There’s the common phrase “unintended consequences.” That usually conveys a negative, something harmful you hadn’t anticipated.
But sometimes a new piece of technology has a benefit you hadn’t anticipated. For example, I got high-speed cable modem service when it first became available. The touted benefit was speed — so much faster than dial-up. Well, yeah, but I wasn’t doing much that really required that kind of bandwidth. Whoop-de-doo, you didn’t have to wait 5-10 seconds for the graphics to load. But what made a bigger impact was the fact that the broadband connection was on all the time. That meant I left my computer on all the time, so whenever a thought popped into my mind, I could walk in and jump online to look something up.
I got a BlackBerry for work five years ago and eventually I got used to using it to hop onto the mobile version of Google at a moment’s notice. I have irritated many of my friends and family members while interrupting a conversation to whip out my CrackBerry and say, “Hold on, I’ll look it up.” I mean, if at a moment’s notice you could know, why wouldn’t you? (Answer: Because, who cares?)
So my old iPod, which I got for Christmas ’05, bit the dust. Failed logic board, they told me. After much struggle, I decided to replace it with an iPod Touch. Basically, it’s like an iPhone, without the phone and the camera. I suppose the two big draws were the flash drive (which means no moving parts) and that cool interface. Those things are nice. The Cover Flow View is fun. They lost some of the navigation; for example, you can’t access the show descriptions on podcasts, which is a weird oversight.
But here comes the unintended benefit. It has wireless access. You can pull up the weather, check your stocks, visit a special version of YouTube (browser doesn’t support Flash), shop from the iTunes store. Or you can just visit the Web, anytime there’s WiFi. And it’s a pretty nice experience. The screen is only 3.5" diagonally, but you can view it vertically or horizontally — just turn the Touch and the image rotates. That zoom-in feature for the photos also works in the browser; you make a pinching gesture on the screen and spread your fingertips.
You can get used to carrying it around with you, whipping it out to see if there’s a WiFi connection. You start wondering why there aren’t more free WiFi hotspots.
I have WiFi in my house and the Touch means the Internet can be in my pocket, not even requiring me to go upstairs to the computer. I hadn’t realized what a big deal this would be.
I’ll throw in one more quick example. While out in L.A. recently, I was driving my daughter’s Prius. Yeah, it’s a hybrid and it’s a small car that would probably get great mileage anyway. It comes with GPS, as many cars do today. But the important feature turned out to be that you don’t need to use the key physically. You don’t have to push a button to open the door; as long as it’s on your person, the doors unlock as you approach. You don’t need to put the key in the ignition, you just press the power button to turn the car on. I’ve seen ads for other cars with this feature.
What this means is that you can walk up to the trunk with both hands full of groceries and it unlocks by itself. You walk over to the car, which unlocks itself, slip behind the wheel and press a button on the dash to fire it up. So awesome.
It’s the little things…
UPDATE: Turns out Deborah Klosky said more or less the same thing two months ago. Only she more cleverly pointed out how different Seinfeld would have been with an iPhone.
Tags: iPod Touch, Prius, technology, consumer electronics, gadgets