Those unavoidable iPhone apps

Of all the announcements that made headlines and created news in 2008, we’d be remiss if we didn’t lead off with the absolute explosion of third-party support seen by the iPhone in 2008 after Apple opened up the platform to developers with the . We’ve pontificated on our picks for and our analysis of the . So let this serve as a nod to the general trend of third-party companies supporting the iPhone itself.

Never in the history of Apple have so many independent developers flocked to support a new Apple platform so quickly. The result has been like trying to take a drink from a firehose—there are too many new applications to keep track of (), and the torrent seems to be growing larger each day.

Major releases

Though not technically a third party, Apple-owned FileMaker introduced in January, followed by an . FileMaker aimed Bento at individual users rather than the business customers that turn to the more advanced FileMaker Pro. What’s more, FileMaker adapted Apple’s iLife application philosophy with Bento by providing tight integration with Apple applications, along with themes and templates to make your data look pretty. Sophisticated database users may have turned their noses up at Bento and the lack of an upgrade discount for version 2 caused some grumbling among early adopters, but in terms of making general database use easy and friendly, Bento was a welcome change.