Point taken -- I do not think it works that way either. My poorly constructed hypothetical was trying to illustrate that people with business (or out of the box) app ideas for the iPhone are far less likely to jump into the App Store pool than those with game ideas, because, the more significant or wide-ranging your idea, the longer your App Store roulette odds are.

It is not that devs say "I could make a game, or I could make Lattitudinal Tweet-Enabled Mobile Excel" -- it is that a game devs not only have smaller App Store process risks, they can more clearly estimate those risks beforehand. As a result, more game devs jump in.

The more ambitious app developers not only have greater rejection risk, they also have little way to measure it before they spend their money. As a result (IMHO), less truly innovative ideas are attempted for the iPhone than otherwise would be.

If you were a dev house with $50,000, would you spend it to make 2 games that would almost assuredly get approved, or 1 new type of application with no idea could if it can make it into into the App Store?

I'm not sure it works that way.

The concept of the generic Dev House is largely a myth. People and organizations have areas of expertise. If Games are your bread and butter, the chances of you coming out with a great business app are slim to none.

Then there is the need of an infrastructure if you want to develop a social networking application. You either have to have one, or ride on someone else's infrastructure.

So while I agree games are probably easier once you port your gaming engine, I don't think its due to a cost benefit calculation made by the developers. Its what they know. Its all they do.

There is the boredom factor. Get bored with your eReader, or your Chat client, chances are another eReader won't be much help. Get bored with you Game, and another game may be the answer.

So any Dev who ports his game engine to the iPhone can then crank out new titles about as fast as people can become bored.

If you were a dev house with $50,000, would you spend it to make 2 games that would almost assuredly get approved, or 1 new type of application with no idea could if it can make it into into the App Store?

Is Microsoft Office For iPhone Just Around The Corner?

http://tinyurl.com/n7cabu

Too bad this power doesn’t appear as if it will be used to expand productivity for the Iphone.

I agree.

It seems that Apple is content to let the innovation be carried by the App store developers, who in turn, seem content to concentrate on mindless games for idle minds.

There are a hell of a lot more juveniles with money to buy games than business uses of the iPhone, or really powerful new concept apps.

Even the much hyped Augmented Reality apps seem like toys, with the only real useful application Missing In Action, namely as an addition to the Apple(Google) Map App. Where is that? Apple? Anybody? Bueller?

Games seem to be the focus of the App store, and the iPhone in general. There has even been a study on this over at Channel Web: http://tinyurl.com/ksuk7k

Weird… are you sure you clicked on the new 3GS version and not the old one? Because the former link is broken on my touch 2g.

I tried the free version. Wasn't impressed. I think the augmented reality apps will be the ones that really amaze. I saw a demo of one on YouTube where the person was in a train station and maneuvering the iPhone around and you could see the route namesmove and adjust themselves as the phone was rotated. Awesome! This? Not so much.

A slight exaggeration but come on people all you have to do is what we learned when we were just little children and READ!!!!!!

This also applies to OS versions too; for example, if you have a touch 2G running 2.1.1 you won't be able to download, say, Music IQ.

And if you're viewing the store on your iDevice, the app doesn't even show up if your device doesn't meet the sysreqs.

The App store needs some categories. iPhone, 3g, 3gs, iPodTouch, Internet and Inter-Off (requires internet for data download but it retains it for off-line use, maybe I'll call it Inter-Cache).

I actually thought we would have seen these a lot sooner.