John’s Blog

I’ve got about 15 different posts half-written in my head about my first 3 weeks with my iPhone, but wanted to write quickly about how human a device it is. It’s hard to explain why, but when I get a call, say, from Kathy, and there’s a large, high quality picture of her & SPL on my phone, my emotional reaction is wonderful. And I feel that way about a lot of the phone — Kathy & SPL & I routinely flip through photos from the past few years — even SPL, who just turned 2, can flick from picture to picture, and back again. It’s stunning, actually. Flinging pictures, lists, web pages around — it’s really fun — and it feels direct. It’s making using the mouse with my desktop feel extremely intermediated — like I’m not really interacting with it at all, but directing some robot to do it.

I have a feeling that it’s going to cause a very funny consequence — I think that all sorts of software/hardware vendors are going to start making their UIs flickable, flingable, draggable — and, very often, in incredibly inappropriate ways. Sort of like when everyone thought that “drag and drop” was always appropriate for everything, when sometimes it just wasn’t (isn’t).

Anyway, after 3 weeks, I have a high level of attachment to the iPhone. I’m about to get on a plane to London, and will need to switch back to my Blackberry Pearl — more about that in a posting soon — and already I’m feeling a little sad about it.