X
Business

Top iOS Apps lists not boding well for BYOD

BYOD doesn't have a chance of taking hold unless we evolve into primates who walk upright with devices that are ready to go to work.
Written by Ken Hess, Contributor

I know it's going to be a bad when my fortune cookie reads, "Fortune not available: Abort, Retry, Continue?", I see a list on Yahoo! from the Associated Press titled, "The top iPhone and iPad Apps on App Store" and it looks like a list of the favorite Apps of everyone under the age of 12. Yep, it's a very bad day, indeed for someone who writes a Consumerization Blog and for someone who evangelizes the advantages of BYOD. I had to ask myself, "Have we de-evolved so far back into the past that perhaps we shouldn't have advanced computing devices at all?" If we're wanting to bring our own devices to work, shouldn't we develop as modern humans with the capacity to use those devices for actual work?

I'm not saying games are bad, necessarily, just that they have no place in the workplace.

How will you convince your employer to allow you to bring your own device to work when it looks as if you're only using it as a toy or social networking communicator? It doesn't do much for our BYOD case, now does it? If you were an employer and all you saw on your employee's tablet was a bunch of games, would you be willing to allow this person to use that same device for 'work?' I would be suspicious and leery of doing so. I might have a different perspective than most because I've been an employer, so that tends to taint my otherwise rose-colored glasses on the topic.

But, before I go further into this tirade rant informative article, here is the list of Apps that has thoroughly disappointed me with the App-buying public:

App Store Official Charts for the week ending Jan. 9, 2012:

Top Paid iPhone Apps:

1. Angry Birds (Clickgamer.com) 2. Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick Studios) 3. Camera+ (tap tap tap) 4. Where's My Water? (Disney) 5. Words With Friends (Zynga) 6. Cut the Rope (Chillingo Ltd.) 7. Tiny Wings (Andreas Illiger) 8. MADDEN NFL 12 by EA SPORTS (Electronic Arts) 9. Bejeweled (PopCap) 10. TETRIS (Electronic Arts)

Top Free iPhone Apps:

1. Temple Run (Imangi Studios, LLC) 2. Doodle Sprint! (Wivvu) 3. Zombie Farm (The Playforge, LLC) 4. the Sheeps Free (Ivan Starchenkov) 5. Pocket Potions (Breaktime Studios) 6. Social Girl (Crowdstar Inc.) 7. Dice With Buddies Free (Stofle Designs) 8. Facebook (Facebook, Inc.) 9. Instagram (Burbn, Inc.) 10. Global War Riot (Addmired, Inc.)

Top Paid iPad Apps:

1. MONOPOLY for iPad (Electronic Arts) 2. Where's My Water? (Disney) 3. SCRABBLE for iPad (Electronic Arts) 4. TETRIS for iPad (Electronic Arts) 5. Words With Friends HD (Zynga) 6. Angry Birds HD (Chillingo Ltd.) 7. Pages (Apple) 8. THE GAME OF LIFE for iPad (Electronic Arts) 9. Real Racing 2 HD (Firemint Pty Ltd.) 10. MADDEN NFL 12 by EA SPORTS For iPad (Electronic Arts)

Top Free iPad Apps:

1. Temple Run (Imangi Studios, LLC) 2. Pinball HD Collection (OOO Gameprom) 3. The Weather Channel for iPad (The Weather Channel Interactive) 4. Skype for iPad (Skype Software S.a.r.l) 5. iBooks (Apple) 6. Bejeweled Blitz (PopCap) 7. Angry Birds HD Free (Rovio Mobile Ltd.) 8. Words With Friends HD Free (Zynga) 9. Kindle — Read Books, Magazines & More — Over 1 Million eBooks & Newspapers (AMZN Mobile LLC) 10. Facebook (Facebook, Inc.)

Now, for my rancid analytic commentary.

Seriously, people? This is what you buy when you have the most advanced computing devices since the original IBM mainframes. With the exception of Pages (and possibly Skype--that one can go either way), you've bought games. That's right, games. You should be ashamed of yourselves, squandering good money on such nonsense.

I'm guessing that you're going to quote the O.G. Star Trek series episode, "Shore Leave," where Kirk states, "The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play." To which I respond, "Blah blah blah, I'm not buying it."

Here's a list of 20 productivity Apps that you should have purchased, or downloaded free of charge, for your awesome slab of electronic crack or your smarter-than-you phone that have absolutely nothing to do with flinging happiness-impaired fowls at oddly fortified swine or social networking:

1. Citrix Receiver 2. VNC 3. RDP 4. vSphere Client 5. iSSH 6. Quickoffice 7. FileApp Pro 8. Fing 9. Printer Pro 10. Dragon Dictation 11. VMware View 12. Fing 13. Ubuntu One Files 14. iSQLQuery 15. PlainText 16. Dropbox 17. Time Zones 18. hypOps 19. SharePlus Lite 20. Zoho Docs

And, while I'm at it, I need to tell you that I'd never allow a jailbroken device on my network. So, if your device has been jailbroken, you need to unjailbreak it and put it back to original standards. If you update it to iOS 5.x, I think it does that for you but I'm not 100 percent certain on that because I don't jailbreak my devices.

If you want to bring your own device, you might have to make a concession or two along the way. It's a world of give and take. It can't all be benefit and no burden.

If you don't want to uninstall all of your games and social networking Apps, at least copy them to their own folders and then move those folders to their own App page so that they're not blatantly staring back at your employer, taunting him, teasing him and defying him into making the same frivolous leisure time purchases that you have.

The next time I see a list like this, I'd love to see more than one productivity App on it. Ones that say, "We're serious about the opportunity and the privilege to bring our own devices to work." And, then actually work with them.

What do you think? Do you think your employer should be upset to see games and social networking Apps on your personal device that you want to use for work? Talk back and let me know.

Editorial standards