There's An App for That

An iPhone came to our house last July. Since that time, Sy has adopted it as his own when I'm around. He plays games - at home, in the car, at the store, in restaurants - everywhere.

We started with Angry Birds and moved onto Plants vs. Zombies.

Since Sy enjoys playing games, I downloaded some educational apps and bought some other games. But in the process of doing this - you realize you are wasting 99 cents or 1.99 on the games you try once and don't like.

So recently I added some of the free apps to the phone. I have wound up doing this a few times because you download 5-10 to try them. That's all you need at one time, right? Well, that's all we need at one time. I am surprised at how many don't work, aren't suitable for kids - meaning they are too hard, or they continually are pushing for you to buy the app.

First, don't offer the game for free if all you are going to do is push me to buy the full version. I need to make sure that one of us is going to like it for more than a few days. The constant pop up reminders is annoying and makes me like your app less.

Second, make games with galactic shoot outs and car chases/races for the little boy crowd. Not the tween/teen crowd but the 8 and under crowd. Sy wants all the space and race game apps but they want you to play with your friends, make it hard to move up levels, only let you play one small section of the game, or buy upgrades to trick out your car - not appropriate but they attract him because he's interested in these.

I know these companies are trying to make money but again - don't offer the game for free unless you are willing to really make it free. Even a trial time period. You push to my phone so like a rented movie, in 1 week, remove it from my phone or lock it until I pay.

And if iTunes could search and provide only the games for the little crowd - man that would really help. You can say no until your blue in the face but the kid doesn't understand he just wants to play a cool game with cool battleships or sports cars.

As far as other apps - the only one that actually worked well and provided a service to me was the app I downloaded prior to flying last summer. I got an app that let me enter our flights and then provided updates as to the status, gates, etc. Very helpful and I am looking forward to using it again when I fly.

The other apps - not that big of a help. The recipes and news apps - you can get to those just as easily and have better views of the entire site if you access through safari and not the app.

I really like the phone. It's easy to use. I like having the internet. Texting is fantastic, I have e-mail and my office calendar easily accessible and making a phone call isn't difficult.

But the app thing - they really need improve on these.