App Store off to flying start…
Piers Fawkes is a Guy (geddit?) who is a bearded thinker and new media marketing bod much like myself. He may even have a tattoo, I don’t, so if he did we wouldn’t be alike in that respect.
He also writes and founded PSFK the font of all good stories, hence my need to re-cycle them here with the occassional commentary.
Writing recently Piers had this to say about the App Store:
‘Has Apple helped launch the next generation web? For a long time, many web analysts have been labeling the second web boom (also known as the read-write web) as Web 2.0. Watching the impact of applications on Apple’s iPhone makes you wonder if they were being a little too generous to the return of browser-led web.
Applications on the iPhone give users a different experience of the web than we’ve had before. They offer digital connectivity beyond the browser - custom solutions designed with the user in mind - interfaces that borrow more from phone and video-game menus than web pages. And if you couple the range of applications with the power of location then this new ‘web’ becomes something very different, very instant and very relevant.
Of course there is other phone technology like this - but it has failed to be as popular as these applications (25 million apps were downloaded in the first 10 days after the iPhone 3G launch). Apple is helping create the second version of the web.
The simplicity and user-centricity of the applications makes what we’ve been calling 2.0 look rather 1.0. I’d argue also that many successful old-school web services like Facebook are better through an iPhone application. In this version of the internet, users don’t need to access the web and browse to find their content. They just click and go. In fact, this second generation web isn’t so much about content as it is about experience - how the user can interact with the world online and offline simultaneously.’
Those figures are pretty compelling, but most of the apps are cr’app. Games dominate, news regurgitates and some plain irritate. But I love it. I love it like my hands, which I love because they mean I can type this and browse that, but if one day I can do all that with my sweat glands, or better my mind then I’ll love them more.
We’re a month into the App store and there is much talk of how this could dominate the market like iTunes has. I firmly believe their is much innovation to come in this space that goes way beyond the glut of transitioning existing titles (games) and services (Twitter/Facebook). We are yet to see the first game changing original app.
But when pigeons can use your God phone to play guitar hero, you’ve peaked into the future.
Posted in 2 Minute Critique, iPhone | 
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