The Next Phone

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In this day of war, churn, and the return of dead rock bands to the fray, the lure of grievance has reordered the strucutre of information. Too much of nothing is now weaponized as a blunt instrument of power. Social media has become the whipping person for what’s wrong with politics, business, rumors, and retribution. Somehow we are told that the key to the worst part of success is to just say the quiet part out loud. Well, maybe. Or perhaps that is just the calm after the storm, when we give up waiting on answers and start working on improving the questions.

What, for example, is the impact of the mobile revolution? Not just the million answers to that question, but what are you really looking for as an answer. Let’s list the top five names in mobile, not just carriers or platforms or apps or release models. That last one, the new Phone. At the start of the iPhone era, I had to have each one at the earliest possible time. I conned Robert Scoble, who was going to be at the Palo Alto Apple store no matter what, to pick up a second one for me. The iPad — same thing, though by then I had to go pick it up myself. People now say that it was a moment not obvious to most people, particularly the virtual keyboard crowd which bankrupted Blackberry. It was obvious to me and about 60 percent of the tech crowd I frequented; that became 100 percent when Apple unleashed the Web app hole in the devices’ mutual architecture. We’ll never know whether that was the plan all along, but that single move created the virtualization of upgrade path. Software became an ecosystem that traded the cost of an app for the implicit subscription mindshare that drove the installed hardware base up and to the right.

The twin architectures of phone and pad consolidated the model of hi-end-razor and market-forming blades (the apps.) The new devices conspired to create a feature-driven synergy between the iOS direct extentions into the media-driven features that kept Android a step behind. Apple made a ton of money off Google and everyone else who was left by giving them iOS app access to maps, search, and the only complete data set for the realtime all-you-can-eat unlimited consumer market. Every year, the holdouts gave in as the battery wore out, the storage was overrun, the carriers kept unlimited plans viable by their capitulation. By iPhone 12, the first time I didn’t upgrade like clockwork, the ecosystem had been cemented with upgrade plans from Apple and the carriers, turning the hardware into a subscription monthly fee that we were allowed to update after a year as we flipped to an ongoing 2-year contract. That was then. Now I still have the 12 and no payments. I’m ready for a new one but something has changed.

Let’s rule out what the media says has changed. It’s not AI, which has been here all along. In a way, that was the implicit contract of the iPhone, that the forces in play produced an economy that knew more about you then you did. We’d joke about what a coincidence it was that the battery was getting tired just around the release of the next phone, but honestly the whole system was built around providing enough incentive to reenroll: more speed, new features, additional leverage of the basic free install of the latest OS, and so on. In a world orchestrated by the device, AI was a misnomer. It was Intelligence that was transformed. The Cloud and the relentless stream of transactional data closed the loop on the patterns we intuited but had not yet harnessed. AI has for me always been there since the mobile platform and its gasoline unlimited fuel produced a permission economy. I didn’t agree to the Apple Update Program. I cheered it on, adopted it the first second it was available, and still would be doing it if I wasn’t waiting for a little more incentive. So, no, AI is not the new iPhone at least so far.

OK, so it’s all Trump’s fault. When ubiquitous technology can be harnessed just as easily by those guys, we clearly have to come up with a new plan for the next Phone. According to the TV, Biden and China President Xi’s talks were “candid and constructive.” So what’s their plan for the next phone? Same question for the suite of CEO’s who met with Xi last night? What’s the deal with this work from home thing? Seems like our corporations are downsizing their work forces to the point where they can effectively mandate access to tools in a way that empowers the talented in the work force to be their own managers. The choice may well be acknowledging the role AI plays in marketing the lifestyle that encourages the talented to stay put. Walking into a CostCo sends a powerful message not just to Wall Street but competitors — a work from anywhere theme park where the big TVs are on your right and on the left are the new eyeglasses so you can tell the difference. It’s not UBI Universal Basic Income. It’s CBI CostCo Basic Income. How many charging stations does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 500,000.