At the bottom of my wardrobe, there is a draw I called my “technology graveyard”. This is where I put my small collection of technologies that no longer useful in the world of 2017.
As an industrial designer, I love these beautiful objects. They represented a small step in technology advancement: typewriter, telephone, calculators and more. Among them, my most precious artifact is an iPhone, the first iPhone. “The iPhone, my iPhone” (the voice of “my precious” from Lord of the rings came into my mind).
This week is the 10 years anniversary of the iPhone launch. Time is the best instrument to take out the noise the past and refine our thinking. I find it’s the best excuse to take my iPhone out, exam it, play with it and think about it.
I carried this iPhone for 5 years. When my hands caressed the back of the device, I can feel all the tiny scratches that faithfully documented my personal story.
I want to share three stories from those scratches.
Tender and Care
When Apple released iPhone in 2008, it was not on sale in China, I spent a month of my salary brought the first iPhone on a black market.
With an empty bank account, I came back home full of joy, and I sat down to open the device. It was a beautiful black box. Once I removed the seal, I still can’t quite figure out how to open it. There was no handle for me to pull or a lid to open, the male and female parts of the box have a interference fit together. It almost feel like they know it’s a precious object inside. And they are the friendly guards holding the door, testing your faith.
After a few minutes, I figured out: hold the box in the air gently, the weight of the phone will brings the bottom part of the box down. After 5 seconds, the box opened. It was a magical 5 seconds. It shut down the noisy world around me, I felt my breath, focused my mind. It was a moment of Zen.
You can never rush this process. Even if you pull the box, it will move just as fast as I let gravity do the work. Because it takes time for the inside and outside of the box to exchange the air and pressure. It almost feels like the guards are saying to me: “patience, young man, be gentle and tender, It’s there, no matter what you do. It’s there waiting for you.”
Even today, when I touch the device, I feel a sense of care, a sense of tender. It speaks volume of the people who design, engineer and manufactured it. It’s not an “MVP”, and there is nothing “lean” about it. It was thought through and through because they cared.
Shift in mindset
Before iPhone, I use a Nokia phone, every day when I get ready for sleep, I set the alarm clock to 7 AM for the morning, and power down the phone. The next day, the Nokia phone will wake itself up, and then alarm me of the time.
You can’t do that on an iPhone.
iPhone is more like a computer, once it’s powered down, it can’t do anything for me. Why it’s like that, why it’s not like all the cell phone on the market at the time?
I think this decision reflect a mindset shift. The people at Nokia see a cell phone as an electric appliance. A cellphone is an appliance with a battery, like a toaster, a coffee machine, or a vacuum, only smaller. The people at Cupertino see iPhone as a computing device which happens to be able to make calls.
The final artifact (iPhone) is like a fruit of the tree, cultivated by the soil and the environment. The personal computing mindset cultivated iPhone and set it apart from the rest. We can see the same mindset shifts in Tesla, a car company with a software mindset, upgrading the car via code rather than atoms.
App vs Devices
the iPhone replaced physical devices one app at a time.
Carrying an iPhone today means you are carrying a list of devices: a computer, an MP3, a calculator, a clock, a torch, a compass, a GPS, a camera, a DVD player…
The list can go on. If we think about the world’s resources and the exploding population, iPhone preserve resources. We can take a step further. The combination of iPhone with services like Uber, Seamless are replacing my kitchenware and my car.
So are we looking at a future where the industrial designers will be jobless? Because there are no need to design physical devices? Where everyone carries the same device? A neutral, gray, cold and sexless device?
I think no. iPhone made all those devices accessible to everyone, but it also helped surfaced what we passionate about.
When I was in college, I made a bet with my friend between two futures. One path was a powerful multipurpose device. The second path was purposeful devices talk to each other via a powerful protocol (like the Bluetooth).
Today, most of us travel coast to coast carrying one multi-purpose device like iPhone (which was my bet). I remember when iPhone’s camera become good enough, the first thing I ditched was my camera. I was the amateur photographer disguised behind a huge camera.
But a true photographer would never put down her DSLR; just like a true music lover would set up her Si-Fi at home. An accountant would still carry a Texas Instrument calculator and a true petrol head would think life is about the joy of riding a car.
What’s next?
iPhone saved a lot of world’s resources by giving amateurs like me with a camera that’s “Good enough”. But it seems like Apple is keep asking us to buy more and more devices: iPad, Watch, iMac. iPhone’s revenue soared in the past ten years, it deepened Apple’ business model: to find more people buy more devices. The question is not “if” but “how long” we can stay like this?
Apple is an amazing personal computer company. When building the iPhone, they adopted a new mindset. Instead of carrying the legacy of electronic appliance, Apple build a true personal computer. A computer we carry everywhere we go. I believe the next device like this need a shift of mindset as well, and I wonder if Apple will be the agent of change this time.
Here is Apple’s mindset: a computer is an amazing tool for human, it’s like a bicycle for human’s mind. It enhances our thinking and helps us navigate through the world. We (apple) make capable, reliable and beautiful machines, and every device we sell, we make a profit, and we will keep doing that.
Imagine an alternative mindset: an algorithm that is smarter than human, let’s call the algorithm Sherlock. Sherlock can help us (humans) make better decisions in life. No, let me rephrase that: Sherlock make better decisions, and he wants to make them for us. What Sherlock want is information and data about its owner, to learn about her. So we (a company) want to make capable, reliable, beautiful machines that host Sherlock. So when I design it, the device is always connected and gathering information about the owner. After Sherlock gathered all the data, he will analysis them and tell us the decision.
That sounds like somebody’s dream or nightmare, but let me try to make it more tangible. Imagine on Monday, I wake up, took my usual commute to Boston’s local coffee shop before work. While I walk into the door, Sherlock, the algorithm noticed I want to get a coffee. He calculated my genetic information from 23andMe last night and found caffeine might give me a stroke in future. Sherlock also reads my past coffee bills from Mint, and it knows I will have a better financial future if I stop keeping this habit. The device buzz me, and say: “for your health and prosperity, please stop drinking coffee”. I smile and think: one more coffee won’t hurt, and swipe the credit card to buy one more.
Sherlock read this transition, and understand how weak minded human is, and Roger is just as weak as the rest. But he also knows human can be convinced by other humans. So he books a doctor appointment for me from ZocDoc and booked a financial appointment with my bank. Before I go to the appointments, Sherlock wrote to the banker and the doctor: “We love Roger, that’s why we need to convince him not drink coffee, please talk sense into him”.
If you’ve made this far, I hope you are either laughing at my writing or angry about this future I just painted you. And that unease, the uncomfortable thought is a small shift in our mindset. Can we build a phone out of it?
