Popular iPhone applications are a waste of time

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 19:16

IT Industry - Market

Why would anyone queue for hours, pay top dollar, suffer at the hands of activation servers that didn't work and all to get hold of an iPhone 3G just to chase a monkey in a ball around the screen or pretend to be a Jedi whilst using the handset as a virtual lightsabre?

I guess it should come as no real surprise. The Apple App Store has had a chance to recover from the hiccups of the first few days, when its goodies were not available to the masses who found themselves unable to upgrade to the necessary version 2 software required to run them. And now the truth about popular iPhone applications emerges: they are, mostly, a complete waste of time.

For proof just head over to the App Store yourself and check out the most downloaded applications. As I write this there are two distinct popularity charts, one for paid applications and the other for the free ones. They have one thing in common though, the majority are a total waste of time.

I mean this in the nicest possible sense, and am not suggesting that these are buggy or do not work. Rather that they are pointless, designed to waste time rather than provide useful added functionality to your iPhone or iTouch. Let's look at the top paid for applications to start with. Straight in at number one is Super Monkey Ball, followed by Crash Bandicoot Nitro at number two. Positions four and five are filled by a Texas Hold 'Em poker variant and a brain training game respectively. Moving down, at number seven we have some Sudoku fun, and at ten there is the opportunity to play a number of virtual musical instruments. Then along comes a bunch of games, Pool at 11, Enigmo at 12, Lord help us a virtual pet at 13, more card games at 14 and a virtual pint of beer at 15. To round up the time wasting insanity there's a fake fingerprint scanner at 18, a puzzle game at 19 and a music beat maker at 20.

So that is 14 out of the top 20 most popular paid for iPhone apps that do nothing to aid productivity or add sensible functionality to your state of the art gadget.

Maybe the free stuff will prove more worthy? Find out on the next page, but I warn you not to expect miracles...

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