To spend or not to spend.

So I was amongst the lucky few who managed to get my hands on a HP Touchpad last week. Its a marvellous bit of kit..... For £89.99. However this isn't going to be a post about how good or bad the Touchpad itself is but more a going over, what for me, is old ground when it comes to apps. The Touchpad has become the poster boy for some of the current problems faced by discerning consumers when it comes to paying for apps.

The question I return to is this: As Android and iOS have now established themselves as the markets dominant players are our paid for apps now more likely to be with us with us until our death bed? Doggcatcher, my most treasured Podcast app has gone through many iterations since I first purchased it nearly two years ago, and has matured from what was once a clunky, ugly piece of software into a highly intuitive, but still fairly ugly piece of software. Questions of whether you'd want to turn up to the Android ball with Doggcatcher on your arm aside, it seems reasonable to expect that she'll get better with age.

HP Touchpad apps however, will not. In fact, they are already on death row. The beauty of smartphones or smart anything really, is that its functionality can be augmented and customised beyond its shipped state. With WebOS not being able to do basic tasks like play (obviously legal) DivX files, I'd like to download an app that can enable this functionality. Except that I don't want to pay for something that I'm only going to use for a few months until some bright spark creates a Honeycomb Rom. Phones and tablets are replaced roughly every 18 months, and what happens if an OS you've spent £50 on apps for dies? Apps are not media in the sense that they are like games that can be completed and discarded, they can be much more part of your everyday life.

Paradoxically with the demise of the Touchpad we've seen two things. Both a weakening of the perception that apps you pay for are yours, forever, and yet, a strengthening of the chance that in fact they will be. Android and iOS are here to stay, and though its now down to individual developers to continue support for their applications I think its also fair to say that a certain element of risk has been removed when it comes to paid for apps. Go spend your money!