All of these applications are linked to the iTunes Store, so click the link to proceed to their iTunes page with screenshots and other information.

Twitterrific. - Iconfactory (free or € 7,99)

The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific is already reknowned as the premier client for the microblogging service Twitter on the Mac, and they’ve expanded to the wonderful iPhone and iPod Touch platform. Looking at the screenshots, it boasts a unique and beautiful UI, with familiar characteristics from the desktop application like replies to your tweets that are highlighted in orange. As with the desktop version, the ad-supported version is free, and a ‘Premier’ version is available for €7,99 (I believe this is about $9,99 in the USA).

Tuner. - Nullriver (€ 10,49)

Although pricy, Nullriver (known from their efforts on ‘jailbreak apps’, i.e. applications developed before the official SDK was released) has also come forward with an internet radio tuner with a fresh interface. I know first-hand that Nullriver has made some excellent iPhone products prior to Tuner, and the application looks very attractive for on-the-go music. Certainly an app I would purchase.

Tipulator. - Tap Tap Tap (€ 0.79)

WhereTo. - Tap Tap Tap (€ 2.39)

WhereTo and Tipulator could be considered the absolute cream of the crop in the App Store when it comes to UI. With a few exceptions, no application in the store comes close to the level of polish and detail that can be seen in these applications by the new Tap Tap Tap team. The developers and designer in the team are quite well known; Sophia Teutschler (perhaps you know CoverSutra?), John Cassanta (MacHeist et al) and the very skilled designer Wolfgang Bartelme have produced some excellent applications under this label. I’d recommend checking these apps out first when you get around to browsing the App Store on your portable.

Remote.. - Apple Inc. (free)

Interestingly, Apple themselves released a freeware application on the app store that lets you control iTunes. It’s a very straightforward and iPhone-native application that blends in with the other pre-supplied iPhone apps in an elegant way. No more getting off your couch to skip that album or to switch the speakers you’re sending audio to; Remote lets you do this all from your iPod Touch or iPhone. A very welcome addition to the iTunes featureset.

Trism. - Demiforce (€ 3,99)

I have been playing Trism since the trial version became available on the jailbroken iPhone installer. It’s a very easy to learn and fun game that works with the accelerometers in the iPhone to add an extra dimension to an otherwise unremarkable puzzle game. Cleverly thought up, Trism is one of the more fun games in the App Store, but its graphics aren’t really up to par when compared to the heavy-hitters like Super Monkey Ball.

Moto Racer. - Freeverse (€ 7,99)

Freeverse is also releasing a very impressive 3D racing game called Moto Racer. This speedy game allows you, just like Pangea’s Cro-Mag Rally, to race through detailed 3D environments by using your iPhone as a steering wheel of sorts. Since words don’t really do its gameplay justice, I recommend you just grab it and play it!

Sketches. - Late Night Soft (€ 5,99)

Sketches is also one of those apps that’s been developed before the official SDK was even around. However, Late Night Soft has expanded significantly on its featureset, adding a very innovative and natural interface for managing multiple sketches. Sketches lets you ‘fingerpaint’ sketches, add graphics to photos and maps and interact with the results easily.

Netter’s Anatomy. - Modality Inc. (€ 31,99)

Also featured in the WWDC 2008 keynote, Netter’s Anatomy by Modality is really a niche product for medicine students or people who are active in the medical sector. It is a comprehensive studying and reference application with information on the entire human body and anatomy. The interface is a true work of art, looking crisp, native, and very intuitive (especially for such a ’sophisticated’ application). If you fit the target audience, I’d certainly bite my lip and pay the (relatively) steep price to purchase Netter’s Anatomy.

Telegram. - Polar Bear Farm Ltd. (€ 7,99)

Telegram is a novel app by Polar Bear Farm that lets users send each other short audio messages, in their words ‘combining the best of three major mobile communication types’ (email, SMS, and calling). The interface is very nicely thought up, although the technical (graphic) implementation of it is a bit shoddy. I think it’s a very cool idea to wrap such a service (a 1-year subscription to their voice messaging ‘backend’) into an iPhone app and make it easy to use with a unique UI. Telegram retails for the going shareware iPhone app price of 9,99 dollar.

Exposure - Connected Flow (free or € 7,99)

From the makers of flickrExport on the Mac, Exposure is an iPhone application following the model of Twitterific; a free version, and a ‘Premium’ edition. Both free apps feature advertisements from the Deck, a non-obtrusive and high quality advertising network. Exposure lets you browse flickr from your iPhone, keep track of your friends’ photos, comment on photos, and, most interestingly, find pictures on flickr that have been taken near your location. This feature sounds absolutely fascinating to me, as it’s very useful to see pictures taken near you (imagine landmarks, or other points of interest and navigation aids).

These are my favorite App Store debut apps; I hope I’ve whetted your appetite for the applications that will come rolling in in due time that also carry some great graphics from my hand. For now, you will have to wait until at least August to see some of those, but trust me: it’s worth the wait!

Digg this!

If you’re Dutch, you may recognize the artistic direction of the building as ‘de Stijl’;

(… De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. [It] advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour — [members of de Stijl] simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white. – wikipedia )

The similarity is not coincidental, as the entire block was designed by the founder of de Stijl, Theo van Doesburg. As such, we considered it to be the perfect location for such a graphic studio!

Feel free to check out more of the images on our flickr.

You can imagine I was thrilled when Tony approached me to design the icon for his new Spaces-enhancing application, Hyperspaces. The name, purpose, and features of the application instantly appealed to me, and we set off to make a great icon for it.

When Tony and I were discussing the application and what artistic direction we could take, we both expressed our love for the existing popular culture representations of ‘hyperspace’. Since we both knew enough Star Trek and other science-fiction, we threw a few ideas back and forth about what hyperspace looks like.

Star Wars-y hyperspace. Those panels look suspiciously much like iPhones.

We concluded that we’d like concepts that relate to hyperspace, but that the icon should remain pretty close to the purpose of the application as well; the icon should convey its relation to desktops, to the Spaces application, and the Leopard look and feel.

There was enough conceptual reference; in mathematics, hyperspace has been quite well defined. We were also looking at the existing design of Spaces; although the Leopard spaces icon isn’t really that appealing, the basic shape is a great design.

With space and hyperspace, there’s more than enough to be inspired by.

I kicked off the sketch phase with a concept that had been lingering in my mind since I got the first email from Tony. I showed off a few other concepts too; although I had discussed tesseracts and other, more abstract concepts, I really wanted to propose the icon designs that I’d be most happy with; relating to all the intended concepts, with a clear ‘Spaces’ symbolism.

My sketched vision of the Hyperspaces icon.

I mocked up two designs; a ‘warp’-like field of stars as shown in popular culture, and a Leopard-like ‘galaxy’ behind a spaces screen. I figured it would be best to use this ’spaces’ shape, as it’s iconic for the purpose and working of the application. Making a galaxy and warp effect from scratch isn’t easy, but I had a bit of prior experience, having made spacey wallpapers in my younger years.

After varying with the nebula version, and trying a version with the ‘warp’ effect, we decided we preferred the warp-y version, in a color theme that matched the default Leopard desktop background. This icon was communicative of the application purpose, its relation to Spaces, the OS X desktop, and it would look futuristic enough for our needs. Polishing the design took a while, as rendering a truly convincing ‘warp’ effect and shading a proper glassy ’spaces’-shape was a process of refining this design iteratively. I’ve made a quicktime movie that shows a few steps from mockup to final design. You can see that the background and the shading are radically transformed with each step.

The outcome was incredibly pleasing. After nailing the warp effect, the shading started coming together. The unconventional color and suggested motion of the background effect gives the icon a very dynamic feeling.

In the late hours of the last working evening, I wrestled with the exact perspective and visual weight, and following some good balancing, I generated the icon. A quick application of the icon with Candybar later, and I there it was. I knew it was right; I wouldn’t want to get it out of my dock any more. And thus ended our journey through time and space.

In the last month and few weeks, I’ve had an astonishing time in my life where I had a hectic moving of home and office, a set of challenging projects to work on with hugely talented people and world-class products, and other time-consuming challenges I had to overcome to get back to my regular life. As a young individual running his own startup business, it’s not very easy to get a mortgage and to learn about everything that comes with such a big step in life. I’ve also released a few details of what I’ve been working on, with a lot of updates coming soon, including the long-awaited Orion Extended freeware icon set that’s fully ready for replacing the system icons on your Mac or PC.

There’s also a small change in the blog; if you visit the Cocoia Blog on your iPhone or iPod Touch now, you will be served a special optimized version that’ll make it easier to read content, navigate your way around, and load on low-bandwidth data connections.

This version is powered by the powerful WPTouch plugin, by Bravenewcode. Mad props to them for making such a quality plugin available; I’ve applied some of my own design work on it and took out a few of its features because I found them less than necessary, but I can certainly recommend it if you are looking for a solution to bring your content to iPhone.

I hope you all enjoy this small addition to the blog as I prepare new and exciting content.