Sunday, September 28, 2014

Updated: We played with the worst apps in the world, so you don't have to

Updated: We played with the worst apps in the world, so you don't have to

There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are crap.

We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.

Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.

So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

1. 99 Bottles!

iOS
Price: Free

Let us set the scene: You're having '99 Bottles of Beer' sung to you by Stephen Hawking. We just described the entirety of the 99 Bottles app.

No, that's not fair, you can also pause the song or choose to start it over. There are also some crap bottle animations that twitch along with the "music". Ok, now we've described it.

Worst apps in the world
It's just counting. Annoying counting.

Yes, it's the slow, awkward rendition of 99 Bottles you never asked for but you're sure as hell going to get anyway. And what happens if, God forbid, you last the whole 19 minutes and 48 seconds? No spoilers here, but we can confirm that time is accurate because we sat through the whole damn thing ourselves.

Worst apps in the world

Actually, we got a text message at just over 50 bottles down the first time and accidentally hit 'start again', so we basically sat through it twice for this column. You're welcome.

You'll hear all the greats: 87, 64, 50, 42… And if your phone goes to sleep just as bottle 93 has been taken from the wall, does it start exactly where it left off? Course not, it starts number 93 ALL OVER AGAIN.

We really can't think of any useful applications for this other than torture, and Amnesty would be all over this in a heartbeat.

To its creator's credit he at least acknowledges how ridiculous the app is. We just don't know why anyone would use it, let alone make it. Then again we did play it for the whole 20 minutes so we're hardly in a position to judge. No wait, make that 29 minutes and 42 seconds. Again, you're welcome.

No comments:

Post a Comment