Geek & Mild by Sean Sperte

Jul 11th, 2008 App Store Impressions

Marco Arment gives his impressions of the App Store so far (via Cameron.):

What bothers me the most is that so many apps are simply unnecessary front-ends to websites […] I want to see more apps doing things and enabling uses that weren’t possible to do well, if at all, using Safari. That’s the result I expected from the pent-up SDK demand.

I wholeheartedly agree. Most — probably 90% — of the apps available right now are unimaginative. I haven’t found a single (non-game) app that uses the accelerometer to present a different, landscape screen. That seems extremely odd to me, especially since many apps could really use more horizontal space for their UI presentation.

One of the most interesting apps is a video app from Rhythm NewMedia called vSNAX Videos [non-iTunes link]. The app is really polished and has some great features I’d even like to see Apple incorporate into the iPod video player. (If only the content were better.)

If there’s any takeaway for me from this past week (including all the TripLog conversation), it’s that interface design is needed now more than ever.