Monthly Archives: October 2010

I am an ignorant smartphone user. I can be eating in a restaurant and will quickly check Twitter or my emails, in meetings I will often have a quick scan of the latest news and the very first thing I do in the morning is check my iPhone to catch up on emails, the news and the words that have been played overnight on Words with Friends.

Even my children get annoyed with me for taking my phone everywhere and often checking it just to see what has happened. It is daft, but it is definitely an addiction of some sort. It’s nothing to do with work or checking emails either- I just like to check it and to see what’s happening socially or around the world in general. I also like to have lots of content loaded to immerse myself in; it could be a few episodes of a TV series I am enjoying, a selection of eBooks, new articles added to InstaPaper and a few games, usually new ones that I am hoping are as good as my current favourites.

Because my phone goes everywhere with me, all of the temptations travel with me also and it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In many ways it isn’t a problem because most of he uses are beneficial, but I have realised that I am one of those face down, hollow eyed smartphone users that normal people find strange. Let us know if you are the same by answering today’s question of the day.

Today’s comment of the day comes from Bob who was responding to an article about the current state of Symbian- “The people who go along with what was said above will probably never be completely satisfied with a smartphone OS. Sure iOS is restrictive. It’s designed that way for a reason. Because most people aren’t power users or geeks (like me) or often even heavy computer users. They don’t think too much about multi-tasking. They just want something to work simply and easily. Something that lets them do what they want to do. And that’s not fiddle with an OS.

I’ve said this before, iOS is trying to make computing into an appliance, where knowing what’s going on underneath isn’t needed. Sure some of us get into the heavy details of our HDTV, but most people are just like “Wow, big screen, sharp picture, I’ll buy it.”

I’m not belittling them, they just don’t care about the techy stuff like I do. And I’m sure I don’t care about some of the stuff they love.

You can see how iOS is evolving. Rather than have lots of openness and power features that may or may not be used, or may or may not be used properly, features are added slowly. Remember, once the genii is out of the bottle, it’s hard to get him back in. So if you add a feature, it’s hard to take it away, or even modify it extensively if you’ve made a mistake.

Originally, iOS didn’t expose any file system. Now we have “Open In” if Apps want to take advantage of it. We even have Apps like GoodReader that are like mini file managers where I can add any file I want to the App and then open it in any other App that can handle it.

To paraphrase Lincoln, you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Just my .02 worth as usual.”

I have a fetish. It has lived with me since I was a child and to this day I still gasp when I see one of these objects that has made me delirious with joy on countless occasions. My fetish is the LED digital watch, or more specifically the Pulsar digital watch from 1972.

Just look at it. That is not a piece of technology, it is a work of art. The way the gold surround closes around the small glowing LED numbers is about as perfect as design gets for me.

Another design that punches my buttons is even simpler- the Leica logo. The camera below is quite plain to look at and despite its retro styling it does not stand out at all. The simple addition of that logo makes a huge difference to me, and it is not because of the perceived quality of the brand.

Some products look good in our minds because we know they are good in reality. Others simply look great even if you have no understanding of the brand or the product itself. A watch and a camera are everyday items that are numerous in their variances, but a few stand out for being so brilliantly different, and most often in the subtlest of ways.

There are many smartphones on the market in 2010, and many that cost more than £400 to purchase, but how many can you think of that have the special something that makes them special to look at and to hold? The focus is on miniaturisation, sleek materials and copying the design of others and little on the actual design. It’s not easy and if you asked me to come up with 5 items in history that have what the two above have I would struggle. But for all of the investment in technology and the marketing of mobiles no one has managed to create any emotion in their smartphone products yet.