The Digital Swiss Army Knife

I have a lot of experience working with computers, back to year 1983. Moreover, I have a university degree in computer science. So, it is supposed I'm a specialist in computers. However, there is no day I have some kind of problems using them. And I do not mean problems managing large or complex data centers. I mean, problems as an average user that only wants to read his mail and surf a little bit the web.

I think the problem of the PC, the Personal Computer, is that by definition it is a wrong (I would even say a little bit perverse) idea. There cannot be such a thing called Personal Computer, that is, a generic machine that can do almost everything. General purpose tools, by definition, must be complex and difficult to use. If we want to make a machine to play music, we can make it simple to use. But if we want to play music with a general purpose machine, it does not matter what kind of user interface we design, it cannot be simple. That's why computers are so difficult to use.

And now we have a new generation of mobile phones, the smartphones: those small and powerful devices. So powerful that even Nokia call them mobile computers... What? Are we going to make again the same mistake? Do we pretend to create a personal mobile computer? It cannot work. By definition.

How I can say that? It is supposed that my company develops applications for mobile phones. Yes, that's true. But our company see mobile phones more like a swiss army knife than a general purpose personal computer. For example, if I'm reading one of these free newspapers in the metro, and I want to keep a story I liked, I can use the scissors from my swiss army knife to cut the paper. But, If I am at home doing a papercut with my children, I would get a real scissors to do that job (a children safe one), not the one included with the swiss army knife, because it is not convenient for that job. In the same way, If I want to listen music in the metro, I can use my smartphone to do that. But, if I want to organize that music in my personal collection, with my own comments, recommendations, and so on, don't use the mobile phone, use something else. We must keep the music program in the mobile phone as simple as possible. If you want to play seriously to games, please, use a console, not a mobile phone. In the same way, we can have a set of convenient tools in our mobile phones, like a simple map application, a simple notebook, and so on. Apple, with its iPhone, is in the right direction. Nokia, with its N900, is not.

Finally, in order to avoid further mistakes and misunderstandings, I would like to propose to the community to change the name from smartphones to diswaks (Digital Swiss Army Knifes).