Macobyte

As a product design student, it's a constant struggle to maintain the balance between studio work and socializing with friends. To help, I use iCal and MobileMe to keep my schedules lined up across my iPhone, my MacBook Pro, and my Mini9 Mac. I also use Pages to write out schedules for the week, and stickies to leave myself reminders. I have also recently downloaded Alarm Clock and am trying it out.

Don't drink the Kool-Aid.

George is getting upset!

I got iTunes giftcards and (a total surprise) an original Newton MessagePad in pristine condition!

Using it to check my email and favorite sites here at Auburn University between classes so I won't have to carry around my MacBook Pro everywhere, everyday.

Let me try it out...

I worked for a year in a Kroger grocery store. After that job, I will never work retail again. I was verbally abused on a daily basis by customers.

For instance, as a sacker I tried to helped a lady find something in one of the aisles. After looking for several minutes unsuccessfully, I was called back to the front, but I told her I'd make a page to have someone come help her. I made the page, employees all over the store later told me they heard it, but the person I paged apparently didn't. About an hour later she comes through my line to check out and I ask her if she was able to find it. She started screaming and said, and I quote verbatim here, "You left me there to die in the aisle!" After about 10 minutes of lashing out at me she declared she'd never shop there again, and stormed out, with her teenage daughter whispering back apologies the entire walk out.

Then there was the time a man went ape because the deli hadn't sliced his cheese thin enough. We had to shut down the front end of the store and call the police, and he almost punched a female store manager. You could hear him all over the store, it was completely silent in there except for him.

My favorite job was working the U-Scan, though. People are dumbasses. Those machines are not hard to use, all you have to do is read the effing screen and you're done.

Some people are misinterpreting this and panicking, as has happened in the past, because they think Apple is pulling out of the computer production game. This isn't the case; what appears to be them removing themselves from the personal computer market is actually them merging that market with the new media market.

More and more Apple is tying all our digital media files together so we have them wherever we go and whenever we need them, on our desks, in our pockets, and now on our TVs. Apple is (and has been) pushing for the combination of computer, PDA, cell phone, DAP, and TV. Today's products only prove my point.

Fast forward to ten or twenty years from now. You'll wake up and on the nightstand next to your bed will be a small, pocket-sized tablet mac-slash-pda, sitting in its dock, ringing its alarm to awaken you. You'll roll over and tap the screen to turn off the alarm, and the local weather reports and news will pop up on screen. You'll get out of bed and get ready for work.

As you leave for work, you'll pick up the device and put it in your pocket, then deposit it in a slot on your car's dashboard as you drive to the office. Your entire music library will be available through the car's stereo, and your phone calls will come to the device and be delivered through the in-dash interface, as well.

You'll park and walk into your office building, holding the device up to your ear and carrying out a phone conversation as you reach your desk. On the desk will be a large flatscreen monitor, wireless mouse and keyboard, and another dock for your device, no CPU in sight. You won't need one, you'll drop the thing in the dock, the monitor will come on, and your call will be transfered to some next-gen iChat app as work. The small unit will be a fully-functional computer, performing all necessary tasks.

At the end of the day you'll drive home listening to your iTunes through your car again, then deposit your futuristic PC/PDA hybrid in a dock beside your TV, giving you instant access to your media files, as well as any channel you want to watch, as TV will be carried over the Internet. The machine will also drive your video gaming, and have video chat functions as you sit in front of your television (you'll be able to video chat on the go, too). At the end of the day, you'll drop it in the dock by your bed and repeat.

This is what Steve Jobs always meant the term "iPod" to entail. Eventually, such a device will function as a full featured computer and media center while docked, and revert to more simple functions for audio and video phone, web access, and media playing while used portably.

Sorry for the long post, I'm an industrial design student and have spent the past 9 years of my life brainstorming how such a device would look, interact, and function.

First Saddam, then Elmo? This is going to be a great day.