So after much debate and overcoming a lot of fears, TOR finally went from Blackberry to IPhone and obviously we're about 4 years late to the party but I have to say we're impressed.. The sleek design, the 5megapixel camera, the WiFi, the browser, the 32Gigs of memory, the ease of ITunes, the miserable typing, the app-store, the slick form..
It all comes together to form a wonderful experiment of light and sound and I have to say the TOR editorial board is more than just a little impressed..
The one issue I have is that everybody tells me how great the apps are and as a former BlackBerry user just having the ability to download an app is a breakthrough. The problem is that every time I go to the App store and search through the 1,000,000 titles I find that there is almost NOTHING I want. Yeah there are a couple of goods ones like the free Weather Channel app but the vast majority of them suck.
This is the problem I think; the more you look the more you realize that you can categorize them as follows
The Free Apps designed by some dude in a basement - they will generally suck, now I know that complaining about something that is free is kind of lame but honestly when you look at the 'lite' version of a crappy app, it doesn't want to make me buy it.. Instead I want to delete it from my phone. I downloaded some app that allows you to manage a fish-tank and even for $0.00 I felt like I got ripped off.
The Free Apps designed by some major corporation. Totally hit or miss sometimes they are very good (see NY Times), sometimes they are decent (see MenuPages) and sometimes they completely blow (see CBS Sports). It's a crap-shoot but honestly we all know they are basically a free commercial for some product and my first impression of many of them is that they suck. I can't imagine being a huge Fortune 100 company and putting out the equivalent of one of those cable-commercials for a local car dealership. I downloaded a CBS Sports app and can honestly say that I felt like I was using my Blackberry again. The interface sucks, the connection is slow, the features are limited and the colors make my eyes bleed. I would rather just use Safari and browse over to cbs.sports.com
The Standard $0.99 Apps.. I know this is the way of the future and I have no problem in principle paying for something I enjoy but it's surprising how hard it is to justify $0.99. I have honestly spent 10 minutes debating whether or not to spend a dollar on Angry Birds while I would spend $1 to try a new flavor of water if I was presented with it. I'm sure there are good ones but I won't even consider it unless it's got a minimum of 4.5 stars.. (by the way Cut-The-Rope is fantastic)
The Expensive Paid Apps. Somehow the whole $0.99 thing has gone by the wayside because there are thousands of apps that are like $10 or more. I looked at some app which allowed you to call the equivalent of 911 in any foreign country and they were selling the app for $109.00. Now I acknowledge that debating $0.99 is ridiculous but it would take a lot to justify spending $100 on anything I can find by looking at google.com
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