“All the recent talk about the App Store’s 10th anniversary makes me wonder if I’d have finished [my Ph.D.] it if I had access to the same apps I now enjoy on my iPhone and my iPad. That sometimes makes the frustrations feels almost fun,” Leif Johnson writes for Macworld. “Discussions of the App Store’s impact tend to focus on how it gave thousands of small-time developers a good way to make money or how it changed our social lives; we give relatively little attention to how it simplified our routines. I don’t think I’d be the same person I am today without it. Heck, I’ll bet the same could be said about you.”
“In 2006 I was still toting my BlackBerry Pearl and harboring good memories of my PalmPilot and the apps I used with them. Even Steam, the popular cloud-based gaming platform and marketplace, had already made its debut a couple of years ahead of the App Store, offering us a way to download the games we bought any time we wanted them,” Johnson writes. “But these were false starts.”
“The App Store, though, put possibilities in our pockets,” Johnson writes. “With all those apps and more at my fingertips, I could have sent off my dissertation without ever printing a single piece of paper or possibly even using another device. It’s so revolutionary that it’s staggering.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Revolutionary.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s App Store turns ten years old – July 6, 2018
Apple’s App Store is destroying Google Play in services and subscriptions – April 18, 2018
Apple’s App Store revenue on track to eclipse global box office revenue this year – February 1, 2018
Apple App Store users spent nearly double that of Google Play users in Q417 – January 26, 2018
Apple unveils all-new App Store – June 5, 2017
Why would some one write a paper on a phone or iPad?
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You and snoop dog are really annoying. Rushing to be the first post with one sentence that has nothing enlightening to say Day after day. Please go away and come back with a thoughtful post. Both of you are soooo juvenile.
Why would someone invent software that can read for blind people?
Why would someone invent a machine that can power wheels and make a car?
Why would someone ask dumb questions on an Internet forum to try and pretend they’re smart when they are actually dumb by nature of the dumb question being asked?
“BeatSnoopDummiePrattler” above is correct, both drugged out Snoop Dogue and blind as a blinged out bat Prater are grating on people with brains.
Bad Doggie! Prattling Prater!
iOS devices and apps have made it much easier to consume media, browse news, and play games. There are pros and cons to these mobile capabilities – they can be productive, entertaining, and…time wasting. I have played a couple of games fairly regularly for about two years. Both are freemium apps (which means crippled gameplay) and both involve some degree of social interaction (teaming and grouping). I have spent zero real money on these games – I refuse to support the freemium approach to apps, which can easily translate into a never-ending series of payments that take you another small step closer to…nothing. Because there is no end and there is no ultimate reward. I would hate to see the total number of hours that I have spent on these two games over the past two years.
It is very possible that the author of this article would never have completed his Ph.D. in the modern age because he would have wasted too many hours watching YouTube, texting, and playing games.
An oddly-written article. I agree that there are huge number of useful apps that increase productivity. I find the following phrase from the introduction to be strange:
“the App Store boosted productivity 40 years ahead”
He never explains where “40 years” comes from, so I guess it’s just a fun bit of hyperbole. Also contributing to that view of the phrase is the awkwardness of the phrasing. It turned me off to actually reading the rest of the article because that intro was so weird.