There are squillions of software applications (or “apps”) available for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, and this is presented as evidence of their utility. They are must-have multimedia devices, we are told by Apple, only to be repeated ad nauseam by the company’s fanboys in web forums in which they spend all their waking hours.

I own an iPod Touch*, and use it primarily as a portable digital organiser, rather than as a means of insulating myself from the ambient auditory environment. My iPod is marginally useful to me, but occasionally I consider tossing the damn thing owing to the hype that surrounds Apple’s consumer cash cows, and the sad individuals who obsess over its products.

Take, for example, the Email ’n’ Walk application, which allows its users to type emails as they perambulate, with a video feed from the iPhone’s camera on the screen in the background. The video may allow users to see what’s going on in front of them, but it won’t save them from being splatted by an articulated lorry as they stray across a busy road while typing a message to their mates extolling the virtues of their funky new app. Natural selection in action, maybe, but unpleasant for those who have to clean up the mess.

And then I can see drivers using the application with their mobile cupped in two hands on top of the steering wheel, and messages typed out using the thumbs. It would be ironic if a pedestrian iTexter were killed by iWhiteVanMan following the use of a $0.99 piece of software junk.

Email ’n’ Walk is approved by Apple for inclusion in its online shop, while an ebook application was turned down as it might be used to read such outrageous material as the Kama Sutra.

I also own a MacBook Pro laptop. In fact, I use Apple computers almost exclusively, with recourse to a Linux machine for the odd spot of scientific data analysis and mathematical modelling.