There has been a lot of noise in the news this past few days about the release of Apple’s new 3G iPhone (unfortunately still not available here in Dubai).  While the second generation iPhone improves nicely on the previous version with its cheaper price and 3G capability, from a computing point of view I find the launch of Apple’s new App Store is a lot more interesting.

App Store

Why? Well I believe that the iPhone and the iPod Touch provide a newer, more advanced mobile computing platform than anything that had been available previously. But perhaps more importantly,  what is it that gives any computing platform its power? The applications!  By providing the software development kit (SDK) to attract developers and leveraging the App Store and iTunes to distribute the applications means that there will be many more applications available than Apple could ever manage alone, which is only going to strengthen the platform further. Some of the presently available applications may seem a waste of time,  but others will definitely enhance an already impressive platform. The iPhone is more than a phone and iPod Touch is now way beyond just being a MP3 player with a bit of a nifty interface.

iPod Touch

Now if you still think that iPhone is too expensive , it is not available where you live, or you are happy with your existing phone then my recommended way to move to this platform is with an iPod Touch. All the benefits and hey you where going to upgrade that iPod anyway!

Rivals

Now of course Apple isn’t the only game  in town and Nokia for instance has provided a mobile applications store for its Symbian platform for a while already, but I think that Apple have taken everything to a new level.  The good thing for all of us consumers is that Microsoft, Nokia, Google and the like are not going to just take all this lying down. So expect some great things in mobile computing in the near future.

Have you tried the Apps Store?