The Age Of Apps

A new iPad and the avalanche of “apps,” all over. We’ll look at everyday life in the age of apps.

It’s amazing what the apps on a smart-phone or tablet can now do. And how ubiquitous they’re becoming.  Apps to play.  Apps to learn.  Apps to share and eat and track and socialize.  Point your phone at sign in Spanish.  Click.  It tells you what the sign says – in English.

We’ve got Google apps and Kindle apps and Apple apps all over.  Last week, Chunli Fu in Qingdao, China, downloaded the world’s 25 billionth Apple app – a game called “Where’s my Water?”  Apps are bringing computer power deep into the world.

This hour, On Point:  the newest, the coolest, and life in the age of apps.
-Tom Ashbrook

Hiawatha Bray, tech reporter and columnist for the Boston Globe.

Christina Bonnington,  staff writer for Wired Digital’s blog “Gadget Lab”.

Wired "Despite the gaudy sales numbers and some moderately useful organizing attempts like “What’s Hot” and the self-fulfilling “Top Charts,” it’s basically an unnavigable mess of 425,000 titles pressed against the App Store window. As Joe Lindsey, a contributing editor of this guide, told me, “If the App Store were a real store, it would resemble Walmart at roughly 10 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving — an apocalyptic mess of children’s clothing, Zhu Zhu Pets, and cheap Blu-ray players."