Thanks, Apple, for that billionth app
Sometime tomorrow, if estimates are correct, the Apple App Store will serve it’s billionth application, an amazing number for something only about a year old…
The April 23rd date is the product of calculations done by the mobileSQUARED people in Great Britain. Their computation say that the billion mark will be reached sometime in the afternoon, British Isles time, according to a CrunchGear story. A few others have given approximately the same estimate. When it happens, there will be some prizes distributed and the world will go on. You could, of course, be a winner by purchasing an app at the App Store, or by registering to win at this link. But all of us are likely to be winners in this event, one way or another.
The mobile devices for which these applications are intended have advanced the cause of mobile computing measurably, as have the apps themselves. I keep my iPhone in my shirt pocket. I can take it out and read the news, or read a book. I can use it to do math, listen to music or make a telephone call, either 3G or VOIP. I can record voice notes or type sticky notes.
I can check the weather, surf the internet, access Wikipedia, and share files with my MacBook. I can write email, or a book if I don’t mind the tiny touchscreen keyboard. I can call up maps, look up telephone numbers, find lost classmates, check to see if I’m busy next Tuesday, check my bank balance, and take a photograph. I can visit the social media site of my choice and even use my mobile device as a flashlight, should I need to.
And that is just scratching the surface of the thousands of applications available for the iPhone, and is a list made without even mentioning games. These devices, the iPhone and the iPod Touch, are sufficiently common that people have downloaded nearly a billion of these applications. There are millions of people walking around, therefore, with that much computing power in their pockets, and they are using it.
Devices like the iPhone and the Touch are changing how we live, and they are leading us into a future where our pockets will pack more computing and communicating power than our desktops have today. Tomorrow, for the billionth time, someone will download an app that will let them perform one more function on that tiny mobile computer in their pocket. Thanks, Apple.
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April 24th, 2009
I can do those same things on my HTC Touch Pro, and have Apple to thank for it. Good health to Steve Jobs, a true visionary.