Traveling light

On a recent trip to the CIC Accessibility and Usability Group meeting at Michigan State, I took a risk by leaving behind the Macbook Pro in exchange for the opportunity to trim 5 pounds of laptop and a few more pounds of extra gear. In its place, I took my iPhone (version 1.4 FW). Notes typed, information read, and videos viewed on a 3 1/2 inch screen. And enough flash memory for my african/latin playlist to leave the iPod home, too. Even cut my clothes to a minimum, bringing only a loin cloth. Not.

I was surprised and delighted by how quickly I adjusted to working exclusively with the iPhone. The Safari browser and touch screen interface made nearly all information retrieval and reading easy. Many web sites suck beyond redemption and are unsuitable for small screens, but none were completely unreadable if I really needed to. Mail, thanks to Google IMAP, was great. I couldn't (or didn't know how to) read the Word attachments that still pass for collaboration with some groups, but that feature is touted for version 2 of the operating system. But I did edit several wiki pages, and yes, the styles for wiki pages suck enough on a desktop screen, and are just horrible for small screens. (I mean, didn't anybody tell the designers that 140 character length lines with 9 pixel fonts are torture to read on any device?) But, yeah, when it had to be done, it was done.

Notes were terse because how can they be otherwise with a one-finger non tactile keyboard; but with focus and an emergent shorthand they were actually better for it. This post was written and published on the iPhone, and you can thank me that it wasn't in my shorthand ;-). Phone, music, video and business on the same device - that really was cool, and very travel friendly. And I feel a trend acoming, as devices continue to grow in capacity and sophistication.

What I miss most on the iPhone is the lack of concurrency of applications. I can't keep IRC chat going as I pull in a web page. I have to leave the Settings app as I try to log in to ambient Wi-Fi. Lack of concurrency is, in my view, the key weakness in Apple's application strategy. Watch out, here comes Google Android.