Apple has been running its “there’s an app for that” television commercial campaign for some time now. (You can see all of them on Apple’s website.) Apple now has a section of its website titled Apps for Everything which includes nicely designed pages showing you the apps that are useful for Cooks, Keeping Current, the Great Outdoors, Music, Work, Students, Moms and Dads, Working Out, Going Out, Managing Money, Traveling and Fun and Games.
What, no page for lawyers? Actually, the Work page identifies many apps that lawyers would find useful, such as Quickoffice, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, Nexonia Expenses and others.
Like everything that Apple does, these pages have generated discussion and even controversy. For example, Roy Furchgott, who covers smartphones for the New York Times and writes a weekly column that recommends iPhone apps, wrote an article titled “Is that a recommendation, or an ad?” in which he wonders whether developers paid Apple to be listed on this new page. I actually doubt that these are ads. I have seen developers write in the past that they were surprised to see their apps featured in a TV commercial or the icon for their app displayed at an Apple Store. Apparently, Apple has the right to use any images that it wants from an iPhone app without seeking prior permission from a developer, not that most developers would object to the free publicity. For this reason, I suspect that these developers were surprised, albeit tickled, to see their apps featured on these pages.
With over 85,000 apps, it is increasingly difficult to find the good ones. Even though relatively few apps are identified, it is always helpful to have some good apps pointed out. So if you consider yourself a person who likes to work, cook, go out, travel, etc., take a look at Apple’s new page. You just might find an app that you like.