by Jason Snell
An unusual link to the 10th anniversary of the App Store
Craig Hockenberry, whose app Twitterrific debuted on the App Store 10 years ago this week, wants to celebrate a different kind of App Store app:
Many of the apps on that first day, including my work with Twitterrific, were adaptations of desktop apps. Things like AIM, NetNewsWire, and Solitaire had many advantages on mobile, but in retrospect, they weren’t a sign of what lay ahead.
Even though it was a gag, iBeer gave us a real glimpse of our future. It was the first app that was spacial. The function of the app was determined by where it was in your world. It could not exist without you.
The YouTube video of how to use iBeer is a real hoot. And Craig’s exactly right: Many of the first-day apps were iPhone versions of Mac apps, and while they were great, there was a whole other class of apps that were uniquely designed with the iPhone in mind. iBeer, as ridiculous as it was, pointed the way to the future of the App Store.