Life Between 0 and 1

I’ve literally spent the last 2 hours going through the Windows Phone Marketplace (iTunes for Microsoft phones if you don’t know) and have come to several conclusions:

1. It’s a terrible waste of time to “browse” looking for something interesting.
2. There are thousands of apps to review (and this is the smallest store, iTunes is hundreds of thousands).
3. Some developers have real large balls charging for an app that has a free equivalent from another developer.
4. The thought process that goes into developing an app needs to be revisited.  A flashlight app, really?

I feel cheated out of the two hours I spent looking for an app that I didn’t know I needed.  You’re saying right now…

“How many apps did he download and install?”

Short answer is one.  Long answer is I downloaded an app that looked interesting, got reviewed well by fellow downloaders, and it was free to try.  I figured what do I have to lose, right?  So I did it, downloaded it.  I got so excited to click on it and see what it was all about and guess what happened?  My phone crashed.  Literally, screen went black.  Was this what my two hours culminated into?  It certainly was a moment where the word “F**********%%%%%%%%%%%%%%kkkkkkkkk!” was more than relevant and dare I say, required.

I’ve had the phone for 8 months now, and up until this moment of offending crash-i-ness, I’ve never rebooted or turned the thing off.  Probably the most stable phone I’ve ever owned (a post for another day though).  I took off the case, unclicked the batter cover, and did the battery pull that I hoped would return my phone to the living.  It worked, thankfully, but as soon as the it returned to life, I promptly uninstalled the cancerous app.

Were all those people wrong?  Was it the reflection of my face in the screen protector that made the app decide it didn’t want to be on my phone?  I didn’t know what to say on the feedback…..  would I dare be the first person to say the app sucked?  I decided to keep my comments to myself, as I truly didn’t know if the app sucked or not, it never ran for me to form an honest opinion.

What I did instead was download the Microsoft Developer SDK 7.1 for my phone, paid $9 for a dev unlock code, and unlock my phone for what will certainly be a time sucker hobby.  I decided in that moment of battery pulling and stewing over the app failure that I would learn how to develop apps that make sense for me, and if they worked, throw them up on the Marketplace site for others to use.

After all, there have to be others that use their phones like “its a tool that makes my life easier to live” rather than people that use their phones like “look at this, my phone lets me see in the dark”….  it gets me every time people showing me their flashlight app and I pull out my LED flashlight with the comment “this didn’t cost me $300 and a 2 year contract.”