One of the more entertaining aspects of owning an iPhone is the plethora of apps that are available for your use and enjoyment. Some of them are really helpful, informative, or at least interesting: weather updates, celeb gossip, directions, movie times, etc. Then there are the completely superfluous apps that make you scratch your head and wonder why anyone would ever need that – right before you download it yourself.
iBeer is probably one of the most pointless apps, yet everyone seems to have it. It’s an app that turns your screen into a full pint glass of beer, and you can “drink” it by tilting your iPhone downwards. The beer then flows out of the pint glass. Sounds simple enough, yet it’s enough to reduce grown men to giggles when they all use it.
Tickle Me! is another app that seems to be mainly for the amusement factor – even if that factor does wear off pretty quickly. The app enables your touchscreen to respond to you tickling it, with a slightly irritating child’s laugh.
One that still makes no sense is Hold On, an app where you hold your finger in one spot on the touch screen for as long as you can. That’s it. This could probably be amusing for a bunch of drunken people who are pretending to be sober, but that’s about it.
Everyone loves to pop bubble wrap, which is most likely why the Bubble Wrap app is so popular. It just fills your screen with bubble wrap that you “pop” by touching each bubble.
While this one doesn’t do it anything useful, it certainly is cool – the PhoneSaber. It basically turns your touchscreen into a light saber, complete with visuals and sounds. It’s pretty awesome, yet there seems to be limited things you can do with it. Challenge your friends to a duel, maybe?
One that may seem silly, but has popped up at concerts and rock shows a lot lately, is the Virtual Zippo. Gone are the days when you hold up a lighter at shows if something moves you – now you have the virtual version. This is admittedly better than people just holding up their cell phones, which has always looked silly.
CoinFlip is another that goes into the “is that really necessary?” category, yet everyone seems to have it. It does exactly what its name indicates – it flips a coin.
A pretty amusing app is the Abacus, which seemingly goes against everything the iPhone really is – cutting edge technology. But again, maybe for the drunk folks trying to figure out how much money they have at the end of the night, this might work.
Too tired to yell enthusiastically for your sports team of choice? Then the “Wooo!” app may be for you. It’s a button that shows up on your touchscreen, and every time you hit it, a tinny voice says “wooo!” Very exciting.
Lastly, there is the I Can Has Cheezburger app, which sends you an update every time there’s a new location posted. Who doesn’t need that?
There’s something compelling about some of these iPod touch apps, even though they do absolutely nothing useful, and in fact, just mostly take up space on your iPhone or iPod touch. However trivial some of these applications may seem, they offer enjoyment to the hundreds of thousands of users who download them. After all, isn’t that the point of these applications?