Bob loved Electronic Arts' Mac version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour and played it until his fingers bled. Now we're enjoying the iPhone version almost as much. The graphics and level of detail are incredible, as shown in Figure 17-1, and the user interface is among the best we've seen for an iPhone game. And the touch-and-drag swing meter, shown in Figure 17-2, is one of the best touchscreen game controls we've tried.

Figure 17-1. The graphics and detail in Tiger Woods PGA Tour are outstanding.

Figure 17-2. Drag your finger to the left or right as shown to execute draw and fade shots.

With your choice of seven world-famous golf courses and top golfers such as Annika Sorenstam, Vijay Singh, and, of course, Tiger Woods, along with real-time play-by-play commentary by Sam Torrance and Kelly Tilghman, you can play over and over and over without repetition.

And that's just what we've done. If you like golf or just enjoy a beautifully designed iPhone game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour is a bargain at $9.99.

Have you ever gone to the supermarket only to discover you left your grocery list at home? The Grocery IQ app from Coupons.com is, plain and simple, the shopping list you'll never leave behind, because — we presume — you'll never leave your iPhone behind. It's easy to build up a shopping list organized by category, so as you peruse the aisles of canned goods, say, you'll know when you're short on soup or peanut butter.

Better still, the Grocery IQ app has a database of 130,000 items (with real product brand names), so as you type some letters on the iPhone's virtual keyboard to add new items to your list, Grocery IQ can start suggesting potential matches. And when you've located the items you need in the store, just tap to check them off your list until next time, as shown in Figure 17-3.

We think Grocery IQ is well worth the 99-cent price. Heck, you spend more money than that on some impulse item when you check out at the supermarket.

Figure 17-3. We need to pick up a loaf of bread.

OldBooth Premium is just plain fun. It lets you take any full-face photo of anyone and apply wonderfully goofy transformations to it. Since a picture is worth thousands of words, let's start with Figure 17-4, which clearly demonstrates just what it is that OldBooth Premium does.

Figure 17-4. The original photos of Bob and his wife Lisa are on the far left; the three OldBooth images of each appear to the right of them.

You get the picture, don't you? (Pun completely intended.)

Using OldBooth Premium is as easy as 1-2-3:

OldBooth is easy and lots of fun for less than a buck.

If you've ever wanted a perfect excuse to leave a meeting (or anywhere else for that matter), you'll love GottaGo. This clever little app lets you create a bogus phone call or text message and have it appear on your iPhone at any time you choose. At the appropriate moment, your iPhone rings or chimes and you receive what looks and sounds just like a real phone call or text message.

It's beautifully done and will fool most everyone. The GottaGo unlock screen is animated just like the real thing. You can attach an image to your GottaGo call so it truly looks like you're receiving a real phone call. You can record custom audio that you hear when you answer the fake call. And you can choose your own wallpaper and ringtone to make the effect even more realistic, as shown in Figure 17-5.

Figure 17-5. GottaGo has a myriad of settings to make your fake call look so much like the real thing that even you might be fooled.

When you gotta go, nothing gets you out of there faster than the GottaGo iPhone app. Yes, it costs two bucks, but isn't that a tiny price to pay for your freedom?

Being writers ourselves, we love a good word game, and one of our favorites so far is WordsWorth. You form words by tapping letters on the screen. Longer words using rarer letters (such as J, Z, and Qu, for example), score more points than shorter words with more common letters.

To make things interesting, there are certain special tiles, including blue wild cards, green bonuses, and red timers, all shown in Figure 17-6. The timer tiles are the most insidious; if their time runs out before you've used the letter, the game is over.

Figure 17-6. Blue wild card, red timer, and green bonus tiles make WordsWorth a challenge.

WordsWorth doesn't have a fixed time limit per game. Instead, it's level-based — each time you achieve the prescribed number of points, you advance to the next level. And, of course, the levels grow increasingly harder with more and rarer timed tiles, fewer vowels, and rarer consonants.

If you can't find any more words on the screen, you can shuffle the tiles by shaking your iPhone. But be careful: A limited number of shuffles are available for each level.

Although WordsWorth is simple, it's engaging and addictive. But don't take our word for it. You can try a free version — WordsWorth Lite — before you buy the full game. Both games are the same in every way, except the Lite version is limited to three levels (versus 20).

We should point out that lots of terrific word-based games are available for the iPhone. Another favorite worth checking out is a Boggle-like game called Wurdle from Semi Secret Software, which will set you back only $1.99.

We admit that Jaadu VNC isn't cheap and is more than a little geeky, but it's so cool and potentially useful that we would have been remiss had we not included it.

Jaadu VNC (Virtual Network Computing, also known as remote screen control) is an iPhone app for controlling your Mac, Windows, or Linux computer, "from a few feet away or from halfway around the world."

Yes, you can actually see your computer screen and control its keyboard and mouse from anywhere in the world (as long as your iPhone can connect to the Internet through Wi-Fi, 3G, Edge, or whatever).

Figure 17-7 shows an iPhone running Jaadu VNC, which is controlling a Mac in another room (though it could just as easily be in a different city, state, or country).

Jaadu VNC is an iPhone app, so you pinch and unpinch to zoom in and out. In Figure 17-7, we zoomed in on the upper-left corner of the Mac screen, where this very chapter is being edited in Microsoft Word.

There's little you can do on your Mac, PC, or Linux computer that you can't control remotely with Jaadu VNC — though of course you're dealing with a smaller screen on the iPhone. We use Jaadu VNC to check mail accounts other than the ones on our iPhones, to grab files from our hard drive and e-mail them to ourselves (at our iPhone e-mail addresses) or others, and to make sure backups are running when scheduled.

Figure 17-7. I'm editing this chapter with Microsoft Word while controlling my Mac remotely with Jaadu VNC.

Another cool use for the application is as a "spy cam." This feature requires a computer with a built-in camera, such as a MacBook or MacBook Pro. Just open an app that uses the camera (for example, Photo Booth on the Mac or a Webcam program under Windows), and you'll be able to watch what's happening in your office remotely on your iPhone.

Several free or less expensive VNC apps are available in the iTunes Store, but Jaadu VNC is the only one we've found that is robust and reliable enough to recommend.

Consider Baseball Statistics 2009 Edition a dream app for a passionate baseball fan. One of the things that makes baseball such a great game is the statistics that have defined the sport since, well, the 19th century. (We won't add a steroids comment — oops, just did.) Baseball Statistics from Bulbous Ventures puts all those stats at your fingertips, so you can settle barroom bets or just relive memories of favorite ballplayers from when you were a kid.

The app has easily accessible yearly stats for every Major League player and team since 1871 — nope, we weren't around — from batting, fielding, and pitching statistics to team wins, losses, and attendance.

You could look up the stats for outfielder Cherokee Fisher of the 1872 Baltimore Canaries. (Check out Figure 17-8 for evidence that the Canaries existed.) Or see how Mickey Mantle's career stats compared to Willie Mays's.

About the only bad thing we can say about Baseball Statistics (which used to be called just Baseball) is that the app was once free. But Ed, a passionate New York Mets junkie, would gladly spring for the $2.99 tab. Heck, that sum would have bought an awfully good seat at the ballpark when Tom Seaver was pitching brilliantly for the 1969 Miracle Mets. His stats from that season are shown in Figure 17-9.

Figure 17-8. And you thought the Orioles were the only Major League team in Baltimore.

Figure 17-9. An amazing year for Tom Terrific and the Miracle Mets of 1969

Almost overnight, Ocarina, Smule's addictive app, became one of the most popular in the App Store. It can transform your iPhone into an ancient flute-light instrument. You gently blow into the iPhone's microphone and play notes by pressing and holding your fingers over any of four virtual on-screen holes, shown in Figure 17-10. There are 16 possible combinations.

At Smule's Web site, you can learn how to play and even find Ocarina sheet music for everything from I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face to Yellow Submarine.

Figure 17-10. Turning the iPhone into an ancient flute-like instrument.

Figure 17-11. Some lovely notes from Israel.

We know the iPhone is a fabulous iPod, but even if you splurge for the 32GB iPhone 3GS, you may run out of storage for all your music. Simplify Music can stream digital music stored in your library on a Mac, PC, or Linux computer back home, as shown in Figure 17-12. You can even access lyrics and artist information. You must download software onto the computer where your music resides.

Simplify Music works over a Wi-Fi or a 3G cellular connection. There are some limitations, notably the fact that Simplify can't play songs purchased over iTunes that are saddled by digital copyright restrictions.

Figure 17-12. Some of the songs that can be streamed from Ed's Mac at home onto the iPhone, wherever it happens to be.

A $5.99 pro version dubbed Simplify 2 lets you create playlists on the fly and search. But if you don't need those features, we think you'll be simply satisfied with Simplify.

Hey, you have to eat sometime. Zagat to go, the newly updated app from Handmark, lets you access the popular Zagat ratings for restaurants, hotels, nightspots, and more around the world — there are more than 40,000 listings.

You can search; filter results by food, décor, cost, and service; and read Zagat's famous thumbnail commentaries. Foodies can tap into GPS to find decent restaurants when they're traveling.

The information, like the listing for Nobu in Figure 17-13, is current through the 2009 Zagat editions.

Figure 17-13. Finding a swanky place to eat.