The App Store Turns 15
Happy 15th Birthday App Store 🎂
Fifteen years ago today, on Thursday, July 10, 2008, Apple launched the iPhone App Store. And we launched the first app we ever built which could fit in your pocket, OmniFocus for iPhone.
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At its launch, there weren’t any mechanisms for free copies of paid apps: no promo codes, no TestFlight, no trials or in-app purchases. What to do? The next morning, we went to the local Apple Store, bought a bunch of iTunes gift cards matching the price of our app, scratched the backs of each one to get at their codes, and then emailed out all those codes to potential reviewers.
Let’s (try to) crowdsource the names of the original iPhone App Store apps and games!
I’m writing a piece on the App Store turning 15, and I couldn’t find a list of the original ~500 App Store apps and games from 11 July 2008, which I thought was strange. @jamesthomson, whose PCalc was there from the start, suggested we might be able to crowdsource this, for posterity and future research.
Here’s the spreadsheet.
If you have info to add to it, please do. Please share!
See also: BasicAppleGuy.
Previously:
Update (2023-07-13): Mike Rockwell:
But here we are, fifteen years later, and the App Store feels like more of a hindrance. A limitation on the platform that prevents entire categories of applications from even being developed.
Mike Rockwell nails it. Apple has utterly failed on all the reasons it originally gave to have total control - curation, quality, preventing malware and scams, innovation, making it easier for developers - all lies.