The Coolest Looking iPhone Conversion App Is One You Can’t Figure Out How To Use

That nutty guy Steve Kovach says Samsung is out-innovating Apple because the iOS home screen is still just a grid of static icons that launch apps.

Maybe so, but those icons work very well to launch apps and I, and a few hundred million other folks, know exactly how to use them. What if someone made a nice iPhone app that you couldn’t figure out how to use?

Convertbot Needs People Skills

My iPhone and iPad are home to three or four conversion tools; apps that convert this to that. Apple provides a Dashboard Widget for Mac users that does something similar.

Converting units from one to the other is mostly math, so apps need to differentiate their wares through the number of unit conversions or the interface.

I bought Convertbot for my iPhone a few years ago while I had a bout of App Store fever.

It looked very modern, almost futuristic, and I needed a conversion app. The only problem with Convertbot, other than it hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, is the interface.

The interface probably looks great to my geekier-than-thou friends, but what is a human being to make of this?

Say what?

All those unmarked icons might work well as a handheld device for Data of Star Trek TNG.

I require a little more information before tapping on a button. Is it a dial? Is it a drill down menu?

Conversion apps are such that we probably don’t use them all that much, but it’s nice to have them taking up a little space on the iPhone, because, well, one day you’re going to need to convert something.

Convertbot does that. I think. Maybe it’s more of a finger exercise app. After all, it takes twice as many taps to convert something as any other conversion app on my iPhone.

It’s clever looking but probably too clever for mere mortals to figure out how to use. And, worse, it appears to be abandonware, a growing trend among iPhone applications where it’s obvious that no more updates are coming down the road. Ever.

Caveat emptor, indeed.

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