As It Appens

(Originally posted 2013-02-10.)

We must have over 200 iOS apps in our iTunes account. Some of them we paid for, but usually not much¹, but many were free.² I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering "how did that happen?" 🙂

It’s got well beyond the point that a new app³ simply won’t appear on my iPhone and has to be searched for. Yes, I do use app groups and yes I also know how to find the recently used apps but that’s not the point.

So, starting this week, I’m going to take an app a week and try to get value out of it – whether it’s a game or utility or whatever. I’ll probably write a personal review in Evernote.⁴ I might even post a review here. Such a review would be, it has to be said, my opinion and not that of IBM. But that’s true of everything I post here.

And at the end of the week I’ll decide what to do with it:

• Some will get promoted to my first page on the iPhone.
• Some will get much more use as I finally get to grips with what the app can do.
• Some will get relegated to groups in "low rent" 🙂 pages.
• Some will get deleted from my iPhone.

In some ways it’s like what I should do with stuff around the house: Triage it and rediscover it.⁵ There’s a cautionary tale here:

Twice recently we’ve had to replace significant household items and discovered features in the old one’s manual that would’ve been really handy and will get used in their replacement. I recommend reading the manual (again 🙂 ) 3 months after purchasing something and pressing it into service.

I’ve also dutifully installed updates to all the apps – across all the iPhones and iPads in the house: This "app a week" approach will probably unlock things in later releases that make the app more relevant which I was largely unaware of.

Could this be like Christmas all over again? 🙂

And, finally, I might get a better understanding of how we come to acquire these apps (and perhaps other stuff). And how to handle their lifecycle.⁶

Now he who is without sin may cast the first stone. Form an orderly (and I bet very short) queue. 🙂

¹ Defined for the purposes of this exercise as "tuppeny pieces to this value in my pockets wouldn’t make my trousers fall down". 🙂

² At least two of us (me being one of them) are prone to falling for the "it cost nothing to acquire so there’s no TCO" line. 🙂

³ I’m in two minds about the word "app": The ponderous part of me wonders what’s wrong with the word "application" but the rest of me likes the brevity, now the term has become commonplace and with wider applicability than just iOS apps.

⁴ I already have a table in Evernote for each Mac app – so the family can find apps they might think useful we’ve already acquired.

⁵ There is a certain amount of joy in rediscovering some half-forgotten product that actually has use. Or is just plain fun again.

⁶ There ya go – if you were looking for business relevance: 🙂 There’s an analogy or transferrable lesson right there.