Today we ‘re continuing our series called Desert Island Apps. It ‘s based on a very long-running and brilliant BBC Radio show called ‘Desert Island Discs ‘. The premise of Desert Island Discs is simple and wonderful “ a guest is invited to choose the eight musical pieces (originally records) they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island.
In our case of course we ‘re not interested in our guests ‘ choice of music. What we want to know is which six iPhone apps they would take with them if stranded on an island. In the past we’ve left the field wide open on this, and even let guests assume they’ve got WiFi and full connectivity on their island. This time round the stakes are raised – as our guest has decided he wants to inaugurate the ‘Hardcore‘ version of Desert Island Apps, as you’ll see below.
This is also a first in this series in another notable way – it’s our first DIA with a site reader. Today’s guest is Brian Bothwell – a loyal reader and epic and prolific commenter here at JAiB. Here’s a little more about Brian:
Brian Bothwell is a technophile currently working at IBM who has a tendency to be entertainingly difficult. An iPhone user for just over two years, he has quickly grown to both love and despise the platform for all its quirks. As a test engineer, he spends his days hammering on hardware and software trying to break it and his nights hoping he doesn’t find the same flaws in the iPhone apps he enjoys.
Read on to see Brian’s picks
So, I’ve always enjoyed this Desert Island Apps series a great deal. I have found it very interesting to peek into the mind of some of these folks and see what apps they would choose to occupy their time had they been stranded somewhere away from civilization. That said, it’s always nagged at me a bit that they somehow have full Wi-Fi and/or 3G connectivity when they’re supposedly stuck on a deserted island. I understand having no connectivity not only drastically limits the number of apps available to choose from, but also takes away some of the fun. Logically, if we had full connectivity, we could just tweet our GPS coordinates or post them to Facebook and tell somebody to pick us up.
Now, I’m sure most of you are thinking I should take my sourpuss attitude and go away. I don’t blame you! However, I’m not mocking the series or any of the contributors. I very much appreciate reading their posts. I just thought I would attempt to write up some recommendations for apps that would be useful or entertaining if you were truly stranded with no communication with the outside world. This was far more difficult than I imagined since the vast majority of what I use my iPhone for is directly related to being connected and in communication with the world.
Now, with that long-winded rant out of the way, here’s what I’ve come up with:
1. Google Maps 
I figure GPS signals should work no matter where you are,
unless the island you’re stranded on isn’t on Earth. Being able to explore my island and use Google Maps to drop pins at locations of interest would be helpful for remembering where you stashed the crate of rum or where you found the banana tree.
2. Evernote 
Although I’m attempting to find a better app for taking notes, Evernote is still currently my favorite. If I was stranded, this would get a great deal of use. I would record everything that I experienced and, once I was rescued, turn it into a book or movie. Hopefully the public would understand my friend Wilson and not just think I was crazy.
3. iPod 
I listen to Pandora and Last.fm constantly, but in keeping with my restriction of apps that don’t need connectivity, I’ll have to resort to my own collection of locally stored music. Hopefully I remembered to remove the Christmas Tunes playlist during my last sync or this may drive me to insanity even more quickly.
4. Kindle 
Other than music, I’ll need some sort of entertainment. I dug through the huge list of games I have on my phone trying to find some good candidates. Unfortunately, most of the games I enjoy a great deal, that hold their entertainment value, are like Words with Friends. Such games would get awfully boring to play alone. So, I figured being able to read books would be a better choice. We’ll just pretend I have already purchased and downloaded a very large selection of books from Amazon to keep me busy.
5. Survival Pocket Reference 
Already having this on your iDevice when you get stranded might be a bit of a stretch, but I actually have it currently installed, so I figured I could list it. Most of us heard the story of the guy that was buried in the recent Haiti earthquake. That story is actually the reason I have the app now. It would be extremely useful to help me build shelter and find edible plants as well as help me in case I needed to perform any first aid on myself.
Somebody has to tell AT&T how terrible their 3G coverage is out here on my island, right?
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Huge thanks to Brian for doing Desert Island Apps with us! I’ve enjoyed every single one of these, but I think this may be my favorite so far – just because he showed us how it’s done with the hardcore, no connectivity style. I hope this series will help all of us to discover some great new apps.
If you ‘d like to see all the previous entries in the Desert Island apps, just go HERE “ and if you feel like sharing what your Desert Island Apps picks would be, please fire away in the comments.
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