Countdown, 21 Days: An App a Day
Yesterday provided some of the most thorough use the G1 has gotten, and without any midday charge, I was still able to surf through Google Reader entries during a late cab ride home.
The absence of a proper App for Google Reader doesn’t annoy me so much as intrigue me. You use Reader, Google’s powerful and simple RSS aggregator, through its G1 browser, just as you would on a proper, full-power computer — only smaller. As anyone who’s used Google’s online tools might notice, the whole idea of an App is sort of peculiar, almost outdated. Apps have certainly been valuable to the iPhone’s growth, but some of the best technology on the Internet is, well, on the Internet. Apps are less a practicality than they are a phenomenon. There are apps out there that are little more than executable (and occasionally hyper-self-referencing) text files, like bibles and encyclopedias. Some tools should be apps, of course — using Evernote on the little browser isn’t as efficient as an eventual proper app (like the one already made for the iPhone) would be.
The G1 has its own apps marketplace, which is slowly coming to rival the iPhone’s. Right now, all the apps are free, though next week it looks like the for-sale apps will arrive, which means a lot of developers who have been waiting to cash in will start making their goods available. These are the apps I’ve been using:
Of the apps I use the most, only three didn’t come with the machine: OI Notepad, which is a simple notepad, Twidroid, which is an OK Twitter app, and Voice Recorder. They all work pretty well, but all are simple and not fully functional. I’m excited to see what the coming weeks will bring.
