Your iPhone is simply a new interface

Ross Hill — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:08:30 +0000

I have been thinking about this for a while now, but it took Mick’s Mobile Killed The Desktop Star post to remind me to write it down. The correct answer is “derrr Mick, of course!”

When the iPhone had just launched and everyone was asking my opinion I suggested that they think of it as a “mini-laptop” instead of a “mobile phone”. When you watch someone using it you know why – Phone and SMS and Calendar are just 3 applications of the 15 that I use on a regular basis.

When you are carrying all of this media with you – music, video, games, blogs, documents, spreadsheets.. you do start to wonder if you need a laptop as well. When I have been traveling recently I often take the iPhone and leave the laptop at home, and I don’t miss it at all. I can do 80% of the things that I want to, and the other 20% can wait until I get back.

When you combine all of these data formats with the web you now have a very practical platform. I don’t need to carry my music with me because I have the Last.fm app and can stream anything. I can watch YouTube videos in the YouTube app. I can edit documents with Google Apps. I can read blogs with the RSS readers. The device itself doesn’t actually have to store any of this media as long as it has the network connections to get it from the web. I can browse the real web in Safari.

This all means that at the end of the day the iPhone is simply a new interface. It can get content from the network but it can also share that content on the network.

Soon there will be connectors publicly available to plug the iPhone into an external display, such as a computer screen or a TV. When your apps are using these screens for display the iPhone can turn into a touchpad interface for input. You might be typing into a keyboard on the iPhone and seeing a document on the screen. You might be playing a game on the iPhone with all the action happening on the TV. You might be using the iPhone as a remote control (which you can already do) for your stereo.

Forget tablets, forget netbooks, forget all that. Your iPhone is simply a new interface. A good one!

Ross Hill » mick liubinskas

Your iPhone is simply a new interface