AppStore boasts 1,001 iPhone applications – Buying iPhone apps isn’t too painful
By Will Park on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 2:40 PM PST In Announcements, Apple, Developer, Gaming, iPhone, iPhone OS
Steve Jobs seems to think that the AppStore “is a grand slam,” and we can’t find any reason to not agree. With unrivaled platform integration and third-party applications that readily take advantage of the iPhone’s multi-touch interface and various sensors, the AppStore has proven to be a boon for iPhone, iPhone 3G, and even iPod Touch owners.
So much so that the AppStore boasted over 1,000 iPhone applications as of this past Monday – 1,001 iPhone applications, to be more precise.
Granted, a good deal of iPhone applications aren’t worth a second look. But, the shear volume of iPhone applications available from eager iPhone 
developers is an indication that iPhone application development isn’t going to be slowing down anytime soon. What we’re seeing is the ramp up to a diverse and expansive iPhone application portfolio that will eventually offer solutions to just about any iPhone owner’s needs or wants.
My personal iPhone 3G already has four homescreen-pages worth of iPhone apps (beat that!), and that number is likely to keep growing. Most of my apps were free, but I did manage to bite to the bullet and actually pay for a few apps. Turns out, it’s not that painful. As long as you do the research and make sure you are buying an application that fits your needs and that no free iPhone apps are available with similar functionality, buying an iPhone app can be highly rewarding.
Of course, it’s a little harder to justify spending upwards of $10 on an iPhone game. But, if you really have a need (like using Texas Hold ‘Em Poker to make your Friday night poker games more fun and convenient) for them, then by all means, hit that “Buy” button. Remember, you can share your iPhone apps and games with all your friends and family, so it might be a good idea to convince your friends to pitch in to buy a more expensive iPhone application. Hit up our “How To” to get the low-down on sharing iPhone applications between multiple iPhones.
The AppStore will likely grow larger and larger every month, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll be seeing ever-increasing numbers of truly useful applications. There will come a time when the AppStore is essentially saturated with so many different types of iPhone applications that the flood of innovative new apps will slow to a trickle. Just how long it will take to reach that point is the question here.
My biggest problem is the lack of a documents reader (Word/Excel/pdf) and the innability to save documents on the iPhone (I know there is an app for mac users, but not for windows users!)
The other point is, alot of the apps should be free, but aren’t – they should be apps developed by apple themselves which should’ve come with the phone
Beat that? I have six nearly-full pages of apps. It’s easy to find apps, and easy to tap “install” but haven’t you also noticed that installing them seems to be getting slower and slower? Is it related to the number of apps already installed or is the process just always slow? I’ve had the AppStore app freeze and/or crash my iPod Touch a number of times while trying to install or upgrade apps, and the last one I requested has been “Installing” for over a half hour now… Something seems horribly wrong.
In addition, it is very frustrating to try to keep your apps “arranged” in any way, since upgrading apps will not install the new versions into the same page as the old one. Instead, they seem to get dropped into the “first available” slots.
Hope 2.01 comes out soon to correct these and other issues!
Okay, you beat me, Chris. I’ll slip away in shame now….
I agree that the apps constantly changing position on the homescreen can be annoying. It’s definitely something that Apple needs to fix with the iPhone 2.0.1 firmware, which is now available!
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/08/04/apple-releases-iphone-201-os-through-itunes.html
I have an ipod touch and since the 2.0 update i have been having loads of problems similar and the same as iphone users. My ipod is very unstable when installing and deleting apps on the appstore. It sometimes freezes but mainly freezes then crashes. At the moment i have to restore my ipod twice a day. I rang Apple and they seem to think its the apps which are unstable. Even if it is the apps which are causing the problem its their fault because they take weeks to review apps and should test them to see if they make the ipod touches/iphones crash.