Why the iPhone isn’t my next computer… yet.
There’s been some interesting conversation recently about how some people are beginning to use their iPhones (or any mobile handset, for that matter) as more of a computer than a phone. After all, you can access just about any type of media on your mobile now. You can communicate in most all the same ways as you do on a desktop–if not more. And with the added enhancements like video cameras and GPS, your phone is becoming more of a tool for getting things done than ever before.
These enhancements, as well as the continual refinement of the OS, make the iPhone a great tool for work. But not all types. Work that is dependent on consumption rather than production is great for mobile devices. But the form factor, lack of sufficiently focused tools and technical limitations like processing power and battery life all make it tough to produce much in an optimized way.
When you are producing work (output) you need quiet space in the interface where you and your tools can focus. You need modal experiences where changing your area of focus is holistic. You need the interface to meld with the way you best use it. Currently the iPhone struggles with some of these needs. The idea of a “workspace” on a phone is a bit tough to buy considering we are all humans and have these big clumsy appendages called fingers. But I don’t think this gets mobile devices off the hook completely.
As an experiment I wrotte this post on my iPhone using Writeroom for the iPhone and it’s painful, but possible. While mobile technology is poised to lead the next big evolution in human-computer interaction, it’s current focus on output over input is something that must begin to change before we can all finally be rid of our large, clunky machines and their wires.
TweepML – all your twitter are belong to us.
We just wrapped a fun little project with the amazing Marcelo Calbucci from Seattle 2.0 called TweepML. Marcelo elequently describes the services as:
It’s one of those ideas that is just so simple in origin and elegant in excecution that you can’t help but love it. We don’t do a lot of community projects like this at Design Commission, but it was a lot of fun for us and we hope to keep evolving TweepML.org as its community grows.
Feel free to follow along with the Design Commission crew at TweepML. 