A new month, a new set of possibilities. What a fine time for making predictions about the future!
Sometimes (although not always), analogies with past technological advancements can give some insight into future ones.
Take, for example, the Apple iPod. Introduced in October 2001, the iPod was not completely revolutionary. The first digital music player to hit the market was Elger Labs MPMAN F10 in 1998, followed by a succession of rivals.
But 1998 was too early. Digital storage was still too expensive back then, so you couldn’t fit much music on those early devices. But three more years of Moore’s Law made a world of difference.
As usual, Apple jumped in at the right moment, and did it well. The iPod was far more user friendly (and better marketed) than its competitors, and it managed to capture the public’s imagination.
The iPod continued to evolve until 2007, when Apple jumped again, this time to the iPhone (with the iPod Touch serving to help ease the cultural transition). Now, rather than a mere media consumption device in your pocket, you had a general communication device. Where the iPod had been about tuning out, the iPhone was about tuning in.
Now, about fifteen years later, we are starting to see a similar progression with wearables. Perhaps we can use the transition from iPod to iPhone as an analogy.
More on this tomorrow.
The iPod Touch is the gateway drug.
Kids too young to get their own phones (and their expensive cell plans) get an iPod Touch. They start collecting games and apps when Aunt Nancy learns a $20 iTunes card is the easy sure-fire birthday gift. The kids turn into WiFi junkies, developing ESP for finding the nearest hotspot.
Somewhere around middle school, when the parents finally cave and sign up for actual phones (to keep track of increasingly mobile kids), there’s only one device that’ll run all the apps & games collected on the iPod Touch.
I honestly don’t know if this strategy of hooking kids on iPods/iPads before they get iPhones was originally planned by Apple, but it’s working brilliantly.