I don’t want my phone to play music.

Ed Lamoureux, co-director of the New Media Center at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill

Me neither. But it’s wrong to look at the iPhone as a phone that does lots of other stuff. It’s not a phone – it’s a multi-functional, multi-tasking device, where each function is designed and implemented in the best possible way for that specific function. When you play music on a smartphone, or a PDA, you’re constantly reminded that its primary task is something other than playing music. The iPhone (despite it’s name) is a neutral device. Whilst the look and feel is (vitally) similar across the set of functions, each has been specialised for the best user experience. That’s why Steve Jobs introduced playing music as the first function of the iPhone.

I’m going on a business trip today. It was easier for me to put the train times onto my iPod than to add it to my mobile phone. That says a lot about the design of mobile phones. Sure, I could use a Windows Mobile device, then faff about with synchronisation with my Mac, or indeed create a document on it and save it some place (remembering where I saved it!), but I already know how to create text documents on my Mac. The ‘other direction’ text at the bottom of the iPod screen is a link to another note giving me train times in the opposite direction. Dead easy.

This is what’s going into my various pockets for today’s journey:

Come the end of this year, there’ll be only one thing going in my pocket. But the iPhone isn’t just not a phone, it’s much more than all the things Apple have said it is. So what else is there? Find out in my next post.