Dumb iPhone Applications

No matter how you look at, 2008 was the year of the App Store: Launched July 11 in tandem with the release of Apple's iPhone 3G [1], the virtual retail storefront revolutionized the distribution and sale of mobile applications, with consumers downloading more than 60 million apps in the first month alone--a $21 million windfall for the computing giant's developer partners. In mid-October, the App Store reached the 200 million download benchmark [2], just over 100 days after it opened.

The App Store now boasts applications in 19 categories including Games, Navigation, and Music. What it doesn't offer is a category for overpaid, self-infatuated jackasses--Apple made sure of that in August when it removed I Am Rich, a $1,000 application created by German developer Armin Heinrich that does absolutely nothing except display a picture of a glowing ruby on the iPhone screen. That's right--it's an app that tells everyone unfortunate enough to cross your path "I am so painfully insecure and desperate for approval that I must waste a thousand bucks to show off my immense wealth instead of quietly donating that money to the charitable organization of my choice." Remarkably, eight iPhone subscribers shelled out a grand each for the I Am Rich app before Apple yanked it. Talk about turkeys.