Five years ago Wednesday, Apple launched the iPhone App Store and, with it, ushered in a new app economy.
Lots of changes have taken place over the last five years and it's hard to argue that the impact the App Store has had on the world of mobile and smartphones is anything but immense.
On Monday, Apple started celebrating five years of the App Store with some free app promotions and a look at highlights over the last half-decade. Although that list was good, it missed some important milestones.
After all, the arrival of Angry Birds and Instagram are important, but who can forget the app "I Am Rich" or the deluge of fart apps in the App Store? And speaking of app bans, remember when Apple refused to let Google Voice apps in the store?
Loren Brichter, who most recently made waves as the developer of the award-winning iOS game Letterpress is recognized twice in our list for his work in creating not one but two now-ubiquitous mobile design patterns: Pull-to-refresh for Tweetie 2 (which later became the basis for Twitter for iPhone) and the slide-in navigation menus with Twitter for iPad.
Other highlights include Ocarina for iPhone, the disaster that was Apple Maps, and the seminal release of Facebook 3.0 for iPhone.
I started writing about technology professionally in 2007 and have covered the App Store since the very beginning (in fact, I was writing and covering the jailbreak app ecosystem that existed before the App Store officially launched). Looking back at the last five years has been kind of like looking at a time machine of my professional career.
Thinking back about the last five years, what amazes me the most is how quickly the ecosystem and the community around iOS apps took off. The store launched with only 500 titles but that figure grew — and grew quickly.
App pricing changed almost overnight. In the beginning, $9.99 apps were the norm — though free apps existed too. Within weeks, however, the so-called "race-to-the-bottom" started in earnest. Today, aside from in-app purchases for subscription content, its hard to find apps that are above $4.99 that don't have a very specific purpose or a professional aim.
The rules about what is — and what is not — allowed in the App Store started almost immediately as well. It would be more than two years before Apple would finally release developer review guidelines, but even today, the rules of what is acceptable and what isn't in the App Store remains somewhat arbitrary.
Even though the Android Market (now called Google Play) launched just three months after the App Store, it took nearly three years for the App Store to face any real competition. It's true that most major apps are available on both iOS and Android, but even in 2013, it's not uncommon for apps to debut on iOS first.
If you had asked me a month ago about the state of the App Store and the iOS developer ecosystem, I would have probably said that at this point, it's a well-oiled machine and that it has become very easy to predict what kind of apps achieve commercial success. Then, Apple unveiled iOS 7.
Suddenly, everything is different. The new look of iOS 7 makes existing iOS apps not designed for the new system look and feel out of place. Marco Arment said it best when he wrote that "Apple has set fire to iOS" — adding that "anyone can march right into an established category with a huge advantage if they have the audacity to be exclusively modern."
I think he's exactly right. Who knows, maybe five years from now, we'll be looking at the start of a third era of iOS apps. Over the last five years, I've written millions of words about the App Store and mobile apps in general. I know I intend to keep writing millions more.
Let us know what you consider the most significant milestones of the last five years of the App Store in the comments.
Image courtesy of Apple, composite by Mashable
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario