Technology is in a very strange place, it’s become ever-present, but not necessarily at the front of our minds. According to the official QI Twitter account, the average smartphone user checks their handset 150 times per day!

Considering where computing was only 15 years ago, this is phenomenal. The average home computer came in a number of boxes, took an age to set up and then the blank hard drive had to be filled up with any number of programs. There were separate discs for word processing, spreadsheets, databases, music players, DVD players and anything else that you may have wanted your computer to do, before you even went online and updated your web browser and email client.

Tell the user of the system above that they’d be checking their computer 150 times a day, and they’d have wondered if you accidentally said ‘day’ when you meant ‘quarter’.

Part of the amazing success of the smartphone being used as a palm computer is the mobile app. Upon the launch of the second-gen iPhones, coffee shops were full of users swapping handsets to a chorus of ‘Ooh, what apps have you got?’ because they were the thing that made smartphones so versatile and enticing. Apps were smaller, less hungry versions of larger software programs.

Today’s smartphones are smarter than the average home PC of 1998, have more storage and faster processors, but we’re still obsessed with the app. During the first three weeks of November 2012, Apple’s App Store generated over $120m in America alone.  According to Apple’s own figures, there are now over 1 million Apps approved via the App Store and the rush doesn’t stop there.

While originally apps were stripped out programs that allowed lower ability computers to use them, they’re now a focus in their own right. Apple’s own OS now appears in a similar vein on the iPhone and iPad; small instant launch windows showing a pictogram that is clicked to launch the feature. Even the Microsoft Xbox 360, which even by today’s standards is not a low powered machine, shows ‘Apps’ on its home page rather than ‘Programs’, despite being a computer with enough processing power and memory to handle a huge range of dedicated computer programs.

Part of this has to be down to the acceptance of the general public to the concept of the ‘mobile app’. The public use apps for specific purposes, with each one dealing with a particular task.  No longer is the public satisfied with a lumbering piece of software with 500 special features that never get used. We’re instead far too busy using apps for the fast, efficient and focussed reasons they were invented, saving massive amounts of time, thereby allowing us to check our phones 150 times a day.