Is there something you’d want for yourself that is relatively simple to make that you know there is a significant demand for already?
I would think that many companies have spent many billions of dollars trying to find as many answers as possible to your question.
That’s the app!
I have a potentially silly question. IANA computer professional, so bear with me.
If anything, I want FEWER apps. Seems like every damn web site wants me to download their app. Why? What value is there to the user that couldn’t be accomplished with a web browser? I thought the whole idea of a web browser was that they can be used to view and use a variety of information in a single piece of software.
But now even the local Chinese takeout desperately insists that I should download their app. To provide me, the user, with a better experience? I’m doubting it, and suspect is has more to do with harvesting information of some kind.
I do have a few apps (why aren’t they just “programs”?) that are useful for offline work, so I’ll carve out an exception for them. But I fail to see why we need so much extra software when much of it can be accomplished in-browser. Can somebody with more tech knowledge than me explain why this is necessary or desirable for users?
There’s your answer - an app that makes all the other apps stop demanding you download them.
IAA software professional, although that doesn’t mean I have all the answers.
The publishers don’t always want to provide you with a better experience; sometimes they want more control over your eyeballs and your behavior.
Some apps can perform more complex (and invasive) functionality than a web app. They can control better what data they need to store, rather than depending on cookies (which the user might disable). Apps make money only two ways: advertising and in-app purchases. You can’t do ad-blocking on an app, and it’s easier to do in-app purchases through the hosting platform (Google Play, Apple Store). However, you are in turn dependent on that platform for distribution and have to pay a commission on purchases.
Some phones apps are really just web sites in disguise. The app just uses a browser engine but saves you the step of entering a URL, and hides from the user that they are really just interacting with a web site.
I am not sure exactly when “programs” became “apps” but it had to do with phones.
As an example, I am a TripAdvisor member but I hate the mobile app. It’s harder to user than the web site because the functionality is more limited. OTOH I use my Bank of America mobile app because it’s faster to login and the interface is tailored for my device, so it’s easier to do just about everything.
At home, I leave my phone on the nightstand next to my bed. That’s where I leave the charging cable, for one thing. If I get a call, text, or something else that needs my attention, I want it to make a sound.
When I leave my apartment, I have the phone in my pocket. I change the notification to vibrate so it won’t bother other people.
I want an app that detects when the phone is within range of my home wifi, and automatically switches from audible notifications to vibrate, and back again.
Yes. An app that reveals all outgoing network traffic from my phone AND reveals which app each connection request originated from (NOT which app it’s being relayed through). And allows me to block or redirect any connections I choose, on a per-connection basis, a per-app basis, or a per-protocol basis.
Thanks. 
(Note: You said simple, you didn’t say easy. ;))
I want an alarm app that can wake me with a song or chapter from a CD or a downloaded book. I finally found one that comes close, but it can only start from the beginning of a file; it can’t go to the place where I left off and start there when it wakes me.
So the goal would be to tell it “Play this song” and then “start the book here.”
Another thing that would be lovely is if it could turn on a specified internet radio station. That seems like such an obvious thing, but I can’t find an app which accomplishes it.
And if anybody makes these, I want 5% of the income. LOL!
I use a laptop. I don’t know what an app is. Is that something like the portal of a webpage? Which has so far worked just fine for me.
Oh my stars, yes - and if somebody can make an app that will permanently wipe Tapatalk and all its notifications from the face of the earth while roundly smacking its creators with a series of progressively larger trout, I and many others will pay very handsomely for this app.
If you have an android, you can enable this yourself (along with thousands of other context-aware options and behaviors) by buying the Tasker app.
I absolutely swear by it, and it along with rooting is the primary reason I use android.
Amen! I will pay handsomely for this app, too.
Although you can get the per-app basis internet blocking with Droidwall if you have an android.
But anything more sophisticated per your description (I’m thinking an app like Little Snitch on macs that pops up anytime an app requests ingoing or outgoing internet internet traffic) would have to be built.
Solitaire card games that play them the way I do.
E.g., for traditional solitaire: one -not two- stock piles. No moving an already played card except to a foundation and no moving back from the foundation. You made a decision, deal with it.
Spider: No auto move of completed piles. Use old SunOS spider scoring on those.
Pyramid: A card covered by only its match can be removed.
Freecell: no autoplay to foundations, ever!
Plus intelligent play on right clicks and such.
Everywhere I look there’s always at least one thing “wrong” with these.
I am almost positive that I had an app like this on my previous Android phone. It was a preinstalled app on my Droid Razr M. It was location based, and you could tell it to do certain things automatically based on where you were. So I could save my home and work locations, and tell it to turn off wifi at work, so that it wasn’t running down my battery searching for wifi all day. Then when I got home, it would turn wifi back on.
I don’t see it on my current phone though, and don’t remember what it was called.
xkcd on apps vs. websites: xkcd: App
I found one app that did something like that, but there were still problems.
It determined location based on which cell sites it could contact, so it wasn’t very precise in determining when I was home.
I can change manually from sound to vibrate mode with one touch, but the app had four or five options and settings of notification modes, and none of them did quite what I wanted.
Yes… Per-app internet blocking is very different from per-connection NETWORK blocking, where (in addition to normal internet) Bluetooth, GPS, and NF transmissions are all intercepted and can be individually blocked.
Again, Tasker is what you guys want. You can do it by wifi proximity (including with time-of-day fences, I have “if you see my work network and it’s between 7AM and 6PM, do X,Y, and Z”), by cell-phone tower, by GPS location, and more.
And that’s just 5% of what it can do, it is fantastically extensible just with the out of box GUI options, and if you can program, even more so.
It is fairly expensive for an app (I think I spent $8 on it back in the day), but it’s one of the few apps that’s actually worth it, because it’s just so amazingly versatile.
Tasker is indeed great, if you want to do some of the many things it makes possible. I did buy it, unfortunately found I wasn’t using it much so haven’t had it around lately.