App Store birthday: Apple's celebrating, but should you?

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 08 July 2009 06:30

Opinion and Analysis

Apple's App Store turns one this week. The company is celebrating in a small way.

The App Store - Apple's online outlet for iPhone and iPod touch software - went live on July 11, 2008.

But there's no sign of "it's our birthday but you get the presents!" Instead, Apple's marking the occasion with some self-congratulatory prose and localised lists of the company's favourite applications.

Sure Apple has a lot to be proud of - the App Store currently offers more than 56,000 apps (according to AppShopper), and the billionth download happened back in April.

But isn't this a bit too gushing?

"Light a candle and cue the music. Okay, forgive us for sounding like doting parents, but we're just so proud - having watched the App Store go from promising newcomer to full-fledged revolutionary. To celebrate its first birthday, we've gathered some of our favourite games and apps, Part fun, Part function, Entirely amazing."

Featured apps in the Australian store include Ocarina (perhaps the poster child of iPhone apps), Things, Aussie Rules Live, Sygic's Mobile Maps Australia, and Oz Weather. Among the games are Flight Control, The Sims 3, Blooms, and Real Tennis 2009.

Even if Apple's not doing anything special for its customers, iPhone and iPod touch owners have benefited from a wide range of often free and almost always affordably priced software. By providing a simple and relatively low cost (30 percent of sales) distribution channel, to a large extent Apple has made up for refusing to allow developers to sell their products directly to customers.

While the debate about the rights and wrongs of the model bubbles along, masses of developers and users have contributed to the App Store's evident success.

But problems remain.

From time to time developers complain that their apps have been excluded from the Store on grounds that are inconsistent if not arbitrary. Some recent examples have involved downloadable content.

Please read on for examples and other App Store issues.