In this political season, why not talk about the roughest political argument of them all: the real meaning of Apple’s announcement of over 100,000 apps in the app store. Are these apps important because, as Steve Ballmer says, the iPhone doesn’t handle the Internet well? Are these apps a testament to a strong ecosystem? Or are these apps a testament to Apple’s marketing might and the perception that you just might make your millions by selling a flashlight app for the Touch?

The announcement, which basically says that there are over 100,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch with some of the true winners – Smule’s I Am T-Pain, for example – getting 10,000 or more downloads a day.

Clearly the concept of an app store is compelling. Why, then, hasn’t this taken off in the Windows Mobile space and why hasn’t Anrdoid’s market truly taken off?

The singular reason is obviously OS age, in Microsoft’s case, and OS fragmentation, in Android’s case. We’ll ignore Symbian for now because, well, it’s a nice operating system but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has been around for almost a decade. All the apps that could have been made for it have been made for it and, like a tired mule team the developers just can’t push out any more juice. Sure, you can make plenty of cash in the WinMo arena, but it’s all on your own marketing dime. Apple excels at marketing.

In Android’s case you have multiple “branches” of the OS for multiple devices. HTC and Motorola have their own UI tweaks and these branches for programmers to recompile for multiple devices. This, obviously, is a big issue for mom and pop shops run by a few developers and even worse for the 14-year-olds out there building apps in their basements.

So Apple’s refusal to expand its product line has finally paid off. By creating a regimented army of drone devices to run its marketplace they’ve ensured absolute compatibility at the cost of, potentially, consumer choice.

But, and I state this only to be devil’s advocate, does this consumer choice come with too great a cost — namely an app ecosystem that underperforms for the average consumer?

Giz has some great videos from Crazy Eddie, the guy who went nuts in New York and New England back in the 70s and 80s, selling home appliances and CE to a trendy and naive audience.

It’s interesting to note that Crazy Eddie could have been lying about his low-low prices. In an era where the information disparity between consumer and salesperson was amazingly high, I doubt he had better deals than most. But like all great media, he milked the immediacy and memorability of the insane to his own marketing ends.

Eddie escaped to Israel after dumping his stock and quitting the company as it fell into a death spiral. Today Eddie is a free man after doing two years on an eight year sentence.

Anyone have any particularly moving Crazy Eddie stories?