Mobile App Revolution

I think there's almost a belligerence - people are frustrated with their manufactured environment. We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use. In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole. -- Jonathan Ive
Obvious statement of the day: the iPhone has revolutionized the way things are done in our lives. There are millions of apps that give us access to parts of our lives that we didn't know we needed 10 years ago. With a swipe of a finger we have access to our insurance companies; social media; photos of family; and any type of game you can imagine.

On reddit there's a a sub-reddit for iPhones and about once every few months people post pictures of their iPhone home screen (herehere, and here). These pictures tell you a lot about a person. The home screen contains a person's most used apps. You'll see a lot of the same apps on the home screen, including: camera, phone, messages, email, web, and some social app. There are so many apps out there, that looking at someone else's phone allows you to discover more apps. It can be difficult to find new apps due to their enormous numbers and lack of organization. My current home screen is on the right. What does your home screen look like?

What surprises me about apps is how people will refuse to pay $1.99 for a quality app on their phone. For some reason, if it's not $0.99 or free, it's too expensive. While there are many quality free apps in the app store, as with most things in the world, you pay for what you get. Here are the apps on my home screen that were at least $1.99:

  • Alien Blue - it's a free reddit app but I bought the in-app extras to support the creator
  • TweetBot - the best Twitter app I have found
  • Golfshot GPS - $20 app that has amazing GPS maps and distances when playing golf
  • British Military Fitness - the My Instructor app near the bottom right that includes guided workouts following the BMF style
  • Sparrow - the email app that Apple should have made. It was recently bought by Google, so development has ceased, but it is still worth the $3
  • Downcast - As I mentioned in my podcast post, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I've tried probably 5 different apps, and Downcast is the best.
How has the smart phone changed your life?
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