Had you heard that George Harrison had an iPad app launching this week? I have been anticipating it for a while, knowing that aside from music there would be loads of context and history about his guitars and what he used for which song and so on. Cool info for a music geek, in other words. But today when it launched, the $10 price made me pause for a bit before buying.
Recently we have seen apps from Jimi Hendrix and Sting, both of which were free, as well as Rock and Jazz histories which are ~$5 each. The Sting and Hendrix apps were both underwritten, and the obvious goal is to recoup the funding through sales of music and products through the app.
The Harrison app is different – it really digs into him as a guitarist, looking at each instrument, featuring voice-overs from Harrison and others, and putting the guitars into the context of their usage with the Beatles. In that
It really is kind of cool for a fan and music geek like myself, but the app itself is terribly unoptimized and lacking polish for a $10 commercial product with such high visibility. My advice is that if you can wait, add it to your AppShopper wish list and wait for a sale or at least an update before jumping.