Ten years ago, the iPhone App Store was just about a year old, and very much a Wild West in the world of software development.
Some software makers saw a chance to get rich quick with cheap gimmicks, while others made efforts to turn venerable websites or desktop programs into mobile apps. Others still came up with entirely new ideas that endure even now.
By looking back, we can learn a lot about how the App Store matured and evolved. Novelty apps that thrived when the iPhone itself was still a novelty eventually gave way to sophisticated games. Other apps proved so popular that Apple eventually built their features into iOS itself, effectively dooming them as stand-alone products. The ideas that have stuck around longest have either benefitted from the backing of tech giants, such as Google and Facebook, or have kept themselves fresh through years of feature updates.
To come up with this list, we used archive.org and its March 2009 snapshots of the app listing website AppShopper, compiling a list of the most popular 15 apps for both the free and paid categories. We chose this over Apple’s own “Best Apps” list from the time, because they better represent what people were doing with the App Store, rather than what Apple aspired for people to do. We also excluded games (they’re probably an article unto themselves), and ignored a couple of apps that were essentially clones of others.
Even if it’s been years since you’ve used any of these apps, you probably remember a lot of them. Here they are, starting at the bottom of AppShopper’s rankings and working our way upward to No. 1.
Free apps
15. MySpace Mobile
2009 App Store description: “If you love MySpace, you’re really going to love MySpace Mobile for iPhone. Simply download the free application to stay connected with your friends . . . anytime, anyplace!”
What it did: Allowed MySpace users to update their profiles, view friends’ status, manage friend requests, and more.
