“The iPhone is a sexy accessory, similar to a Louis Vuitton handbag. It is a fad that will fade. Ultimately people want simplicity in their mobile devices.” So said a very savvy Swedish publishing executive this week at a newspaper conference I attended in Paris. Normally I would tend to defer to a Swede on mobile issues, given Sweden’s early and mass use of mobile devices. Especially a Swede who shares my esteem for the TV shows The Wire, The West Wing and Weeds. How wrong can he be? But as a recent iPhone convert, I simply must disagree with the Swede’s iPhone prediction.
In joining Maroon Ventures, I decided to make not only a career move but a total platform move as well. My decision to move from a PC to a Mac laptop was relatively easy: I have a Mac desktop at home and am comfortable with the interface and adore the multimedia options (which, admittedly, I spend more time thinking about all the cool stuff I could do rather than doing it.) Fellow MV Partner Chris Tippie has a Mac laptop and regaled the rest of our partnership with his seven stages of “Mac Love” which, of course, ends in stage seven, Bliss. Mike Higgins also bought a Mac so I knew I could rely on him to set everything up and provide IT support in exchange for beer. But moving from the Blackberry to the iPhone was not not nearly as easy a decision. I fretted over the lack of a tactile keyboard. I resisted the email interface. Although my husband assures me I don’t really have fat fingers, I struggled to master the simple art of typing.
But two weeks into this transformation, I am smitten. The device is simple, not simple-minded. It is elegant and the interface is smart. I think of all the cool applications that are just waiting to be developed for my mobile device. I want more from my iPhone, not less as the Swede assumes. I desperately want a comprehensive local restaurant directory, for Denver, for Paris, for wherever I am at that moment. I want an application that links my favorite recipes to a grocery list and and local supermarkets so that when I run into the market after work I don’t wander the isles trying to remember or decide what to get. I want a better iPhone interface with Google Maps. I want more memory. I want more, period.
I certainly understand the tendency, and the history behind, the Swede’s viewpoint. Are we trying to cram too many things into one device, and thereby ruining the original intention of the device? I don’t think so. I don’t want my iPhone to walk my dog for me. Heck, I don’t even use the camera much though it does come in handy occasionally. I simply want the device to quickly and painlessly provide critical information to me when I am on the go: weather, headlines, email, address book, phone, recipes, maps, music and the occasional movie. And in that sense, the more information available for me to customize the better.
I still struggle to type a long email message on my iPhone. But that might be a good thing. If I am at the playground with my kids, a short reply should suffice. If not, there is always the actual phone component of the iPhone. My kids deserve that and my clients deserve my full attention when responding to email. I am rarely more than a coupe hours away from my laptop, with its beautiful 17-inch monitor and backlit keyboard. Few emails are so urgent that they can’t either be answered quickly or postponed a few hours. And as for the other habits that the blackberry inspired, including typing while driving or during dinner, perhaps it is best that those get shelved right alongside the old PC, the old blackberry, and the old job.
