• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, July 8, 2013

On July 10, 2008, the Apple App Store launched, and it is hard to argue that it did not succeed in changing the game for both device and Web-based computing. The app became the new nomenclature of computing across platforms, even onto TV screens and appliances. I am not sure what exactly Apple has planned for the Wednesday fifth anniversary party, but it has already seeded the ground by sending posters to select journalists commemorating the milestone with a timeline of the App Store’s history.

We didn't get our hands on one of these collectibles (a notable and ironic analog distribution, given the subject), but some of its main stats are already circulating online. The poster recount shows the App Store opened with only 500 apps, and now it boasts 850,000. Over 350,000 of the apps are native to the iPad. More than 50 billion downloads have occurred in these five years. Payouts to developers have exceeded $10 billion.

All well and good. I have already opined about the need for the app environment to move on to a next stage. Discovery and distribution remain serious challenges because of unresolved app store structures. The problematic search-ability of content inside and interoperability across apps, I think, begs for a solution from a major player like Apple. Personally, I think Microsoft was onto something in replacing the walls of static icons with tiles of live content coming to the surface. The sheer dynamism of always-on connectivity, cloud-based computing and live-ness of a personal device are not reflected in an app architecture that is still anchored in the desktop’s download-and-launch software paradigm. I would prefer that Apple celebrate this birthday by imagining Apps 2.0.

But for my part, let me add to the birthday retrospective with a golden oldie of my own from before the days of the downloadable apps. During that first year of the iPhone’s life, Apple was pushing the Web app and we were getting a first glimpse of how the formats could challenge the desktop in sheer usability. Six years ago, during that first summer with Apple’s revolutionary device, I reveled in the new delights of app-based mobile computing, but still wished for something a bit more practical. We started the Mobile Insider columns in January of that year, and both my teen daughter and wife have been constant companions, antagonists, teachers, and correctives to my mobile musings -- online as they are in life. But in strange concert with the release of the iPhone, my then-15-year-old and formerly adorable daughter debuted on the beaches of Jersey in a new and frightening form that pushed the utility of my smartphone to the edges of its brain power. Five years and 850,000 apps still have not fixed this Dad’s perennial problem. I am still waiting for my iRifle and rubber iPellets. From the summer of 2007, "My iPhone Needs a Gun."