These “Not Available On The App Store” Stickers Are the Cutest Way to Make an Excellent Point - There’s a Life Outside Our Smartphones
Some things just can't be done with a click.
Technology is great, and it undoubtedly makes our lives much easier. But has it made them better?
New technology has enabled us to be everywhere and see everything from the comfort of our homes. But has it alienated us from our neighbors?
We don’t have to remember anything – we can find everything on Google. Has it made us stop thinking for ourselves?
How many of us can remember our closest friends’ phone numbers? We’ve somehow accepted that our lives revolve around gadgets.
There is a saying that fire is an excellent servant but an evil master. The same can be said about technology.
Its primary role is to enable us to perform tasks more quickly and to have more time for ourselves, our family, and our friends. Yet, we end up using that free time playing with our gadgets.
Being involved in the digital world can sometimes make us forget the real world around us. And it’s always more fun than the virtual one, but it actually requires us to get out and live it.
Three Swedish digital media students, Rafael Ochoa, Caio Andrade, and Linn Livijn Wexell, were asking themselves these same questions and started “Not Available on the App Store.”
1. “Not Available on the App Store” is an idea devised by three Swedish digital media students, Rafael Ochoa, Caio Andrade, and Linn Livijn Wexell.
Technabob2. They have created these stickers imitating the well-known Apple “Available on the App Store” badge.
Technabob3. It’s undoubtedly a clever guerrilla art initiative.
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4. Its aim is to make us realize there’s a real life outside social media, smartphones, and computers.
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The Apple App Store is a digital delivery platform where people can purchase and download software and apps. Apps bought from the Apple App Store are kept in iCloud—Apple's cloud service—for easy access from any signed-in device.
Even though Apple maintains that it holds a trademark on the phrase "app store," it is used to describe any platform where apps are sold. The most famous are Google's Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, Blackberry World, and Microsoft's Windows Store.
5. There isn’t an app for absolutely everything
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The Apple App Store opened on July 10, 2008, the day before the launch of the iPhone 3G. It is a significant business for the company, with gross sales of around $50 billion in 2019.
It became a synonym for a public software marketplace, and we are sure that the young students didn’t intend to call out just this platform. They probably chose the App Store logo for their provocative campaign because it’s the most famous one.
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There is a life outside the virtual world, and even though it can be extremely interesting and cozy, it is no substitute for real-life experiences. Unfortunately, we tend to forget this sometimes.
Of course, we didn’t have much choice in the past few years, and we were forced to move our lives and work online. But we shouldn’t accept this “new normal” as a must and forever. Instead, it should be just a phase that teaches us to value real human contact and real life.
