I have said it before and I will say it again. What makes a great app is not the amount of features packed in by the developer. On the contrary, people like things they can understand easily. That is why the iPhone itself is so popular. If I open an app and it does not include a “How to Use this App” section, it better be obvious how to use it within 20 seconds or I close the app and most likely delete it from my device.
Putting the name of the app aside (it is supposedly pronounced “Twitter” with a French accent), Touiteur is starting to close the gap between iPhone and Android Twitter apps. I was talking to a friend yesterday about her new Droid and she was telling me how she thought she was able to use iPhone apps on her Android phone. The reason she thought this was because she and her iPhone-owning friends seems to have what looked like the same apps on their phones.
As a blogger who often writes about mobile matters both here and on other sites, I spend a lot of time in the various app stores/worlds/markets etc. I recently started using an N900, which has apps on Nokia’s OVI Store as well. All the above examples besides Apple’s App Store are a complete and utter mess. If we are taking the Android Market as an example, apps are mixed with add ons, widgets, skins, themes, language packs, and a lot of other “junk” that I do not want to see when I am looking for an app.
From day one of using Android 1.5 on a Samsung Galaxy, my main complaint was text input. Besides the obvious phone calls, the main ways I use my mobile phone is tweeting, texting, and the occasional Facebooking. If you’ll notice, all three of those have one thing in common; they all require typing. Coming from a BlackBerry Bold, which has in my opinion, the best keyboard on the market, to a Galaxy or better yet, Android 1.5, made it close to impossible for me to type a word without mistakes.
As a person who reviews mobile apps daily, there are very few apps that I download and keep forever. On the iPhone platform, there is endless storage and memory to handle hundreds of apps, but on the BlackBerry Bold or the Android device I use, the application memory is very limited. What this means for me and many other heavy mobile users is that if you are not using the app on a daily basis, you cannot afford to have it to take up your precious application memory, so even if you like an app, chances are you will delete it eventually.
I think we all agree that the internet is one of the top inventions of the last few decades, if not the century. We are all on it constantly, and very few things in our day to day lives cannot be done via the Web. What that means, and this is backed up with proven numbers, is that we are all spending more and more time on the interwebs. We do our shopping, research, education, and now socializing through various websites.
Facebook has become notorious for many different things. It is by far the most popular social network today. It is also probably the most redesigned site on the entire Web with new Facebook designs launching almost monthly. As a result, it is also the most debated site when it comes to the design. Lastly, I find it to be one of the buggiest sites on the Web especially when it comes to uploading pictures and videos.
In the million blog posts written on the Web about the iPhone since its release, I would say 90% of them talk about the iPhone’s specifications and features. What I find to be most amazing about the iPhone OS by far, is that my 3 year old kid can use my iPod Touch, select a game to play, launch the app, and play for hours, all without hesitating for a second. OK, that is not true for all apps of course, but there are certain apps that he just loves playing, Doodle Buddy being the main one. You can see an actual screen shot of my 3 year old’s work in the last screen shot below. I know, a true artist…
By: Hillel Fuld
It is interesting once in a while to take a step back and think about how many forms of communication we use on a regular basis. Better yet, how many different tools ensure we stay connected 24/7. First there was of course the telephone, then email, then came mobile technology, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, [...]
It would be interesting to count how many IM apps there are in the App Store. Off hand, I can personally think of close to ten. Meebo, a company that was first on the iPhone scene with their iPhone optimized Web client back in the days before the iPhone 3G, is the most recent member of the group. They announced their native iPhone app recently, and judging by just how good it is, I understand why it took them this long to release it.
