Hey, Your App Sucks

Many who hunt will attest to the simple joys of the pursuit. They appreciate the quiet solitude and the intimacy with nature that is rarely found in our modern world. They experience the visceral thrill of the kill in a way that your office-politics victory over Ed from Accounting cannot replicate.

Most of all, hunters know the only thing they can count on when they go mano y mano with their target is the strength of their own will, and whether [[SoundEffect alloc] initWithContentsOfFile: was correctly coded in the audio toolkit framework bundle.

I don't think that moose wants to be your "buddy."

Not surprisingly, there are six or seven iPhone apps that claim to replicate the sounds of wild animals and draw them near during the hunt. (Don’t worry, there’s still way more fart apps.) Never mind that the iPhone’s tiny speaker is not even close to being loud enough to call an animal from more than 10 feet away.

Take that, housecat wearing a fur Snuggie!

If you don’t know much about hunting, you may be surprised that someone would use an electronic sound device to replicate the call of wild game. Doesn’t that violate the purity, the ethos of hunting? Well, in a world where hunters install motion-activated video cameras in the woods, attach thermal imaging scopes to their rifles, and plant specially engineered crops intended to help deer grow bigger antlers before they’re killed, I think this app fits right in.