Wednesday, September 28, 2011

iPhone and Life

The iPhone has changed my morning routine. It usually rests on my dresser getting charged throughout the night. The first thing I do every morning is to roll off the bed and walk bleary eyed to the dresser to check my emails.

The sad thing though is that I don't get too many interesting emails. It is either notifications from various merchants about sales, or forwarded junk. And nestled among them may be be a personal email or two.

My job fortunately or unfortunately is such that I don't need to constantly check my emails. If something momentous is happening, I get called. But otherwise, typically, I first check my email when I get to work. That was when I normally checked my personal email too. But that has changed with the iPhone.

I had a mild epiphany when I realized this is what is meant by sticky technology. Over the years many of us may have been guilty of buying gadgets that we soon set aside. The iPhone it appears is the exact opposite. It never lets you set it aside. You use it as a still camera, a video camera, an email device, a map device, for restaurant reviews, as a flashlight, to play games, to ignore the world...the list is endless and probably enumerated better elsewhere. True many of the apps are crap, but it is your fault that you downloaded them isn't it? And deleting them is easy too.

There are those who bemoan the closed proprietary nature of the iPhone ecosystem, but for most of us - including computer geeks (self described or actual) - we are just glad to have a device that works. We don't want to be bothered learning the ins and outs and all the "secrets". We want to surf the web, access audio and video content, read, browse and do other simple things. We feel rewarded when we can to these things without compromise and feel it is money well spent even though this device may be capable of doing other great things from measuring your blood pressure to probably launching a moon shot for all I know.

Competitors to this device should take note of that. Do the simple things unfailingly and competently first. If you can't, you don't have a hope to succeed. It is almost a metaphor for living a successful life...