Where's an app for that

February 16th, 2010

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As many of you (presumably) are, I am also paying about $50 too much for a ‘smart phone’ that makes calls and checks e-mail.

‘Don’t forget about the apps,’ you say?

Apps are indeed one of the major selling points for these phones and have enabled that flimsy devise of ours to do much, much more than simply make or receive a phone call—they are essentially what we’re paying for.

However, I’m sure the App Store was once some happy place where folks found useful applications that actually made our lives better; but it has now become that (sometimes, not so) wonderful place where we get to fill up our phone memory and prepare our thumbs for countless right to left, page-turning motions to go through the seven seas of apps that we end up never using. In many ways, the App Store resembles the Internet as a whole, and how we really have to filter through so much information to get what we really want and need.

There are still some great apps out there, don’t get me wrong. But all I’m saying is: for the amount of money we’re paying per month and for the price of some of these ridiculous apps, I’d like to see at least some of these make the cut:

• An app that has the cooking time for every microwavable dinner on the planet—so that I don’t have to waste 5 minutes of my life trying to find the darn time—and then find out that “Microwaving this product, is not recommended”.


• An app that sends me a text message whenever I shouldn’t pay attention to the traffic on my GPS (slaps me across the face—available on pay version only) and suggest that I’ll arrive sooner to my destination if I walk on the shoulder of the 101, instead.

• An app that alerts the elevator I am coming so that it is always there, at the push of a button.


• An app that notifies me it’s the birthday of the person who’s calling me …because those calls can get rather awkward If ‘The Day’ slips my mind. 


• An app that makes me find things I have lost before the last place I look. 



This (silly) list can go on and on…but if these apps were even remotely possible, no matter how silly or useless they really were, someone, somewhere would try to build them.

And this is what makes the Internet as a whole so powerful. Both, its strengths and weaknesses lay in its ability to enable people to create as many things as they please, regardless of any sense of relevance—But in the midst of the seven seas of potato chip bags and Styrofoam that is the App Store, there always seems to be that diamond in the rough.

At the rate we’re going (and with much patience and discipline) some day everyone will have their own version of their ideal app, and elevators around the world will sync up in the nick of time—

(Image source)

Tagged with: innovation, iphone, apps, internet

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