Mobile software overload

THE UNDISPUTED HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP of the mobile application market, Apple recently announced that its Itunes online marketplace is now playing host to over 100,000 Apps for the annoyingly ubiquitous Iphone and Ipod Touch, cementing its place at the top of the mobile application delivery food chain, possibly permanently.

Because the Cupertino company got such an impressive head start on the rest of the world when it comes to offering smartphone-based widgets over the Internet, it will take an effort of epic proportions for late-starting also-rans like Microsoft, Nokia and Google to even catch up, let alone overtake the fruit-themed gadget maker.

The latest figures are not available but, in September this year Apple announced that it had hosted two billion downloads through its Itunes App Store. These figures are, of course, heavily bolstered by Ipod users and Apple tends to keep quiet about what proportions of its downloaded Apps are installed on which of its devices, but the figures are mightily impressive all the same.

Apple, despite its many detractors, has set the bar for ease of use, functionality, reliability and customer satisfaction enviably high when it comes to mobile software delivery. So high, in fact, that its competitors must constantly kick themselves for not having seen the light earlier and jumped on the App Store bandwagon.

T-Mobile, which was the first UK airtime provider to follow tentatively in Apple's well-trodden footsteps, recently published some statistics from its Android Market service but they almost exclusively related to how users of one particular handest, T-mobile's flagship Mytouch (who said Iphone wannabe? Go and stand at the back of the class) use the Android Market service.

T-mobile in particular and the whole Android community in general seem to be uncharacteristically quiet about providing actual numbers relating to the amount of software titles available and how many units have been sold, but there are third party sources willing to dish the stats, no doubt much to Google's annoyance. Androidlib.com offers more charts, graphs and numbers than you could shake a slide rule at, but they can't make particularly easy reading for the inhabitants of Android's Google mother ship, or anyone who owns an Android handset.

Since the launch of Android Market in June, when there were around 6,000 titles available, the roster has risen steadily until today where it has hit the 15,000 mark. It's true that the number of applications and games seeded to the store has increased month on month - there were 1,670 new apps in July compared to 2,642 in November - but at that rate it would take many, many years to hit the 100,000 mark reached by Apple. And don't forget, St Eve of Jobs isn't going to ask his overwhelming army of bedroom-bound developers to stop coding for the App Store just to let everyone else catch up. That would be silly.

All of these numbers, however, go a long way to explaining why shopping for software for your favourite smartphone is such a headache. Even the Android Market, dwarfed as it is by Apple's cash-dredging App Store behemoth, releases around 80 games per day. If you spent five minutes reading the description, checking out the screenshots, and scanning the reviews for each of those apps, it would take you more than six and-a-half hours!

Using all of our fingers and toes, we reckon Apple has released something like 210 Apps per day in the 16 months since it opened its doors to paying customers. Using the same ultra scientific mathematical calculations for which the Inquirer has rightly become famous, that's 17 and-a-half hours just deciding which bit of software you want to download every day. Bang goes lunch hour. And when are we going to get time for our main afternoon snooze?

Big numbers are all very impressive on paper but how do you sort the wheat from the chaff. Let's face it, if you have in excess of 100,000 software choices, chances are that the vast majority of them are going to be very similar to other offerings. Just do a search for Sudoku, for example.

Now we can see the fascination that people have for writing numbers into boxes and adding those numbers up over and over again. If it wasn't incredibly exciting no-one would ever become an accountant or a commodities trader, or a banker… and then where would we all be? Sudoku was fashionable for about 25 minutes two years ago, but now you can download and install any one of 237 Apps inspired by the fiendish Japanese number puzzle. Surely even the most rabid Sudoko master doesn't need a different way of playing his favourite three by three crossword with numbers very day for eight months?

Not convinced that the Itunes App Store is overpopulated with worthless garbage? Try any of these search strings:

Diet = 296
Lots of calorie counters and exercise logging progs for corpulent couch potatoes and anorexic Happy Shopper jailbait alike.

Naughty = 105
Young ladies in various sates of undress for one-handed teenage wrist exercises.

Map = 4752
That's right folks. Maps. Lots of 'em. Maps of everywhere on the entire planet. You'll never be lost on a bus in Seattle ever again.

Radio = 535
Everything from Capital FM and Virgin Radio to Gay Dance.

Drunk = 138
Urination simulators, beer encyclopaedias and drunkometers. Binge drinkers have never been better served by technology.

There are, of course, hundreds of useful, well-executed and sometimes indispensable Apps out there, but finding the needle nestled in the gargantuan haystack of dross is a daunting task. Relying exclusively on user reviews is also fraught with dangers. When it was first launched, Apple allowed anyone with access to Itunes to submit a review whether they had ever used the App or not, which wasn't exactly useful. Since then, the powers that be have restricted comments to people who have actually seen the software, but that doesn't stop the usual idiots from piping up with their inane opinions about how much better the free App they have just downloaded could have been if the developers had spent thousands of hours more on coding.

If we had a penny for every review of a game we have read which states, without irony, that the Iphone version of a big budget game conversion isn't as good as the Xbox/PS3/PC version, we would all be able to retire to Caribbean island and spend our time playing Rock Band on our mobile handsets rather than slaving over hot keyboards to keep you lot informed and amused.

So there you have it. There may be hundreds of thousands of mobile Apps out there, but a relatively tiny percentage of them will be relevant to any given individual. Spend a bit of time wading through the reviews and comments, however, and you may just find a gem.

To get you started, here are the top ten mobile Apps we just couldn't live without:

1: Facebook
Yes we know it's a terrible waste of time and populated by self obsessed nobodies who think the world needs to know the minutiae of their every waking second, but it's the 21st Century equivalent of idle gossip in the workplace, and we love it. Free on just about every platform.

2: TomTom
Turn-by-turn GPS mapping in a familiar format. Scarily expensive at £60 for the UK version (£80 for Western Europe) bearing in mind you can pick up a standalone device including the software and UK maps for around £80. But worth the price to have it resident on your Iphone. The Android version is rumoured to be in the pipeline and coming out soon.

3. BBC Iplayer.
Television on the go from the world's greatest TV channel. You'll need a hefty WiFi connection to get the best out of this App (actually it's a web link but, you get the picture, literally) but watching David Attenborough get all excited about blue whales whilst you wait for your plane is priceless. Free for UK-based TV license-paying Iphone users. Android folks will have to resort to workarounds like Beebplayer which does the job, just not as well as Apple's devices.

4. Remote
If you have a PC or Mac running Itunes and an Iphone, this little wonder allows you to control your music collection using your WiFi connection. Great for parties. "Have you got any Kajagoogoo?", one of your guests asks. A few deft flicks of the wrist and… "Too Shy-aye, hush hush eye do eye". Magic.

5. Record
Like a dictafone for your phone. Essential for evidence gathering, remembering those fantastic ideas that come to you at 3am and recording your farts for posterity. Audio quality is surprisingly good considering the size and positioning of the Iphone's microphone. Free on the Iphone, while Android has Recordoid amongst others.

6. Big Oven
170,000 searchable recipes for foodies and fatties. Most have a bit of an American slant (everything is measured in cups) but for anyone who likes cooking and doesn't mind slopping a bit of chicken stock on their mobile, this is essential. You can search by ingredient type, the name of the recipe, or just go for a random choice if you're feeling adventurous. Care for a slice of "the Devil made me do it chocolate cake" anyone?

7: Rock Band
Probably one of the best cut-down versions of a modern console game ever committed to a handheld device. Rocking out to Foo Fighters, Motorhead and Smashing Pumpkins on your phone will make you look like a twonk, but feel like a God of Rock. £3.99 on Iphone only. Comes with 20 songs but new downloadable content is being added every day at a very reasonable 59p for two-song packs, even if some of them are a bit obscure.

8: LogMeIn
Control your Mac or PC from your handset. Puts your actual desktop on the screen of your Iphone. A bit fiddly to use but incredibly useful if you're on the road and need to grab a document from your home computer. Just log in and email it to yourself. This one's great for showing off. Handles multiple monitors with a quick shake.

9: Eye TV
If you have a Mac and a TV dongle from Elgato this Iphone only App will let you record and watch live TV on your Iphone, browse a comprehensive program guide or stream your video library, as long as you have a reasonably robust WiFi connection. Ever been in the pub on a Friday night and realised you wanted to record something? No need to phone your mum and explain how the PVR works any more.

10 Pic2Shop
If you're out shopping and spot something you want to buy, but are not sure if you could get it much cheaper elsewhere, this one's for you. Scan the barcode of pretty much anything - we've found it works best with electronics, books, DVDs and games - and the software will tell you how much it would cost at Google, Amazon, CD Wow and a bunch of other well-known e-commerce sites. It's a bit hit or miss, but fun all the same. And it really confuses the slack-jawed, dead-eyed, minimum wage floor monkeys in Curry's, which is always a hoot. µ