iSteam: Brilliant use of technology or another useless iPhone app?
By Dave Parrack
A new iPhone app called iSteam has launched. This app uses the technology of the Apple device exquisitely, but at the end of the day there’s also no actual point to its existence. This started me thinking (always a dangerous scenario) about whether these useless but pretty apps are actually worth the time and trouble needed to create them.
When the iPhone app store was announced, I thought it would be populated by useful apps adding something to the joys of owning an iPhone. Instead, what I’m seeing more and more of, as well as some admittedly clever uses of the technology, are games and fun apps which serve no purpose than giving you something to show off to your non-iPhone owning friends down the pub.
Sure, there are some brilliantly useful apps out there, but even now, just six months since the app store opened, you have to wonder if most of the big ideas have already been done. All that’s left is for people to create and sell, or in a few cases give away for free, novelty apps which show off the iPhone without offering anything of use to its owner.
The iSteam is a good case in point. As the video below shows, the app recreates steam on your iPhone. So, blow on the screen and it will steam over, then write on it as you would write on a mirror in the bathroom after having a hot shower. Finally, shake the iPhone to dissipate the steam and turn your iPhone back to normal.
It’s a very impressive and clever use of the technology embedded in the iPhone, with both the accelerometer and touchscreen used brilliantly. But it’s also completely and utterly pointless. Which is fine and all that, especially as no-one is forced to pay the $0.99 asking price. But shouldn’t we now be aiming a little big higher?
Some of the early entries on the iPhone app store were always going to be frivolous and unnecessary and only created to show off the iPhone’s capabilities. But now that we’re six months in to the endeavor, I can’t help thinking we should be trying a little harder to create apps of worth. I suppose all the while apps such as iSteam get press coverage and make money for their developers, the situation isn’t going to change.
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on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
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January 4th, 2009
Dear Editor,
This is Barak Ben-Ezer from Apparty, authors of the original fog application for the iPhone - iFog. I feel that it is unfair that our application wasn’t covered in the same post as it is the original fog application - released a week prior to iSteam - and offers more features and better executed. We have the secret message feature, where you write something on the screen and nothing is visible until you blow air and fog covers the screen, beside the message part.
Thanks,
barak.
January 4th, 2009
I keep reading on forums about this ‘battle’ but it seems to me they’re very different apps! i fog just fogs over the screen with a grey colour and works like a type of doodle app. The other simulates real steam, for games with the droplets, editting pix, secret messages to friends, etc. different strokes for different folks really but im more inclined towards the steam one…