In July of 2009 there was a mere 65,000 applications available for download on your iPhone. Guess how many there are now? 700,000 iPhone apps. Where did they all come from?! The variety of apps available boggles my mind. You can view the current weather for any city in the world, deposit a check by simply taking a picture, follow the activity of your favorite celebs on Twitter, listen to a live feed of your favorite sports team, “Bump” photos or contact information from iPhone to iPhone, or even place an order at your favorite restaurant and designate a pickup time for after class! You can literally do just about anything you want straight through that little device that can fit in the palm of your hand.
I have many favorite apps that I currently have on my phone. OpenTable, Orbitz, 5/3 Banking, ScoreCenter, Pandora Radio, and Instagram to name a few.
Applications are changing the face of cellphones, good ways and bad. The convenience of applications can really cut time off the little tasks on your daily to-do list. Instead of driving to the bank to transfer funds or deposit your check, you can do it all through a single app.
Let’s weigh the pros and cons:
Pros
- Convenience
- Efficiency
- Accessibility
- Entertainment
- Time/money saver (gas?)
- Easy way to stay in touch
- Stay current
- What else can you think of?
Cons
- Loss of face-to-face communication
- Battery drainer
- Storage use
- Distraction
- Some cost money
- Addiction?
Applications are around for a reason: they make our lives easier. What about the negative aspects of applications? Cellphones in general take away from the personal relationships of communication, as they provide a way to get around phone calls, or even face-to-face communication. For me, it’s rare that my friends and I actually dial each others’ numbers to have a conversation. Now we send iMessages filled with emoticons. We depend on this technology so much that we sometimes forget how to operate without them. Sometimes I can’t even tell my roommate a story without her nose in her iPhone. Although she’s not the only one to blame. A New York Times blogger wrote a very interesting blog about his dependency on this technology, and if you take the time to read it I’m sure you will find that you relate to many of his points.
I’m not sure if there’s a way to reverse this epidemic, because it seems as if the pros outweigh the cons. One app that is hugely helpful is FaceTime. FaceTime is an amazing way to have a virtual face-to-face conversation and it seems like you’re almost right there with your loved one. The way the cameras are advancing on smartphones almost makes basic digital cameras obsolete. The new iPhone 5 has an 8.0 megapixel camera. My digital camera that I loved so much 4 Christmases ago is 10.0 megapixels, so it seems to me that the iPhone 5 would suffice.
There will be a time where many of our current communication trends become extinct, but who will be first, and when?
What's the Word? 
Reading this entire blog post just blew my mind! It really is downright excessive at the amounts of different applications which we now have for our phones. Although I myself don’t have an iPhone, many of my friends do. It almost seems like their faces are always buried in these phones, whether it is playing a game, texting, or just searching through the internet.
Do I believe that these different technological advances are making our lives easier? Of course I do. Although I do give two thumbs up to innovative technology, I think as a whole we really are overdoing it with the whole apps thing. There are just too many, and people are literally becoming reliant on their iPhones for everything. Not to mention, I strongly believe that since the upcoming steady rise of cell phones, the overall means of just communicating face to face has really been lost.
Overall, at the rate that we are going with all these different apps, and iPhones and other devices and gadgets, it’s going to be interesting to see where we are as not only a generation, but as an entire planet in the next couple years. If we keep getting new appliances and tools to make life easier, I can’t even imagine how this will change humanity, for better or for worse.
This blog post was most interesting Abby! I don’t have an iPhone but I do have a first generation Android. While I agree that these hundreds of thousands of applications are being made to make life easier for the user, and they do so quite well, I think this user friendly era we are living in, is greatly contributing to the laziness factor that comes from doing everything through your cell phone. Wouldn’t you agree? Personally, I mostly use my Chase bank app, Twitter, and French translator app. I steer away from Instagram, Foursquare and Words with Friends because they are so highly addictive.
Having an iPhone is almost becoming the norm, and if you don’t have one soon, you’re basically isolating yourself from the world and the current times.
I suggest finding an active hobby that will keep your mind and body preoccupied, as opposed to your friend constantly staring at her iPhone. How does soccer or Frisbee golf sound? It will save your battery for your phone, while stimulating your mind and body at the same time. Which beforehand, maybe you used an hour or two a day play a game on your phone as opposed to taking notes in lecture.
Great blog though!