Will apps rule the world?

24 Aug 2009, 4:24 pm   -   Source: New Scientist
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Are iPhone applications taking over the world (Reuters)

Are iPhone applications taking over the world (Reuters)

Are iPhone applications taking over the world? New Scientist's Richard Fisher looks at the new boom industry.

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Are iPhone applications taking over the world? New Scientist's Richard Fisher looks at the new boom industry.

Friday 7.43 am

My wife is standing at the door to the bathroom, watching me time my toothbrush routine using an application downloaded to my iPhone. Thirty seconds on upper-right molars: done. "What are you doing?" she asks. "Nothing," I mumble through a mouthful of toothpaste. She doesn't speak, but her eyes say "I think I love you a little less." If only she understood.

Ever since I bought an Apple iPhone, I have been hooked on apps. Apple's App Store is a virtual shopping mall with all the shopaholic joy of a real mall but none of the annoying teenagers. It is packed to the virtual rafters with thousands of downloadable software tools.

Admittedly, the store makes a bad first impression on many people, with novelty apps such as lightsabres dominating the top 25 chart. But dig a little deeper and you will find life-enhancing riches.

I confess that I now turn to the App Store in almost every situation. In unfamiliar places, I use apps to find the nearest gas station, cinema or even public toilet. I track the length and time of my commute. All my gym workouts are logged. Finding a nice place to eat while on the move is a cinch.

Even this article is brought to you thanks to a voice recorder app (iDictaphone) that I used for recording interviews, and one that helped me "mind map" my thoughts when planning it out. Sometimes I daydream about becoming the most virtually enhanced human in the world.

Thankfully, I am not the only one in this appy daze. I discovered that loads of people, including my colleagues, turn to their phones for help with all sorts of things.

Up until a year ago, apps barely registered. Now these clever bits of software, when combined with the sensors and networking capabilities of today's smartphones, are sparking nothing short of a techno-cultural revolution. On the iPhone alone, Apple claims over 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded in just a year.

The rest of the industry, including Nokia and Google, is now piling in with their own new or relaunched app stores.

Apps are more than just clever toys. While gaming still accounts for the lion's share of app activity, it is beyond doubt that apps, and the new wave of phones in which they reside, are already influencing the way their users communicate with each other, navigate their environment and do business.

Arguably, these tailored bits of software - connected to the internet, location-aware and sensor-supported as they are - may supersede the web. Some say the devices on which they reside are becoming a vital part of our selves, turning us into de facto cyborgs. Could these humble bits of code really have the potential to completely transform the way we interact with the world?

Saturday 11.10 pm

Out with friends and last orders have been called in the pub. The alpha male of our group pulls out a stack of taxi numbers scrawled on old business cards. None of the firms is close enough.

"Richard has a new iPhone - let's try that," my wife suggests. I pull up an app called AroundMe, which tells me where the nearest cab company is. Thirty seconds later and the taxi is on its way. My friends look on in envy and admiration. Alpha male looks despondent.

"I am part man, part computer," I tell myself.

Some might ask what all the fuss is about. After all, downloadable applications appeared on some cellphones such as the Palm Treo almost a decade ago, so what's different now?

The short answer is that the old apps were not particularly good. They were either difficult to download or time-consuming to master, so few people used them, says Gerard Goggin at the University of New South Wales, who has studied the sociological impact of the iPhone.

Even people who think that Apple is all about glossy hype cannot deny that the iPhone changed things for everybody.

Variously described as the Jesus phone, a concierge, a Swiss army knife or, somewhat disturbingly, a fingertip secretary, the iPhone is currently at the centre of the new app world.

But forget the touch screen and sleek design, the truly revolutionary thing that Apple CEO Steve Jobs managed to do with the iPhone was to persuade cellphone network operators to loosen their grip on what phones could do.

One of the consequences of this coup was the birth of the App Store, which Apple alone controlled and had designed to be as easy to browse as the iTunes store.

What's more, Apple made it easy for anybody with some programming know-how to create an app: for $99 you can download the software development kit and gain intimate access to the phone's functions.

Lured by the promise of riches, developers ranging from large software houses to bedroom enthusiasts have created a massive market of apps, virtually overnight.

Monday 7.25 pm

I have begun to track my cycle commute using an app called Trails, which records my path, altitude and speed as I travel. My aim is to find the fastest and shortest route to work.

Today I achieved a new work-to-home record.

"My god, what happened?" asked my wife as I shuffled through the front door this evening. "You look terrible." I give her a self-satisfied grin. It was me versus the clock, and I won.

In the past year, many other companies have launched or rebranded their app stores for other handsets, including Nokia's Ovi store and Google's Android marketplace.

None has the sheer volume of the iPhone's store yet, but few technology analysts think Apple will remain the dominant purveyor of apps for long: Android offers significantly more freedom for developers than Apple, so could lure many of them away from the iPhone; Palm has been in the apps game for years; Research in Motion has the business market cornered with its Blackberries; Nokia has legions of loyal European customers; and Microsoft is, well, Microsoft.

Even if these are not as successful as Apple's store, hundreds if not thousands of apps look likely to be available on most handsets.

The explosion in investment coupled with the armies of developers means that there is already an app for almost any occasion.

"The phone can take on many, many guises," says Goggin. "It can be a spirit level, a bowling ball, a budget balancer or a breathalyser." The device in your pocket is not a phone any more. It is anything you want it to be.

Saturday 4.30 pm

In a coffee shop casually flicking through the App Store. My finger hovers over an icon on the screen. Should I download MyVibe, a vibrator sex toy that was among the first X-rated apps Apple permitted? It feels so wrong, and yet...

The ability to use apps in almost any context raises the possibility that these devices could lead to profound changes in the way we navigate the world, communicate and absorb information. The app phenomenon is only a year old, but researchers are watching the surge closely.

Many social scientists who study the influence of technology argue that app-enabled mobile devices are set to become a huge influence on our daily behaviours.

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