Latest iPhone ads showcase third-party apps

by Dan Moren, Macworld.com

The biggest selling point of the iPhone? You ask me, it’s gotta be the App Store. Apple and I are apparently of one mind, since they’ve released three new commercials that each showcase a different application for the iPhone.

In all three cases, the voiceover is identical. The smooth—smug?—sounding narrator says: “This is how you enter the App Store. And this is how you browse over 1000 new apps. And this is how you download one, right to your phone. And this is when you realize: this is going to change everything.”

The three applications that they show off in the spots are Pangea Software’s Cro-Mag Rally, ActiveGuru Ltd.’s Vicinity, and the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook.

It’s certainly unusual for Apple to place so much emphasis on a third-party product in one of their ads, even though none of the programs are mentioned by name in the voiceover—I’m sure their developers won’t be complaining, though.

It’s also interesting to note that they certainly cut a few corners—for example, they only show the last fraction of a second of installing the applications which, as any iPhone user can tell you, is hardly a real world representation.