Apps are the Worst Internet Trend of the Decade

In an earlier review of the iPad, I mentioned that I thought that platform could become  a subscription machine, sucking up money from users to download apps (applets)… those tiny, innocuous programs that provide access to a wide range of applications at the push of an icon.

Well, allow me to be more direct: In my view, apps are the worst trend of the decade.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would disagree. After all, untold numbers of iPhone, iPad, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn app developers (among others) are making a living off the nifty little programs, which can be uploaded at little or no cost to provide clever functionality – such as access to games, books and movies – to all our various computing devices, including phones, laptops and PCs.

I’m sure there are some who would argue that not all apps are  alike, that some are low-cost but highly sophisticated systems, such as the apps that synch your iPhone or Blackberry with your Windows Outlook software, or provide access to social media analysis programs.

There are those, like Steve Jobs, who believe apps will save the newspaper industry by enabling subscription-based access to leading news and information sources, on iPads and iPhones of course.

And there are those, like Zynga who more or less stumbled into developing addictive apps like Farmville – which despite its banal subject and static presentation, is now the largest Facebook game and one of the most popular Internet games ever made.

In fact at one point, it was looking like apps could be the Great Leveler, the technology that allows anyone and everyone to profit from the Internet.

So why do I think apps are such a bad thing?

Because it’s my strong belief that within a couple of years, they will take over the Internet completely. The entire ‘net will be pay-to-play.

You won’t go to Google to find out about Richard the Lionhearted. You’ll download a Google app and go there.

New York Times? Download an app.

Wired Magazine? Download an app.

Wikipedia? See the app.

Whereas up to this point, access to any manner of information sources has been nearly free, the app will become a benign looking firewall – paywall – forcing users to give up something of value — name, email address and password, at the very least — as a token for entry. Increasingly, however, apps will require a one-time payment or subscription through the virus-infestation known as PayPal or a credit card transaction, or more likely, through your phone bill.

Eventually, and as the world goes completely wireless, that will be the only way to access anything, including kid’s games.

Now you might be asking, why is this so bad? After all, corporate America has been looking for ways to monetize the Web. Maybe this is it?

And you would be right, maybe it is. But that’s certainly not the way corporate America has been marketing the little devils up to now.

Currently, we think it’s pretty cute if Apple has 200,000 apps for its iPhone or the Android has another ten thousand or so coming online.  Someday we’re going to wish there weren”t quite so many, or they weren’t quite so expensive, or worse yet, we’ll wish it was easier to unsubscribe so we could get rid of the constant torrent of app ads, or stop payment from being automatically drawn from our accounts long after we deleted the apps.

You’ll curse the Apple or Google OS for sending them to you, but really, it was just you…and those apps.

Yeah. Apps.

Soon we’ll be telling our grandkids how one day not so long ago, the Internet was free.

And they’ll laugh dismissively.

“C’mon,” their parents will say, patting our knees as they check their Facebooks online. “What could be easier than an app?”

A freebie for everyone who read the whole blog: I’m hereby predicting that the Next Big Thing will be apps aggregators, who will sell you packets of apps at a “discount.” (I can already hear people scrambling for GoDaddy URLs…)

Please follow me on Twitter here.