GearWERKZ TechBlog

Much ado is made about the numerous apps available on Apple's App Store. Some 25000 and increasing last time I looked (which was admittedly some time ago). I am a Windows Mobile user and also own a Palm Pre. But I spent my time with an iPhone. Some 18 - 20 months before I finally became fed up with it. While the Blackberry and Windows Mobile variants of the app store have only recently launched, they have been immediately compared to Apple's model and declared deficient. And here's why all of those people are wrong.

Follow up:

Quantity does not necessarily mean quality. While Apple is frequently lambasted for their martial regimes on approving Apps, the truth there is too much detritus for the App store itself to be whatsoever useful. Before I would ever embark on a foray into the store, I would need to combine it with sites and other recommendations so that I would not waste my time wading through all of the sheer crap available in the store.

While the Palm Pre's app catalog is not full of unlimted choices, I feel like it is easy to peel through the listings and find what is actually of value. I have yet to download an app for my Pre and feel left wanting. And as far as apps for Windows Mobile phones, I have not felt the need, since WinMo 6.1, to download anything. The OS pretty much provides everything I need out of the box (except for Evernote and Twitter plugins).

I will also venture to say that most of the media pundits and Apple fanboys leading the volume brigade about how great the app store is because of all the apps it contains, are addictive micro-buyers. People who are members of a new sub-section of the digital culture who head to app stores and download countless apps simply because they are there. If anyone tells you they have downloaded more than 12 apps for their cell phone, they are downloading refuse simply for the sake of claiming how many apps they have downloaded. A cell only has so much battery power, and unless it is someone's only device, I am hard pressed to believe that people find the time to actively use all of any smartphone's embedded apps, and any more than 12 added apps on a regular basis.

My own feeling is that if your smartphone is something you carry every day and there is a purchased app you have not used in the course of a week, then you did not need it. I'll allow some exception for apps that are used to help your situational awareness while traveling, which then may go unused when you are not on the road, but you can't do without when you are.

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