I often hear people touting features that make device A or device B the best. Whether it is the screen size, processor speed or any other metric that is easily comparable in a spread sheet. The problem is that actually the hardware isn’t what is important to me. I don’t care that it might be slower, the screen resolution might be smaller, it doesn’t have a front facing camera. What does matter to me is how the software platform makes my life easier.
10 years ago I was exceptionally happy to hack away at code, configurations, themes and installed software to find out what it could do. 10 years ago I was at university with plenty of time on my hands. 10 years ago I was still trying to work out what was important to me.
Now I work. That is 8 hours every day for five days that I sell to the company I work for. Given that I am only awake for 16 hours – that leaves me with 8 hours for myself. I have, at maximum efficiency, half the time I used to have (given that I rarely went to lectures and spent most of the time doing what I wanted to do). The result? My time is more valuable. If I am going to tinker with something then it has to be something I want to tinker with, something that has value. I take my mountain bike to the bike shop to get it fixed, serviced and issues resolved. Not because I’m incompetent but because I want to ride my bike and it works out more efficient to pay someone to do the job whilst I work.
This thought process is what has led me to being a Mac OSX user: it worries about all the parts I don’t care about (95% of the system) but is UNIX enough for me to worry about the bits I want to worry about as a developer. It makes my life easier. I don’t have to worry about unstable software. I don’t have to worry about messing about with configuration files. Life is easier for me.
So where does iPhone OS fit into this?
I own two desktop macs, a laptop and an iPhone. Soon an iPad will be joining the ranks.
The features that I covet more than any others with the iPhone is synchronisation (and by proxy backup). I have a MobileMe family subscription with my wife. I use it to synchronise. I don’t use any of the other features, just synchronisation. I have my contacts and calendars syncing over the air almost instantly as changes are made. Yet these are the obvious places for syncing ones that are features Apple push. There are three other uses that are invaluable:
1: I use OmniFocus on my desktop to manage tasks that I need to be doing. Using the iDisk on MobileMe, I have the software syncing across two iMacs (27″ i7 and 20″ G5), a macbook and my iPhone. This means that what ever device I am using I have access to my tasks and can keep track what and when I am supposed to be doing things.
2: Bookmarks. This is the best kept secret. Bookmarks are synchronised over the machines I have and my iPhone. This means I can use my 27″ iMac to search, find and manage interesting sites and get access to them on the phone. The most common use of this is to work out routes in Google Maps, bookmark the route and then opening the bookmark on my phone and it popping open within the Maps application.
3: Music but specifically podcasts. I love that I can listen to a podcast at my desk. Pause it, synchronise my phone and then continue to listen where I paused it whilst I walk to the shops or take on a vehicle based adventure.
All this synchronisation makes iPhone OS not just another device but an extension on how I operate. The ease at which data flows between my devices means that I don’t need to worry about where the data is – I know it is at all my computer terminals. I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t have to tinker with it. It just works. Purchasing an iPad is an easy decision, I plug it in and it is setup to operate within moments within my own personal computer ecosystem.
So where does this leave me? I will continue to buy into iPhone OS mobile devices until someone can provide this level of integration in a way that just works. This means data flow without corruption, between multiple devices without me having to even think about it.
Unfortunately this is a hard problem – so I wont be holding my breath.