You get two game modes, but one is basically just an endless version of the other. Your task is to use the accelerometer to guide the water droplet from a leaf into a container around obstacles. That's it. Just like the marble games.

The water effect actually looks pretty realistic, don't get me wrong, but it's disappointing to see that they didn't come up with a better physics simulator game, and instead just made another move-the-marble-into-the-hole game. It's $5 in the App Store, but we prefer the original Aqua Forest for $8. [iTunes]

Alsooooo, the Chrome Extensions page is now open, so you can easily grab add-ons for the latest Chrome beta on Windows, just like Firefox. (So excited for these to take off.)

Finally, Google Bookmark Sync is also live—it stores your bookmarks in your Google account, so you can access them on any computer, though for now, Chrome's the only browser getting the seamless syncing love. [Google, Google via SAI, Lifehacker]

Games

The bestseller list is populated by high-profile—either in name or in publisher—listings, none of which are too surprising. The list, it seems, it sorted by revenue, because there's a relatively poor showing for cheap casual games. The top six are all franchise titles that cost at least $5.

The top rated list, however, is more heartening. The fantastic Spider: The Secret of Bruce Manor tops the group, joined by a healthy selection of games from a mix of studios, large and small. Just one of the top ten is a big-name franchise title.

Apps

Again, the popularity list must be revenue-ranked, because this is some pricey stuff. Navigon and TomTom are $90 and $100 apps, respectively, and their success shows what a little name recognition, and early start, and a generally good app will get you. Free texting app TextFree, which I sorta though might be banned from the store by now, ranks high, as does QuickOffice, even though the barebones office suite costs a whole $10.

Where the top rated games were generally indie and/or iPhone-exclusive titles, the top rated apps are a bit more mainstream. You've got the requisite appearances from Smule, you've got ReelDirector—the only app that lets you do any serious video editing on your iPhone—and you've got a CBS sports app. Because people like sports, and anything associated with them! (Also: paying for them.) Oh, and, uh, Pocket God is a game.

All in all, the crowd's put together a nice little app roundup for us. I don't see any glaringly terrible apps here, and the top-rated apps even include some of our own Essential iPhone Apps. Which is vindicating! (For everyone else, obviously.)

Anyway, what about the free apps?

UPDATE: It's worth noting that these rankings only include app released in 2009. Some older apps will likely have outsold many, if not all, of the apps on these lists. —Thanks, Dave from Popcap! [iTunes Rewind]

So yes, we know that Bada means "ocean" in Korean, but what about the phones? For starters, each handset will be 3G enabled, with Wi-Fi, GPS and multitouch WVGA screens. Bada's SDK will be released shortly, enabling developers and operators to create and customize for it. It will replace Symbian, which is used on their mid-to-low end handsets traditionally.

The TouchWiz interface, which we've seen on handsets like the Omnia and Behold, will be ported onto Bada, and will offer the following jargon:

"flash control, web control, motion sensing, fine-tuned vibration control, and face detection. Also, it supports sensor-based, context-aware applications. By using various sensors such as accelerometers, tilt, weather, proximity, and activity sensors, application developers can easily implement context-aware interactive applications"

Samsung's hoping to see an influx of applications thanks to the $2.7 million prize that's been put up for grabs, and so far, EA and Gameloft have been signed up to develop games for Bada.

We'll see Bada handsets trickling in in the first half of 2010, with Europe and Asia receiving them first, followed by the US and other corners of the globe.

It's a tantalizing prospect, but we're still eager to see exactly what Bada looks and feels like. With Samsung promising to deliver a full open source experience for users and developers, it could do a lot more for creativity than Symbian ever did. SDK users will apparently have full access to the contact, messaging and phone functions, which could see these "mid to low end" handsets actually offering something iPhone and Android users haven't even seen yet. [Samsung Bada]

When you buy a PC, the most important decision you make is selecting its OS. Do you want Windows 7, for a modern Windows machine-slash-media center? Are you a little more conservative, hanging back with Windows XP? Do you want a lightweight Linux OS on your netbook so you don't have to worry about viruses, or slowdown? Are you a Gentoo purist, building your OS flag by flag, penguin shirt moist from excitement? Or, god forbid, are you a hackintosher? Whatever choice you make, you're making a choice. You're selecting the interface with which you interact with your computer, and by extension, the entire digital world. This makes sense.

But this just isn't how things work in the mobile world. If you want Windows Mobile, you need to buy a Windows Phone, complete with a dedicated Start button. If you want Google's Android, you've got a narrow selection of handsets from a handful of manufacturers, many of which, at least for now, don't even support the same version of the OS. If you think webOS looks cool, buy a Pre. If you like Symbian, import a Nokia or settle for a Samsung. And most predictably, if you like the App Store, Apple—and only Apple—is ready to process your credit card. Like the Touch HD2's obscenely hot hardware, but don't care for Windows Mobile? Tough luck. Think the Droid is a perfect piece of machinery, but don't understand what all this Android hubbub is about? Shut up.

In the last half-decade, we've become acutely aware of what goes into our smartphones. New phones get a spec rundown that mirrors a PC's: Qualcomm processor X! RAM speed Y! Screen technology Z! It fosters a climate ripe for PC-style hardware wars, with new processor architectures competing head to head, an ongoing—and fruitful—resolution race, and each new phone edging out its predecessors with even more onboard storage, or support for a new input or output cable. It's fascinating to watch the competition unfold, but it's even more fascinating to see how tightly grouped development is. These are ARM-based phones, for the most part. They share memory types, display types, cameras, chipsets, processors and often, original device manufacturers. They're the same thing.

When you buy a smartphone, you're stuck with its OS. Your carrier might toss you a few software updates, and if you're particularly gutsy, you might install some custom-baked software of your own, though you're generally stuck with slight variations on and customizations of the handet's default OS. It's as if everyone in the mobile world is emulating what Apple does in the computer space, except worse: at least Macs have Boot Camp, for fuck's sake. (And before they did, they had the PowerPC excuse.)

I know something like this is miles over the horizon—you can't just will new hardware support into existence, and the entire industry is currently built around the bound relationship between software and hardware—and that some hardware (guess which!) is probably doomed to live out its entire life in a hollow monogamous relationship, but it's time for handset manufacturers, along with Google, Microsoft, the Symbian Foundation, and Palm, maybe, to start setting goals. Or at minimum, it's time for us to start asking them to.

For the companies, this would mean working on driver support for common componentry, opening up to the enthusiast communities who already do so much amazing software work on their own, and agreeing on some kind of common bootloader, from which users can choose to install their operating system.

For users, this would mean freedom. Going into 2010, our smartphones are more central to our lives than ever, and it's time to acknowledge that. Consumers treat smartphones like computers. The people who make them, though, treat them like dumbphones; prepackaged products, artificially limited for no good reason—at least, no good reason to the people who buy them.

The Apps

To view the gallery as a single page, click here

This Week's iPhone News On Giz

• An Exploded iPhone Is a Major Frat Party Buzzkill...Or Is It?

• Apple Sued For iPhone Patent Infringement, Again

• The New Mobile Twitter Site Is Actually, Um, Nice

• Droid Commercial Paints iPhone as "Digitally Clueless Beauty Pageant Queen"

• Wolfram Alpha Is Tired Of People Not Paying $50 Dollars For Their iPhone App

• New Mercedes iPhone App: Hands On

• iPhone Orchestra Hacks Touchscreen, GPS and Accelerometer to Create "Music"

• Just a Cheap iPhone/iPod Adapter USB Hub

• Mirror's Edge Coming to the iPhone In January

• iPhone Fitted With SLR Lens (It Was Bound to Happen)

• Top 5 Assclowns Laughing at the iPhone Back in 2007

• RedEye Makes Your iPhone a Universal Remote Control

• Stolen Belgian iPhones Traced to Russian Black Market

• Where Is My iPhone Videochat, Apple?

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Paul Thurrott traces the arc from start to finish:

When Microsoft first briefed me about the Family Pack back in July, I was told that it would be a limited-time offer "until supplies last" (sic) in the United States and "other select markets." I communicated Microsoft plans for the Family Pack in various articles over the next few months, noting that it was a temporary offer only.

Unfortunately, that's just now becoming obvious to potential customers here in the United States, where the Family Pack has apparently completely disappeared. Numerous email messages this week complain that attempts to find the Windows 7 Family Pack online or at brick-and-mortar electronics retailers have proven fruitless, killing plans for planned holiday presents.

In other words, stocks have run dry, as Microsoft said they eventually would. Minor issue! Seeing as Windows 7 is software, any limit on the supply is totally self-enforced. It's possible that they set aside a certain number of licenses at launch, and they've just burned through them faster than planned. It's also possible that they planned this arbitrary supply excuse so they don't look like assholes when the cost of upgrading a household's worth of PCs to Windows 7 suddenly doubles right before Christmas.

How am I supposed to tell my parents I love them this Christmas, if not with a box of vouchers for OS upgrade licenses? [WinInfo]

It's not an official Google product, with Californian film producer Charlie Mason behind the Mac and Windows-friendly peripheral, which can also be used for non-Gmail shortcuts too.

Rack up the $19.99 charge on your card, plug into into your USB port, turn on Gmail's keyboard shortcuts option, and start saving time. [Gboard via CNET]

TUAW noticed a not-so-subtle change to the Wolfram Alpha's mobile site, which now prompts stingy iPhone jerks to just download the app already. Luckily you can kill the prompt, but then you're left with an unoptimized version of the search engine, which is a chore to use on a mobile device.

So, Wolfram isn't moving as many copies of their app as they expected (Dozens! You'll see!) and it's totally within their rights to, you know, make money. But instead of taking away the free, slightly-less-capable alternative, why not just make the paid, slightly-more-capable app remotely affordable? What's the problem with that?

Oh. [TUAW]

The business model will follow that of the iPhone app store, with developers getting 70% of the revenue and 30% going to operational and partner costs. Potential applications will also go through a similar vetting process to Apple's, although hopefully a bit more transparency.

Intel hasn't yet said how many developers are actually working on netbook-specific applications, and they were vague in a CNET interview about what exactly we might see, other than promises of social networking-type capabilities. And of course, there's an easy way to keep 100% of your netbook software sales, and that's by just selling it as, you know, software. In any case, there's no clear timeline for the store other than 2010, but Intel seems motivated to get this done quickly. Soon, I hope... I'm curious to see what form this takes. [CNET via Apple Insider]

Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus. Here's a gallery of some of the most famous interfaces; see how many you recognize.

Coleran's UIs are a mix of proudly retro and boldly new, mingling compact pixel art, wireframes and the solid, militaristic reds, blues and blacks of software from the 80s with touch-free gesture systems and overelaborate visualizations. It's the kind of stuff you take for granted in action and sci-fi films, but rounded up in one place, it's a strangely impressive, almost cohesive view of the future of software, as designed by someone with no constraints. [Mark Coleran via Metafilter]

UPDATE: Mark Coleran weighs in. His main point is a good one: These interfaces are the result of the work of many people, not just one man.

It's $10, but it's an RPG, which supposedly implies more gameplay hours than non-RPGs. Even when you're not actually playing the game, you can level up your guys by listening to the music that's bound to each character, giving you an added bonus to use your iPhone/iTouch more. [iTunes (Full Version) and iTUnes (Lite) via Kotaku]

Nokia's device top dog, Kai Öistämö, reiterated that they don't see the Symbian OS as the problem—just the interface. Accordingly, they're planning two big interface milestones for 2010, the first of which will arrive by mid-year. They plan to:

"Use a new optimized graphic architecture with a focus on graphics and responsiveness, showcased beautifully on a large capacitive screen. Later in the year, a completely new visual architecture re-working of the UI will drastically reduce the complexity throughout and bring fresh appeal. We will execute here." Big screens hey? That concept tablet in the slides sure looks interesting...

Beyond reduced clutter, Nokia also plans to improve input methods (including multi-touch and single tap controls). "Two taps to get to music and video instead of 8, and email access in two steps instead of four….There will also be a significantly improved browser experience."

"The interface will be over three times faster than our current high-end devices in many areas…Scrolling will move up to over 60fps compared to 15fps on our current high-end devices."

If they deliver, it may help Symbian phones (both smartphone and dumb) level off out of their nosedive into irrelevance. And interestingly, Nokia also plans to release its first Maemo 6-powered "mobile computer" late next year, too. FYI: The screens are from yesterday's webcast of Nokia's Capital Market Day for investors: [Nokia]

You need to download and install Silverlight to get the new Maps experience, which isn't too big a deal. It allows you to have smoother animations when zooming in or out as well as a pretty slick looking streetview interface, with trees and buildings looking cut out from their background, if a bit crudely. This is done using Microsoft Photosynth, which analyzes digital photos and creates a 3D model of the area. It's pretty damned impressive.

The real question is this: how did Bing streetview cars cover all this ground without everyone noticing? [Fast Company; Bing Maps]

If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, here's Mirror's Edge in a nutshell: Parkour, with bullets. Which is an unusually hearty mix! The few early screens show what looks like a 3D sidescroller/platformer, which means that the iPhone version is a sort of hybrid game, somewhere between the original and the fantastic 2D Flash version that EA posted for free. Either way: awesome.

Especially since this is one of the few types of games that could actually benefit from the iPhone's tilt-based controls, as opposed to most franchise translations, which see every last ounce of joy sucks from their essence by that cursed accelerometer, and that god-forsken panel of glass. [Kotaku]

The latest of Nokia's reliably rousing Capital Markets Day reports points to two goals, both of which sit decidedly forward from here:

In 2010, we will drive user experience improvements, and the progress we make will take the Symbian user interface to a new level...[Nokia will] deliver our first Maemo 6-powered mobile computer, with an iconic user experience, in the second half of 2010.

Forward in terms of time, obviously, but more importantly in terms of progress: Symbian is getting stale and needs this UI update badly, while Maemo, despite a generally positive reception, is still a little raw, with a slim device selection for at least another year. You can probably assume that Maemo 6 will be more polished and ready for the mainstream, but for now it's just words on paper.

That said, Nokia's self-help regimen will take time. Nokia expects their mobile device volume market share to stay flat for 2010, partly due to their conspicuous absence from the growing US smartphone scene, but mostly, I'm guessing, because even in their European strongholds, Symbian devices are starting to feel plain old.

So yeah, all eyes on Nokia, because things are just about to get exciting! In a year. [Nokia]

Forum-dwellers at PreCentral are claiming the update doesn't bring much to the table, with it apparently addressing lag when using multiple programs. Mind you, considering we described the Pixi as being "brain-damaged, three-legged dog slow" in our review, it's a much-needed fix. Let us know how you get on with the firmware upgrade, and if that three-legged dog just grew an extra limb. [PreCentral]

Previously, the only way to grab location data from Twitter was to scrape through user profiles or to rely on some kind of third-party geodata service, with which Twitter users could upload their current locations as individual Tweets. It worked, sort of, but it was janky and awkward. Now that Twitter lets you embed your location in each tweet without taking up any characters, things are different.

Most new iPhone Twitter clients support the GPS tagging feature, so there's no shortage of location data to play with, and Twitter 360 is one of the first apps to really take advantage of it. You can basically watch your Twitter friends leave a trail of narcissistic word nuggets all over town in real time, rendered on a map or through your iPhone's camera. It's fascinating, if, you know, you're into loose acquaintances' latitudes and longitudes. (Which is an acceptable thing, in this 2009.)

Twitter 360 is $3 and only available for the iPhone 3GS, since a compass is necessary to properly orient the tweets on screen. And the app itself is executed well enough, though its function are fairly narrow—if you can stand to wait, I'm sure free multipurpose AR apps like Layar will get support for Twitter geolocation soon enough. [iTunes]

For the full directory of Gizmodo's Essential iPhone Apps, click here.

The Month's Best

As gathered from our weekly roundups.

If you hate hate hate galleries, click here for a single post.

Essential App Directory Inductees

This month was BOUNTIFUL, as we welcome seven (7!) new apps to the fold. Here are your new inductees:

• I Am T-Pain: This app was fun when it first came out, but now that you can sing over your iPod library, it's priceless.

• Waze: Because it's getting to be good enough to depend on (in a few areas), because it's free, and because their video-gamey plan to make the app better is totally charming.

• Voices: Because when your iPhone isn't acting as a tool, it's a toy. And everyone loves some good voice modulation.

• Snapture: Because full 3GS support, which Snapture recently added, was the only thing holding this app back from replacing the iPhone's camera completely.

• ShopSavvy: Because any iPhone decent a good, free barcode scanning app.

• Chorus: Because finding new apps is hard, y'all.

• Jailbreak: Kirikae: Because without a solid task switcher like Kirikae, fantastic jailbreak app Backgrounder is kind of useless. With it, your iPhone is a full-fledged multitasking smartphone, finally. (Don't get defensive!)

And Farewell To...

Our current directory members are all safe this time around. But next month, expect hell. (Maybe!)

What counts as an essential iPhone app changes all the time, and so should our guide: If we've missed anything huge, or you've got a much better suggestion for a particular type of app, let us know, or say so in the comments. We'll be updating this thing pretty frequently, and a million Gizmodo readers can do a better job at sorting through the app mess than a single Gizmodo editor. Enjoy!