Xeni Jardin, co-editor of BoingBoing.net, was offering a review of the iPad when she set the bar for any technology company aiming to succeed in either the business or the consumer market. She said:
“When the operating system gets out of the way, when the experience of a computing device is so seamless that you’re not aware of the operating system, all you’re aware of is the information or the experience or the enrichment that you’re after…that’s when you know you have really sweet design.” She called that moment “magic.”
She may have been channeling Arthur C. Clarke, whose famous laws included this one: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Or she may have merely been channeling the frustration of consumers and business people alike who have grappled with voice mail or gotten lost in an interactive voice response menu or lost hours of work to a system crash.
Five years ago, the Gartner Group, a technology industry research firm, said that the next 10 years would be dominated by a handful of trends that included the “Consumerization of IT.” More than predicting the rise of smartphones and wireless, remote access, the trend was painted as a danger for companies who resisted.
“As perceptive CIOs seek to transform their rigid, legacy-ridden infrastructures into agile, efficient, service-driven delivery mechanisms, they must adopt a pragmatic approach to managing the risk of consumer IT while embracing the benefits,” said Steve Prentice, vice president and research director at Gartner. “Otherwise, the CIOs risk being sidelined as the ‘enemy’ by their constituencies.”
Now that the smartphone has become ubitquitous (and been given netbook and iPad siblings), now that wireless, remote access has become the Mobile Web and settting aside the question of “who saw what when,” it is clear the market has moved in this direction.
IBM no longer sells software, hardware and services that can be mixed-and-matched, it promotes a smarter planet. Cisco is not content to sell routers, it now enables a human network. Even Oracle, born as smart but homely database software, is now complete.
Each in their own way is trying to create magic — letting the audience see the rabbit without worrying about the size of the hat. Companies that can will be rewarded. Those that can’t will either get bought at a good price by those who can or fall away.
