Iphone owners, what apps have you found with a great concept but fail in practice?

[charlie and algernon]

I downloaded an app called Top 100 Classical, which has 100 classical music pieces. great concept, all great pieces and I've been listening to it for the last 2 hours.
Couple MAJOR problems with it
1) It only works on shuffle, so no choosing what songs to play when you want.
2) you can't leave the app or the music stops. I did this twice, and if you go back in the app, it starts on another random song. x(

Excellent concept, FAILS in practice.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[charlie and algernon]

2. heh, well that's the last time I start a thread and go to bed

I wonder what I missed

[Aristus]

6. It could have been the iPhone's equivalent of that Britney Spears fan:

"Leave iPhone apps a-LONE!" Boo-hoo-hoo!

Whatever they said got them deleted...

[charlie and algernon]

7. lol that was actually my first thought

that I pissed off someone who makes Iphone Apps. :rofl:

[gmoney]

3. I have iPod touch...

It has several audio based apps, like Pandora, and White Noise, and streaming radio that are great, except you can't run them in the background and run other apps. That should be a firmware fix, I'd think, but maybe there's not quite enough RAM in these things to allow open multi-tasking like that. But then again, you can run iTunes in the background generally, so why not?

I guess that would be an overall FAIL or at least shortcoming.

I'm guessing your classical music thing won't let you select a specific song as that's probably a different music license and would cost a lot more. Like Pandora can stream a TYPE of music, but you can't request a specific song at a specific time (and you can't repeat a song). Or there's an online station I listen to ( www.hidebound.com ) that will let you make a request, and will play it, but it has to delay the playing for one hour. I guess it's the difference between something being "on demand" that is the issue.

They're advertising this new music player that plays songs off of little memory chips, and you get like 1000 songs for $20 or so... I'm betting that's the same deal. As long as the user doesn't control the sequence, or can repeat songs, or play on demand, they can treat it as a radio license rather than an ownership license.

[charlie and algernon]

4. I'm thinking whoever made the app just took a bunch of classical songs

and stuck them together. Each song brings up a different album cover, so they probably created their own playlist and turned it into an app. It's frustrating since I can see the list. I know Barber's Adagio for Strings is #3 on the list and I can't get to it on my own. :banghead:

I'm guessing since it's probably a private app and not an Itunes app is the reason you can't multitask like you can with Itunes.

[gmoney]

5. It's trying to get you to buy the tracks

Looked it up on the store, and there's a line that says "Hear or see a song or album you would like to add to your iTunes collection? Touch the "buy song" button and you'll be taken directly to that song and album in the iTunes store."

So, my guess is they have some sort of "affiliate" account where they get a few cents for every song purchased by users of this application. And again, by keeping you from listening to tracks "on demand" they can somehow get away with it as "sampling" or radio or something.

Huge number of 1 and 2 star ratings for this app, by the way. Guess you're not the only one frustrated.

"IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE!"

[charlie and algernon]

8. yeah, i saw that

there's a flaw with that too. If you hit buy that song, you better write down what song it was first, because it just brings you to the CD it was taken from, not directly to the song. And of course if you try and go back, it starts at another random song. :crazy:

[Kutjara]

9. Not being able to run background apps isn't a bug...

...it's a feature ;). Apple made the conscious decision not to allow processes to run in the background (except for a select few of its own like iTunes and the phone functionality) for "security reasons." They wanted to avoid the situation where, for example, a malicious app sits in the background, waiting for you to open your Contacts app, and then spams email to all your friends.

It's a pretty heavy-handed way of achieving a bit of security, and there are rumors Apple will be allowing some sorts of background Apps in the upcoming 3.0 firmware.

If you Jailbreak your iPhone, there's an app that lets you run any app you like in the background, so the iPhone is definitely capable of doing it. I often listen to Pandora while reading my emails.

[charlie and algernon]

10. hmm, that makes sense, i guess

I guess that's the tradeoff, they allow privately created apps, but they're going to have stricter security measures. I don't plan on deleting this app, I still love listening to the song, I'll just wait for the upgrade to come out.