I was mulling over last night’s app-tastic episode of The Apprentice, trying to work out whether I should be happy or sad that mobile apps have become such a part of public consciousness, when an email dropped into my inbox bigging up a new iPhone app.
Called Rack Stare, the “game” sees you trying to ogle the cleavage of a busty woman on screen without being spotted. The longer you gawp, the more points you get. Is this what we’ve come to?
I’m not going to link to it – if you want it, look it up on iTunes – but it serves to show just what’s wrong with this gold rush. It’s not that people are coming back with silt instead of precious stone, but that they’re trying to sell it in shops still afterwards.
To be clear, I’m not annoyed with what Lord Sugar’s contestants came up with in a short amount of time. With no prior experience and one day to turn something around, I don’t think I could come up with an executable concept that didn’t revolve around lowest common denominator humour.
Best Android apps of all time: Top 100
I am however distressed that mere soundboard apps manage to accrue more than 10,000 downloads, and that The Apprentice’s eight million viewers now think this is all they do. Likewise, I’m distressed to see an app as tasteless as Rack Stare emerging at the same time to underline it.
Technophobic naysayers, ignore drivel like this. Apps aren’t apps for the sake of themselves. The best apps are extensions of services, conduits to help save you time, or games where the fun extends from the challenge they pose, not the crude catchphrases you can summon on command for giggles with diminishing returns.
Best iPhone apps of all time: Top 100
Lord Sugar says that apps are where business is now, but the show doesn’t underline what they can do: it doesn’t show you that Spotify brings you every song under the sun to your phone wherever there’s a 3G connection. It doesn’t show you that Dropbox syncs all of your devices’ storage so you can get crucial work files wherever. It doesn’t make clear that Angry Birds is in fact a superb example of game making in any era, combining addictive play and challenges with Nintendo-wrothy charm.
You’ll note that not a single app on our Best Android and iPhone Top 100 lists is a gimmick designed to get a giggle out of your friends. It’s because we don’t support them – all they do is encourage the idea that apps are “disposable”. It’s a race to the bottom that simply isn’t healthy, when smartphones are in fact the new PCs. You don’t download fart apps on your laptop, do you? I mean, you just wouldn’t, would you? So why do it on something you use just as much every day?
The worst aspect of all of this is that consumers won’t just be put off, but that would-be developers will be encouraged to put out more nonsense on the double too to make a cheap buck.
This has to stop now. People, stop buying this rubbish. If you read about a pointless iPhone app that lets you poo on Osama Bin Laden while he makes Beavis and Butthead sniggers, don’t rush out and get it to make your friends laugh down at the pub. At the very least, don’t bloody pay for it.
All you’re doing is convincing tech sceptics that smartphones are nothing more than play-mobiles for burbling man-children who still find the Crazy Frog ringtone catchy. You’re letting the side down: smartphones are so much more than that. The next time a huge TV show focuses on them, I hope that message comes across clearer.
