When is an App Not an App?

When it is useless.

As a member of the exclusive brotherhood and sisterhood of iPhone users (iPu), I can not even begin to extol the virtues of my iPhone.  So I won't.

Instead, I would like to direct your attention to the insanity of the world we live in.

My brother Shawn recently invested in not one, but two iTouch devices - one for him and one for his wife.  Of course, he paid less than $100 for each of them, but that's a story for another post.  They wanted to purchase iPhones, but the whole contract thing is making it impossible for honest, hard-working Americans to get what they want without going further into debt.

So, iTouch it is, somewhere in limbo between the land of iPod and utopia of iPhone.

Anyway, Shawn is a high tech street rat who learned more about his iTouch in one day than I did about my iPhone in a month.  He's a mad genius.

One of the things he discovered is a little toy app named orb.  Orb opens doors to the universe and windows to your soul.  It let's you into into any nightclub, past any bouncer and up to the hottest dance floor faster than a folded Benjamin. He got me so lathered up on Friday night that I downloaded the trial app to my iPhone while we were still talking.

Then the insanity started.  You can't run the trial until you first download the original orb files to your PC (what's a PC?).  So I wait all weekend - in between calls from Shawn asking if I tested it it out yet. Finally Monday arrives and I promptly forget.  Fortunately Shawn calls me on his way into work:  Did you try it yet?

So I find the site and I click the orb download button and an "exe" file shows up on the desktop of my iMac.  And of course my iMac is befuddled with the lack of intuitive insight I've shown by downloading this file which is obviously created for a Windows environment.  And it promptly spits it out and into my desktop trash can.

After a lengthy search I discover that there is a beta Mac OS X version available if I don't mind experimenting.  Yeah, do I look like Mr. Wizard?

So it's over before it begins.  I'll have to listen to my brother brag about his orb and his PC for the next six weeks, or until he finds a more interesting app.  But I really don't mind that so much.  What I do mind is the idea that someone created an application for the iPhone (a Mac product) that does not work with an iMac.  

Is it just me or is that crazy?  I mean really, where is the sense and logic in a non-Mac product for a Mac product?  How many PC users actually even own iPhones?  Four?  Maybe five? Wait, let me look that up on my iPhone and I'll get right back to you.