BlackBerry App World online: Steals minutes of your life you'll never get back

By Flora Graham on 19 August 2009, 11:12am

It's less useful than a donkey with a PhD -- Dr Donkey would be a great reference if you were applying to Donkey University -- but RIM has released an online version of its BlackBerry App World app store.

It's handy to be able to browse apps on a proper screen, and the site is easy to use. But once you find the app you want, whether it's a free whip simulator or a $100 to-do list, you can't download it from the site.

Instead, you can email yourself a link to your BlackBerry. Open your email and click the link, and you're whisked away to the app's Web page. Click another link to open the app in the App Market on your phone, and then click again to download. Everything you need is just a few hundred clicks away!

Oh, wait. That's when you may find out the app's not available on your type of phone, or on your network. Screw it -- just use the App Market that's installed on your phone.

To add insult to boring, tedious injury, all the prices are in US dollars.

We're hoping this hobbled online store is just the beginning, and there's a bright future coming where we can one day download BlackBerry apps on to our PCs and sync them to our phones, or something similarly useful. We also need to be able to filter apps so we only see the ones we can install -- something that happens automatically when you use the App Market on your phone. Finally, we want to see prices in our own currency. Get to it, RIM!