How many features does a clock need?

Over the past year or so I’ve started teaching myself how to write apps for the ipod and iphone. I’ve made a couple of very simple ones which were accepted into the App store which is a feat in itself. I don’t know how many people know this but every single app is checked by Apple for quality assurance before going live in the App store.

I have a friend in Auckland with an older iphone and for her birthday recently, she received a wooden docking station for it. It’s essentially just a block of wood, but an attractive one, which sits by her bed and her iphone sits in it and displays the time. Or at least it would display the time if she could find an app that runs on her old iphone. My ipod is also quite old in tech years and so I know how frustrating it is when you find a suitable app but it won’t install because your device is too old. So I decided to make an app for displaying the time for my friend and anyone else on the planet with a similar problem.

Anyway, my clock app didn’t do anything other than display the time in very large font. I submitted it last week to the app store for review and over a week later, they reviewed and rejected it on the basis of: not enough features and does not appeal to a wide enough audience. Aside from irritating, I found this a little amusing. It’s a clock. It tells the time. How many features does it need?

I am reminded of something Sir Ken Robinson said of wrist watches and how most people under the age of 25 do not wear them. When asking his 20-year-old daughter about this, her reply was, “It’s a single function device. Like, how lame is that?“.

So I’ve added a feature to my clock: it tells the day of week now too. Here’s a screenshot:

I have submitted it and now have to wait and wait. If it is rejected again for lacking features, I’m going to have to add something else. But aren’t we already in feature overload? And wouldn’t it be nice to just have a clock that tells the time? And nothing else?