APPetizing: Distract Yourself While The Ice Cream Softens

By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 15, 2013 6:20PM

Ok, we admit it. This app is single-purpose and hovers right on the edge of being pointless. But we find ourselves oddly mesmerized by its prettiness and, hey, it sort of solves a tiny problem in our lives. For a free app, that's just about enough.

Haagen Dazs has come up with an app they call "The Haagan-Dazs Concerto Timer." You know how pints of ice cream are always too hard to eat right out of the freezer? They claim it takes exactly two minutes for Haagen Dazs to "temper;" that is, to reach its fullest state of perfection before you eat it. But who can wait two minutes? For us, there are only two options when we take the ice cream out of the freezer: break the spoon trying to shovel it into our maw or walk away and let it sit for who knows how long while we try to distract ourselves.

With this app, the user positions their camera so that it can see the top of a carton of ice cream. The app reads both a QR code and the shape of the logo, and then an ethereal violin player effervesces onto the screen. It pays a lovely little song, Bach Inventions No. 14, that lasts exactly as long as you need it to. If you have more than one carton in the frame, interesting things happen.

So yeah. It only does one thing, and that thing is kind of silly. But it's adorable. Plus, for each download, Haagen Dazs is donating $5 to honey bee preservation research at the University of California. What's not to like?