Loving the user

It hasn't even occurred to me to look for a user-manual. This user-interface is so much better than any comparable device, it's just not funny. It'll be copied for sure, but right now the iPhone is fast heading for the horizon and those other poor phones and PDAs out there are going to have to run to catch up.

This is the first gadget I have brought home where the family have soon clustered around it, wanting to touch it and play with it. The 'wiggling' icons had my 3 year old giggling, and he played for ages with with the way the iPhone senses its physical orientation and rotates images accordingly. My partner, who often rolls her eyes at my love of gadgets, was browsing YouTube videos within minutes of picking it up. I had my all my contacts, appointments, music and podcasts synced from my Mac without even really consciously thinking about it.

As a phrase, user-friendly just doesn't cut it. We need a whole new phrase, something which implies that the fact that it's easy to use is just an obvious starting point, barely worth commenting on, but which also expresses the sheer delight that it can bring. Maybe something like user-loving?

I think that the iPhone is going to change the way I work in all kinds of ways, now that I'm connected most of, rather than much of, the time.

I'm still having way too much fun with this thing to write anything like a real critique, so I'll leave it there. Even if you don't buy one (and it's certainly not the greatest deal in the world in terms of tariffs etc.), you really should have a play. In many respects it's utterly brilliant.

And Mike (if you still read my blog) as far as our long-running argument about integrated versus multiple, specialised and connected devices goes..... well, you win :-)