iPhone apps

There are many thousands of apps. Whatever your goal, as Apple's erstwhile advertising campaign proclaimed, "There's an app for that." But some apps are simply must-haves--whether for their functionality, their interface brilliance, or just their entertainment factor. Here are ten apps your new iPhone shouldn't be without.

The many quirks and missing features in Microsoft's Office Mobile for iPhone make it a difficult app to recommend.

It's here. Finally. Microsoft is now offering Office Mobile for iPhone. This is huge news for Microsoft Office, huge news for the iPhone, and a game changer for productivity on the go.

Touch Bionics creates the first robotic hand controlled by an iPhone app.

Kindle app devotees will want to shy away from the Update All button in the App Store for the time being. Amazon recently released an update to the app, but unlucky upgraders discovered that the app update logged them out and wiped out their stored books.

Maybe a friend or relation gave you the gift of a new iPhone or iPad this holiday season, in which case you are a fortunate person. Perhaps you were the one who gave the gift of a new iOS device, in which case you are a generous soul. But what apps should go on that new iOS device? Well, that's where we come in.

Apple rightly takes a lot of pride in the size of its App Store -- more than 750,000 apps are available for the iPhone and iPad, according to the company’s last count. But the risk of having such a massive emporium for mobile software is that the sheer volume of not-so-hot apps pushes the truly great offerings out of the spotlight. Not to worry, though: Plenty of iOS apps still combine great design and must-have features to help you get even more out of your iPhone and iPad. We’ve discovered nearly two dozen apps in the past year that remind us how the App Store and the iOS universe are about quality, not just quantity.

As iPhones and iPads increasingly take the place of laptops, there's one area that continues to be a challenge for business users: how to turn digital documents into printed ones.

Despite its aesthetic achievements, Apple's Maps app in iOS 6 left a lot of users unhappy. Turns out that the years Google spent building out its mapping data were hugely important; Apple's data--which powered its new Maps app--didn't have the real world, real user testing that Google Maps benefited from. That's why Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized to customers over his company's Maps app. And that's why customers are now so excited about Google's new, free mapping app for iPhone. And you know who else is excited about Google's new app? Apple.

Parents beware: Many iPhone and Android apps designed for children are playing fast and loose with privacy, according to the Federal Trade Commission.