Week 4 EOC: There's An App for That

With apps numbering in the hundreds of thousands, it’s easy to see there’s an app for just about everything you could imagine. In fact Apple’s own slogan for the app store “There’s an app for that,” (Apple). “Having recently hit the 15 billion download milestone, a new analysis has found that downloads from Apple's iOS App Store will increase 61 percent.” (Apple Insider). That was in July, however according to Appolicious “ App Store downloads dropped to 3.8 million for the month from 4.06 million in August” The biggest problem with some of the apps is that since anyone can make them, there’s a lot of apps floating around that are pretty unsatisfactory; particularly the apps for popular sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Many of their non-native counter parts, such as MyPad or Hootsuite are in fact better alternatives and make better use of the smartphone or tablet technology than the actual brand app. But one app I think is missing from the app store that could really make a lot of people happy would be a silence app. It’s a simple enough idea that utilizes headphones for blissful silence. The closest thing on the app store right now is Strange Rain. It’s an app that uses the sounds of rain and a bit of music if you like, to calm you. It’s a great app, but it would be nice to have more options. Maybe the sound of wind, or the beach. Or the option for an app that could block out all sound altogether, giving you absolute silence for concentration, because some days you just want to think. Without the kids yelling, the dog barking or people’s lawnmowers going off. You need total quiet, or at least something like it. Maybe you enjoy sounds of a vacuum, or the shower running. Some sort of comforting white noise that can block out every other sound in your life, while helping you relax. Now that’s an app worth its weight in gold.