About twelve years ago I attended a management leadership training offsite and received a heavy glass souvenir. When I got home after the event I put that thingamabob, which officially is called a “tombstone”, up on a shelf above my desk. Little did I know that after more than a decade of inert inactivity that souvenir would launch me into the far future of the Internet of Things with an unexpected thud.
Last night before bed I set my iPhone 6 Plus down on my desk and plugged it in for charging. Then I reach up to the shelf above to get something for my son and BANG! The tombstone leapt off the shelf and landed on my desk. It promptly broke in half and smashed the screen of my iPhone. In retrospect I see now that storing heavy objects above one’s desk is baiting fate and every so often fate takes the bait.
I’ve seen many people running around the streets of Manhattan with cracked screens. My screen was not just cracked. It was, as the kids say, a crime scene. I knew that procrastination was not an option. This phone’s face was in ruins and I needed to get it fixed immediately.
No problem! There are several wonderful Apple Stores near me and I might even have the phone covered under Apple Care. Wait! There was a problem! I had several appointments in the morning and I wasn’t getting to any Apple Stores until late afternoon.
Why was this a big deal? Have you tried to navigate the modern world without your smart phone lately? No music, no maps, no text messages! Off the grid doesn’t begin to cover it! My faceless phone was about to subject me to hours of isolation, boredom, and disorientation!
Yes, I know, a definitive first world problem. Heck! I lived a good 20 years before smart phones became a thing. I could handle a few hours without podcasts, Facebook posts, and Pokemon Go.
In the morning I girded my loins, which is what one does when one’s iPhone is smashed. I strapped on my Apple Watch and sat down at my desk for a few hours of work-related phone calls, emails, and chat messages.
Much to my surprise even though I could not directly access my phone almost all of it features and services were available. While the phone sat on my desk with a busted screen its inner workings were working just fine. I could make calls and text messages with my watch, with my iMac, and with voice commands. I didn’t have to touch my phone to use it! I could even play music via the watch and listen via bluetooth headphones. I was not cut off from the world!
(Why do these smart phones have screens anyway?)
Around lunch time I had to drive to an appointment and I took the faceless phone with me. I don’t have Apple Carplay but my iPhone synch up fine with my Toyota’s entertainment system. Since I don’t look at my phone while driving the cracked screen was not an issue. It just never dawned on me before today that I don’t have to touch the phone to use it.
I imagine that our next paradigm shift will be like faceless phones embedded everywhere. You’ll have CPUs and cloud access in your wrist watch, easy chair, eye glasses, and shoes. You’ll have CPUs and cloud access in your home, car, office, diner, and shopping mall. You’ll get text messages, snap pictures, reserve dinner tables, and check your calendar without looking at a screen.
Now, we’re not quite there yet. I couldn’t use all the apps on my phone without touching them. In fact I could only use the a limited set of the built-in apps and operating system features that Apple provides. I had to due without listening to my audiobook on Audible and I couldn’t catch any Pokemon. Siri and Apple Watch can’t handle those third party app tasks yet.
But we’re close. This means the recent slow down in smart phone sales isn’t the herald of hard tech times. Its just the calm before the gathering storm of the next computer revolution. This time the computer in your pocket will move to the clouds. Apple will be a services company! (Google, Facebook, and Amazon too!) Tech giants will become jewelry, clothing, automobile, and housing companies.
Why will companies like Apple have to stop making phones and start making mundane consumer goods like cufflinks and television sets to shift us into the Internet of Things?
Because smooth, flawless integration will be the new UX. Today user experience is all about a well designed screen. In the IoT world, which I briefly and unexpectedly visited today, there won’t be any user interface to see. Instead the UX will be embedded in the objects we touch, use, and walk through.
There will still be some screens. Just as today we still have desktop computers for those jobs that voice control, eye rotations, and gestures can’t easily do. But the majority of consumers will use apps without icons, listen to playlists without apps, and watch videos without websites.
In the end I did get my iPhone fixed. But I’m going to keep visiting the IoT future now that I know how to find it.