what's great about this is that I have no doubt someone will eventually tackle this problem....wondering, have you tried the iPhone SDK? - Adam Kazwell

I don't think I have the patience to learn the SDK or any other programming language. Sometimes I wish I was a developer though. - Joe Lazarus

That would be very useful indeed. The problem: for you to distribute your newly created app (or to even install it on your own iPhone) you would have to join Apple's iPhone Developer Program, agree to a number of NDAs and pay Apple $99. That's quite a turnoff. The only way around this would be that the user-built apps run as a kind of "modules" inside the App Builder itself. But then they wouldn't have icons of their own on the home screen, for example. - Ole Begemann

Ole, the $99 fee will prevent some apps from being launched (not really specific to the idea above), but I think there are plenty of app concepts worth investing in. It's a one-time payment, not per app. The fee may even be a good filtering mechanism. If app creators aren't willing to pay $99, maybe their apps aren't worth putting out there. Of course, there should be some exceptions like non-profits and maybe students. - Joe Lazarus

It's not only the $99 but the hassle involved in publishing to the App Store. Every time you make a small update to your little mashup app, you are facing a week before you see it go live because Apple wants to review it first. I think Chris is right. The gap between ideas that cannot be implemented as a simple webapp and projects that are so complicated that they cannot be solved with "drag and drop programming" is almost zero. - Ole Begemann

Chris / Ole, I think the success of tools like Microsoft Access, Yahoo! Pipes, Dreamweaver, and other software that helps non-technical people create simple applications shows that there is demand for this type of thing and that entirely new solutions emerge when you open development capabilities up to a wider audience of people with good ideas. - Joe Lazarus