Since the release of the iPhone software development kit, everyone’s second favorite small cute white thing (after Blofeld’s cat) has had a slew of amazing widgets that show how much can be done with well-engineered personal technology. Then there were the stupid ones:

1. Roulette Helper

Roulette Helper is a program that’ll tell you which numbers to bet on at the gambling table, but please note: if you need electronic assistance to choose a number between one and thirty six you shouldn’t be gambling. Or have an iPhone. Or be outside without trained handlers. The roulette helper operates on the fairly safe assumption that people who play roulette don’t understand how math works and are prepared to throw money away on the flimsiest of excuses. So it’s really the best marketed random number generator in the history of the world.

2. iMilk

Yes, the iPhone screen is slick. Yes, it’s cool that the iPhone has a tilt sensor. But combining those awesome portable gadgets to simulate a glass of milk is the most tragic misuse of brilliance since the Apollo 13 astronauts had to piss into equipment bags in the capsule. Some people live in wooden shacks in the mountains, convinced that modern technology is a plot to destroy humanity – and after watching people pay real actual money for milk they can’t drink, we’ve started gathering logs.

If you absolutely must make a big deal out of something achieved by a massive corporation specifically to impress idiots (no offense), get the PosiMotion Level so you can at least pretend it’s useful.

3. iTip

Some say that iPhone buyers demonstrate an absolute lack of understanding of the value of money. This argument is supported by the existence of things like iTip, which not only prove that the user can’t actually work out how to tip people, but is prepared to pay someone else to tell them how much to pay, and will do so with apps like iTip even when there are free alternatives like TipCalc for anyone prepared to spend four seconds with Google.

4. RotaryDialer

RotaryDialer seems like a cute idea – convert your ultramodern touchcomputer into aretrotastic rotary phone – until you realise that they’ve forgotten the sound!  Seriously, a rotary dial program only needs the screen and the  “click-click-click-click” noise to be great, and the cowboys behind this could only be bothered with the touch screen. And for iPhone coders, “making a touch screen interface” rates somewhere between “drinking a glass of water” and “tying shoelaces” in terms of difficulty.  

Update:  The makers upgraded the app to include sound, with the minor downside that they also “upgraded” it from free to a dollar.  By that argument you should pay extra for a car with wheels, double for a windows that let light go both ways, and that keyboard of yours should cost four million pounds because you’re picky enough to want every single key.

5. Fake lighter

Ezone.com, purveyors of all the most puerile and pointless in iPhone iNsults, outdo themselves with the “Crazy Lighter”.  Essentially a reversal of everything that man has achieved since the first caveman lifted a rock and realised that it would work better than his fist for hitting things – hundreds of years of technological development, decades of electronics expertise and years of Apple customer research: all to make an insult to fire itself and the users, who are expected to look at the fake flame and go “Oooooo, bright light!” and scratch themselves. The worst thing is, many do.