The collectable nature of iPhone apps and why it matters

A few months we lauched a little thing called Skinni Popcorn at www.skinnipopcorn.com One of the key design considerations when we were creating the site was it had to look great on the iPhone with any kind of noise stripped out. We discussed about maybe making it an iPhone app but I was dead against the idea; why make an app when you can add it to your homescreen and launch it with one click anyway? There just didn't seem to be any point?

But now I realise I was wrong.

People love apps. They love collecting apps. They don't consider bookmarks on the homescreen to be the same thing - they're simply web pages. Plus most people don't even use the idea of a homescreen bookmark ( though this is purely my own summation). Even though they can give you the same functionality, the context of a homescreen bookmark is entirely different. It's simply not as cool or dare I say it, as cute! Apart from that the flow of the user experience is totally different with a bookmark; click icon, load Safari, load web page, wait for it to load etc etc.

So we're now on with Skinni for the iPhone, alongside other skinni enhancements. Watch this space.

Let me know what you think about  apps v homescreen bookmarks in the comments below...