Applications for mobile devices are commonly called apps; they are available for direct download to a smart phone from an online app store. Originally, apps were available only from an app store that was controlled and owned by Apple®, this allowed owners of an iPhone® or an iPod Touch® to access and download the apps that were offered. It did not take long for other developers to realize that they too could develop apps and offer them to the smart phone market. Today there are hundreds of thousands of apps, many are free and some are available for a small fee, it depends on who developed it and what the purpose is.
Many apps, such as the Best Restaurant Apps have been developed by entrepreneurs who wish to bring a tool to a specific industry so that the public in generally, specifically customers and users of the service can give feedback of their experience. This is very common in industries that provide a service and who are very keen on improving the experience that their customers have. There are many developers who host their apps in the app store, they are then reviewed by individuals to ensure they are safe and functional, the applications are also rated which allows the store to address concerns about children accessing apps which contain mature content.
Apps are used for a variety of reasons; many are used to allow the smart phone user to access his or her email, browsers, calendars and other date stored in a cloud computing environment. There are many games and self help apps that cover all matter of interests, including general information on health topics to what to do if a person ingests poison. For best restaurant apps and other similar apps, they must have been coded so that they conform to the current norm. There are many manufacturers who purposefully release their specs so that developers can write an app for the product or device.
Owners of either Apple® products or smart phones running on the Android™ operating system can access their own store. Although the app itself may perform the same function, the coding is different between the operating systems. Once the user has accessed the correct store, they can search for apps that interest them and quickly download them for installation.