Ampers & Dot

We’ve all seen the commercials: white background, hipster jingle, soothing voice, and a hand swiping through an iPhone application explaining how whatever your wildest dreams might be, there’s an app for that. As Apple claims: there are “Apps for Everything“.

Before I get to the rant section of today’s post, I should preface with the fact that I think the App concept is fantastic and has revolutionized the mobile industry in a great way. iPhone app development is cheap, quick, and relatively easy, drawing out hoards of developers making it a strong marketplace where there truly is an app for just about everything.

The app-ification of the mobile industry is even better. Following Apple’s Shaq-sized footsteps, Blackberry has App World, Windows Mobile has a Marketplace, Palm has its App Catalog, Android has App Market, Nokia has Ovi, and Motorola has App Warehouse (ok, that last one was fake, but if Motorola had a platform, its apps likely would be sold from a warehouse). Although I’m vehemently against the fragmentation of development platforms (expect a blog post on this sometime soon) I’m still glad to see mobile platforms deservedly gain developers’ interest because it means more fun and function for consumers.

Now of course, not all the apps are that great, or useful, or appropriate… (you all know that iFart and 30+ noise emulating clones exist, I’m not even going to link to it because they don’t deserve it), but amazingly, that’s not what I’m going to rant on today. Instead, I’m going to rant about feature apps - applications that enhance the phone’s functionality.

Here’s the back story: earlier this week my friend Matt took me to a Red Sox game (thanks Matty!) and we had pretty awesome seats (seriously, thanks!), right down at about field level. In between innings we decided to take a few pictures. Matt pulled out his trusty iPhone (the most popular camera in the world) but wanted to take a picture of a player deeper in outfield. The iPhone’s camera is pretty good, but it has no zooming ability. But not to fear, Matt showed me that “there’s an app for that!” and loaded up a third party application that zooms in the camera, “and for only a buck - well worth it”. Although I agree with him, that only a dollar seems fair for an application that adds such a great feature to the phone, I’m less enthusiastic about it being a third party app.

My question: why doesn’t Apple include these much-needed features into the standard build of the operating system instead of selling them?

As indicated by third party developers, the phone is fully capable of these features, but for some reason or another, aren’t included in the standard build. Is it because Apple makes more money for every time it sells an app? Man, I hope not. If there were security or stabilization issues, then why would Apple release an app to the public at all? If it’s a copyright problem, that third party developers came up with an idea and won’t sell to Apple, well that shouldn’t be a problem for them either (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch Pirates of Silicon Valley. You can borrow my copy if you want…).

Oh, wait… (and here comes the punch line) taking good third party ideas and building them in is exactly what Apple is doing. In the annual iPhone upgrade, Apple is indeed baking some of the most popular apps to give users the features that should have been there all along. Here’s a good list of “15 Apps Rendered Obsolete by the iPhone 3GS“. #10 on the list: Camera Zoom.

Ultimately Apple’s seems to be slow on improving its operating system because independent developers are doing the work instead, a detriment, and cost, to consumers.

So the next time you wonder if “there’s an app for that” - instead maybe you should wonder why it’s not already standard.

Since posting my thoughts on sponsored conversations last week, I’ve had a number of fun discussions around the topic. During my last post, I asked readers to write me to make a case for why they deserved the free W2353 Smart Series monitor that LG sent me - and I’d ship it off to whoever was in greatest need of an upgrade. I expected to hear a number of good stories about 16bit color screens, 10″ panels, and ginormous CRTs (yes, I heard about each of these - and we’ll get to that), but I also expected to hear some backlash on my sponsored post.

But, to my surprise, I didn’t actually get one bit of negative feedback. I expected to hear from readers about the moral and ethical boundaries in blogging, what I owe my readers, how writing a sponsored post is “selling out” - but I guess that was really just my own insecurities about talking up a product that a company sent me, because no one really seemed all that worried about it.

In fact, I ended up hearing from a lot of readers and most of you found it pretty cool.

I heard from a number of readers who I didn’t know were out there - because normally I only hear from the small percentage of you that comment - and it was refreshing and awesome. Mainly, because a) it reassured me that I have really great readers and b) each of you that reached out said great things about my sponsored post (sure, maybe you were sucking up so you could get a chance at the free monitor… but I don’t mind!). I also heard from a number of regular commenters too, the loyal few that I know are there, and they seemed to like the sponsored post too - which was helpful because knowing I didn’t rock the boat with my active readers was critical.

Basically, everyone liked the post, enjoyed my take on the topic, and thought that I was giving something away was pretty sweet. So first of all, thanks! Because I couldn’t do it without you. No, seriously.

If it weren’t for readers, this would just be a diary (and an embarrassingly lame one). The reason I blog, is to share my thoughts and opinions with people who have similar interests. And now that enough people who share my interests have found me, I can share even cooler things, like free monitors. This makes my blog more interesting and readers more interested. So seriously, thanks!

So anyway, onto the contest winner:

Some of you wrote in with very funny stories and solid reasoning for your candidacy for the free monitor, but the winner in my book (which, as the sole judge, is all that matters) is David from California with his broken Dell laptop!

David’s story goes:

I could really use this monitor because for the last 10 months I have been using an old Dell laptop with a busted screen. I got the computer free from my friend, and doesn’t have a warranty. But it only works with the screen is folded almost all the way open, at about 165 degrees. This is especially frustrating because if it goes past 165 degrees then the whole computer shuts off so I have to keep it perfectly propped open at the right angle. After 10 months of this, my neck is killing me from hunching over and I’m ready to quit using a computer all together.

Now, while I was tempted to tell David that there is probably a pretty easy way to fix it by tinkering in the screen’s hinge housing, there’s one main reason this is a winner in my book: David’s apparently been uncomfortably adjusting himself to a broken computer, instead of adjusting his broken computer to him. And that just sounds awful and totally deserving of the “Smart” comfort features in the LG W2353. David can dock his broken laptop right into the monitor and never have to look at the open-face madness he’s grown accustomed to. So David, email me your address and I’ll ship it off to you this week.

So thus ends a sponsored conversation: LG got me to plug its monitors, I got two post ideas out of it, you guys wrote me with some awesome stories, and David got a free neck-saving upgrade.

Now even though I don’t see myself letting this blog get overrun by product contests anytime soon, I’m glad I experimented with the concept, and I fully understand the benefits. In short, the reason this worked out so well? I disclosed the sponsored nature of the post and was completely honest about my opinion of the product (seriously, I still wish the thing had real buttons…).