confessions of a serial hobbyist

So a couple weeks ago my N95’s battery cover broke and I once again swapped to using my iPhone as my main phone again. Yes, the iPhone is my “backup” phone, what of it? Anyways about that same time the big iPhone 2.0 firmware came out and the AppStore opened and millions of “normal” people were subjected to the idea of using their phone as a small computer instead of as just some thing taking up pocket space and eating money from their bank accounts monthly. I’ve been a long time smartphone guy and have been working in the mobile industry as a developer for quite some time so this is all standard. I installed a few apps and games, played around, and really enjoyed them for a few days. And then I went back to using my iPhone like I did before the store opened and before apps were available.

I just don’t really care enough I guess in day to day life? Or maybe I’m not the right target market for apps on an iPhone? But if I’m not, then who is? I’m the guy who buys multiple phones a year and makes mobile products for a living so if I’m not fitting into the target demographic does anybody?

And then I think back to using my N95. I did use it for a few things I don’t use my iPhone for. It was (and is again) my main camera for taking pictures of daily life. And I had a few really cool apps on it that I quickly stopped using after a few days.

No matter what phone I really only fall back to the same few actual uses…I use the web browser a LOT (numerous times a day)…I use the email client occassionally (maybe once or twice a day)…I use the SMS client a lot…and I once in a while actually make a phone call or look up a contact…and I once in a while will look up directions to figure out just how lost I managed to get. That’s about it. That’s 99% of the usage of my phone. And while potentially very cool, anything that falls outside of that usage will be played with briefly and then forgotten. It’s the fact that if it’s not a daily need it likely doesn’t matter.

Developers (myself included) really want users to care so they can sell their products, and operators or device makers (depending in the case) really want users to care so they can get their cut. The problem is that people don’t need at least 90% of the crap being released on a daily basis, so why should they care? What would they care about long term and not just for a few days before forgetting all about some cool app they tried?

I don’t know I’m just ranting…and now I’m done.

And yes I fully enjoy the irony that is my rant on not caring about/using apps on phones was written in the WordPress app on my iPhone.

So here I have the iPhone app from WordPress and I’m wondering, will this actually encourage me to write more often? Will the “easiness” of posting mean I’ll be less lazy? Or does it mean I’ll be more likely to throw a post together when I’m just sitting around waiting for whtever it is in life we spend our time waiting for…

Or let’s be honest, it will probably just lead to more random posts out of boredom.

But overall the app seems to work well, and let’s me throw a post together rather quickly. The listing of posts is easy to scroll through and while I know a lot of people still aren’t fans of the touch only keyboard I find the lack of effort required to press the keys makes me able to type much faster than most people expect. The ease of adding a picture, or even an iPhone screen grab (taken by pressing the power and home buttons at the same time, added to your camera roll) is nice. Unfortunately you have no real way of doing much other than having it added to the bottom of the post. I’m assuming either I’ll keep having to “finish” the posts on my laptop, edit the HTML on the iPhone (complicated by the lack of copy and paste), or just be happy enough with the photos at the bottom.