket God :)
Skype works for voice on the iPhone, excellent quality.
Yoga Instructor, Yoga Deck and Yoga Stretch all are neat, customizable yoga apps, great way to
learn poses and be talked through entire sessions.
There’s even RockBand :-)
our household: 2 iPhone 3GS, iPod touch, 2 MacBook Pro, 1 Mac Pro tower.
I have: iPieta, iBreviary, Recordatio, VerseWise RSV-CE, iCatechism, and iPhone Bible NAB (which is really just a mobile web site.)
Personally, I like iPieta. What it does or does not include might seem strange, but that probably is due to what is in the public domain. The fact that it has all the social encyclicals and the Summa in one place makes it nice for me.
I have not found any app that has the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
A few state Catholic conferences have mobile sites designed just for the iPhone/iPod touch. http://ndcatholic.org/ndmobile/ is one.