I was in the market the other day with my iPhone4 and some kid, probably 13 or 14, asked if he could play with it for a second because he was thinking of getting one. He commented on the screen and the feel of the device and asked if there were any games he could check out.
The whole experience felt odd to me. I had a really hard time understanding how you could actually evaluate a device this way because none of what he was doing exposed what I do the most on the device.
The reason I continue to buy Apple products is because the more I use them the less I notice them. They quickly become part of my life and I take them for granted. The magic mouse and two finger scrolling are probably the most noticeably intuitive things that I went from never using to not thinking about within minutes.
I used to really enjoy tinkering with my every day technology. I shirked almost anything that was easy for things that were harder and required me to constantly maintain them. I found it enjoyable and felt like I was really learning something.
I don’t know if it’s just because I got a little older, or because I started working so much with JavaScript and writing web stuff, but I can’t stand anything that is hard to use or requires me to maintain it in any way. I have plenty of work to do. On my laptop I’ve got TextMate and iTerm and a browser but anything else that is happening on the machine I don’t want to worry about. I actually find myself annoyed by System Updates.
My iPhone and my iPad are perfect. The best part about them is that there isn’t a terminal, it doesn’t stay on IRC or IM all day and allow people to bug me. But when someone sends me a message on twitter my phone looks the same as when some txt’s me. Whenever I think of something i need to look up I have it up on my iPhone before I’ve even realized I was looking it up.
This isn’t possible when there is friction in the interface or the design. You can’t take products for granted when you notice that you’re using them.
It’s kind of like this. I listen to a lot of podcasts. A few years ago the podcasts varied pretty greatly in recording quality. Now I don’t listen to *any* podcasts that aren’t recorded well. When you listen to something that isn’t recorded well part of your brain has to be working in the background to figure out what is being said. It’s a little more draining to listen to and you can’t to other things like cooking while you listen to it. Interfaces work the same way. When they are less simple and intuitive you have to spend a lot more energy working with them.
I’m not particularly attached to Apple as a brand I just require technology that isn’t technology once I start using it. Once I take can take it for granted it’s like water or air, it’s something I reach for and don’t have to think about. Open alternatives are great and I hope they continue to grow and polish but until I can use them and not think of them as technology but as a tool I won’t be able to adopt them.
