One thousand dillies

Get a load of this shit: Apple recently removed a program from the iPhone’s App Store called I Am Rich. For $1,000, iPhone users could download I Am Rich “to alert people that you have money in the bank.”

Once downloaded, it doesn't do much — a red icon sits on the iPhone home screen like any other application, with the subtext ‘I Am Rich.’ Once activated, the user is treated to a large, glowing gem. That's about it. For a thousand dollars.

Sounds like something someone from Newport Beach would buy.

According to the Los Angeles Times article, eight people worldwide — six in the US, one in France, and one in Germany — downloaded the application before it was removed from the online store. The program’s developer, Armin Heinrich, pocketed $5,600 (30 percent of each sale goes to Apple).

Heinrich is unsure why Apple removed the application from the App Store. He believes it has a market (Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach, too), and that a lot more people are interested in buying it. I don’t doubt that. There are probably thousands of status hungry iPhone owners who would love to accessorize their outdated — not to mention, less glamorous and exclusive — cell phones since the release of the faster, sleeker, and — *gasp* — cheaper iPhone 3G. Although the original may work perfectly, it’s not as aristocratic as it was. That’s where I Am Rich comes in. For a cool thou it will boost you back into the elite by…doing nothing. But how many others, even among the new version iPhone owners, can boast of owning a program that flaunts your wealth with a digital red gem?

The others dumb enough to buy it.

Last night my dad told me about a robbery in Iowa City. A masked man held up the Hy-Vee gas station at Waterfront and Stevens and got away with $1,000. I’m pretty sure an exclusive iPhone app wasn’t his motivation.

It’s interesting to think of what that says about our country, our society. For $1,000 one man will disguise himself and threaten an innocent convenient store clerk with a Glock, possibly to feed his family or a drug addiction, while another man will use the same amount to buy a useless cell phone feature to make himself feel and appear more important.

What would I do with a thousand dillies? I’d put it in my savings account and earmark it as money for grad school. After 30 more gas station robberies I’d be set.

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