Why can’t my iPhone just adapt? The mobile apps model is really outdated

Couple days ago was a public holiday in Singapore and my family decided to visit the National Museum of Singapore. It’s been really a while since we visited the Museum, so naturally we were excited to see what the newly renovated Museum will bring in terms of experience.

I won’t go into the super detail of the whole visit experience but just one aspect that really led me to conclude that the current model of mobile apps experience is outdated.

Now, I will admit that I didn’t do a whole ton of pre-visit “research” on how to experience the Museum. We just drove there, got our tickets and dove straight in. And as I was looking the exhibits, I noticed a small iPhone-like icon with a four digit code to the side of each exhibit. I got excited and thought “Oh, I can read or hear more about the exhibit with this code!” Now……if only I could find the app on the App Store! I could not find a Singapore National Museum app on the App Store app, so I used Safari, searched for it and finally got redirected back to the App Store to download the app. Well, you could imagine my little frustration by now. Anyways, the app design was so-so and I ended up not using it after 2–3 tries.

That experience led me to believe that the mobile app model is now pass its prime. There are way too many idle apps on my iPhone. I have stopped organizing them a long time ago. I simply search for them, and if they have a memorable name, I will probably find them and use them again. If not, they will just be idling in the dark corners of my iPhone, doing nothing (or a more disturbing scenario — collecting data and sending it to somewhere unbeknownst to me!).

A smart device’s capability should be malleable by its software, not mobile apps anymore

I have always believed that software (or most of it anyways) on a device like a smartphone should always be transient. When I need it to be a phone — or rather a person-to-person or person-to-group or group communication utility — it downloads the appropriate resident software and voila! becomes that utility for me at that moment.

When I need it to be a museum tour guide — that is, an IoT device that can interact with the museum exhibits around me but keep a minimal communication utility capability in case my mom needs to reach me — it knows what is the scenario I am in (context aware) and surface that few utilities that supports my context, i.e. museum tour guide plus minimal communication service plus photos & video capability (photo/video taking was allowed without flash in the museum).

When I need it to be my running exercise tracker plus favorite podcast playlists but keep a minimal communication utility in case my wife needs to reach me — I can tell it the scenario I am entering into and my cool device will switch to a smart cool device that support my new context of “I am going for a run”. And I will tell it to switch back to being a general purpose smartphone once I am done.

Wow! I want to start a Kickstarter / IndieGoGo project to build this!

The Future Model

I believe this will be the future model of how software microservices will shape the ever switching utility of a smart device depending on the context of the moment.

There are many implications to how the device software residency model will work, and how, on such a model, the cloud will interact with such malleable smart devices.

Well, this is just some thoughts for now. Exciting times ahead!