Rhodri Marsden: 'I've deleted Wakie - apps need to be useful, not just fun'

The apps that people write about and read about seem to revel in their own preposterousness -valuing flamboyance over utility

It's only a few weeks since everyone was talking about Yo, the app that converts a tap on your phone into a 'Yo!' sound on someone else's

My finger hovered over the "call" button as I winced at what I was about to do. I'd read about an app for Android called Wakie, which positions itself as the leading light in the world of social alarm clocks – and yes, that appears to be A Thing. Nothing is safe, it seems, from the grabbing hands of social media.

With Wakie, your alarm is not a clanging bell, the Radio 4 pips or a random selection from Queen's Greatest Hits; it's a telephone call from a complete stranger, of the opposite sex, who has been assigned the duty of waking you up, with lighthearted chat. I knew that I didn't need waking up on account of being awake already, but it was my duty, as a new member of the Wakie community, to wake someone else.

But what on earth would I say when the call was connected? Who would want to be woken up by me, offering mild pleasantries or wanging on about some inconsequential guff? It felt like a recipe for the most excruciating small talk imaginable. So I chickened out. And then I deleted the app.

This has become a repetitive act, of late. The apps that people write about and read about seem to revel in their own preposterousness; they're so eager to be noticed amidst the morass of product in the Play Store or the App Store that they value flamboyance over utility and actually deliver very little indeed.

It's only a few weeks since everyone was talking about Yo, the app that converts a tap on your phone into a "Yo!" sound on someone else's; those people are no longer talking about it, and would have forgotten about it completely if I hadn't just mentioned it.

An emoji-only social network seemed like a cute and weirdly compelling idea, until three such apps launched in the space of one month; all three demonstrated that man cannot communicate by emoji alone, any more than they can converse using only punctuation.

An app called The Shakedown was launched a few weeks ago, based upon an idea so lacking in value that I can't even bring myself to explain it, but instead of being ignored, it was billed in the press as the "worst app ever" and "the end of society". People dutifully downloaded it, launched it, tried it, sighed, rolled their eyes and deleted it. As I said, a repetitive act.

But maybe we've had enough. Two surveys published in recent weeks by Comscore and Deloitte prompted talk of "peak app" and "app fatigue"; Comscore found that two-thirds of app users download precisely zero apps per month, finding themselves perfectly satisfied with what they've got and weary of the persistent trial and error that app sampling brings.

Of course, only a hardened cynic would say that it's all been done, that nothing useful is emerging or even lurking on the horizon; Instagram's Hyperlapse is a great example of something genuinely cool that has emerged unexpectedly. But the ease of publishing apps has convinced many developers to have ideas for the sake of those ideas alone.

The alarm clock doesn't need to be reinvented, but on the App Store I can choose from Alarm Clock Pro, Rise, Nightstand, Today, Yocto, Wake, Carrot ("the sentient alarm clock that makes waking up fun!") and countless others that essentially do the same thing.

You can try attaching bells and whistles to the act of waking up, but it'll never be fun. Especially if I'm the one doing the waking. Believe me.

twitter.com/rhodri