The Apple WWDC keynote has just finished (finishing anyway!), with Steve Jobs having done his presentation magic on the stage (I’ll write up the actual presentation later in the week – there’s a tip or two to pick up as ever). A little talk on iPhone 2.0 and a few other items… The new 3G iPhone of course… What’s new from Apple?

• 3G Support
• More Countries
• Enterprise Support
• 3rd Party Application Support
• And…. GPS!

Following on from the post a few days ago that mentioned the iPhone (It’s the User Experience as much as the Technology!) it is pretty clear these days that Apple is after the business user. They have provided integration with Exchange e-mail, so you can get your corporate e-mail on the run, and they are creating a very compelling application development environment, which includes a top notch simulator to test out apps.

There is a huge deal of promise in mobile devices to increase productivity, but not without challenges. Lots of different platforms and handset incompatibilities to overcome (see Mini-bar Meet Up – Some New Technologies). Either Apple or Blackberry, or both of them, are likely to crack this one in the next few years.

As I am in the process of choosing a new phone, this is all of great personal interest right now. Apple has been enabling location aware applications, and demonstrated connecting your position and your address book to enable you to locate nearby contacts. I also expect we’ll see more and more social applications coming to the iPhone (there are already a number of blogging apps). The Apple Appstore will enable easy distribution of applications and be in a huge number of countries. Apple also introduced the secure delivery of enterprise custom applications via their own intranets to authorised phones.

Will the Blackberry keep up? In terms of raw handset sales, the iPhone hasn’t flown off the shelves quite as fast as some expected. That good sized user base is key for good support and an a healthy application ecosystem, and there Blackberry has a lead – so far.

That said, Apple users are used to being in the minority from the desktop world (especially at the hight end, according to this report). There too, Apple has been making in roads into business. The Mac might be in the minority, but it seems to be the tool of choice for productivity addicts both at home and in the office – judging by the readers of this blog at least.

All worrying stuff for Microsoft, although given the Yahoo activity, they probably have bigger fish to fry, of the Google variety. They also have some tricks up their sleeve too, but that is for another day. Microsoft have the tablet PC format, which is proving itself in many business applications. The iPhone now have very good support for document reading, and makes good use of the touch screen, but I like having something in between my MacBook Pro 17 inch and the iPhone – the Samsung Q1 I’ve been using is just right. Bring back the Apple Newton (for those old enough to remember that).

Apple also introduced a cloud-based service – MobileMe – which syncs between different devices and enables synchronised e-mail for those of us that don’t have our own Microsoft Exchange servers. It works with PCs (outlook) as well as Macs. It also gives a slick web interface to all of the functionality, and integrates with iDisk as well. It might make for a nice disaster recovery mechanism for solo-workers or small/medium businesses. The usual cloud-based service caveats apply of course. It is $99 per year and there will be a free trial from release in July. Today I use Plaxo to provide this syncing for me, but I’m watching them carefully, post acquisition.

As a side note, it was also nice to see a UK technology company featured during the event (with their Band app, and yes there is even an actual band that use iPhones for their music). A Spanish company was featured too, so a bit of European flavour! Roll on July 11th, when all this should be in our hands…

Related Posts

• It’s the User Experience as much as the Technology!
• Little Pixels in Communication – Are your pauses clear?
• Communicating With Yourself – More on the iPod and iPhone as a Universal GTD Capture Device

Thanks to Tim Duckett (on his adoption curve blog) for this one: Everything that is wrong and broken with corporate IT, summed up in a single, sad sentence:

“I have nothing against iPhone. It’s great,” says Manjit Singh, CIO at Chiquita Brands International Inc. “But we’re a BlackBerry shop, and I don’t think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that’s all.”

From Computerworld: iPhones trickle in the enterprise (emphasis mine).

It really does explain much of the error in corporate IT these days. Web 2.0 consumer services know this, and the next generation of users coming into business expect this: It is all about the user experience. I have used and deployed some awful tools in the past. I will never do so again. They can near bankrupt productivity, be it an information tool for getting things done or an expenses or payroll system.

Let’s say you have 100 employees. If a tool saves a member of the IT department an hour a week, but costs each member of staff just 60 seconds a week, you have lost productivity – and wasted time and money. What if you have 1,000 employees? Think about it.

If you spend a hour downloading, setting up and learning to use a new task management or GTD tool and it saves you a minute a week, it is going to take over a year to get a payback on it. I’m being kind here and assuming the tool stays the same for a year. How many times have you changed your personal productivity system in the last year, or spent time fiddling with new software?

I’m not saying avoid new technology, quite the opposite. If businesses are going to be productive and effective, then they must innovate with the Information technology they use, but it should be from the perspective of delivering productivity not technology. I see a new generation of workers who will bring change, and an older generation who are demanding it. There will be no mercy for IT departments or businesses that get in the way. Technology is meant to improve productivity, not get in the way of it.

Related Posts

• Apple, iPhone and Business Productivity – Post Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote
• Communicating With Yourself – More on the iPod and iPhone as a Universal GTD Capture Device
• How to Write a Speech in 5 Minutes
• Randomness, Virtualisation and Getting Things Done
• Never Loose Your Voice Again – It’s Your Future

Sounds like Steve, over at Micro Persuasion is having excellent fun with his iPhone and Flikr for GTD. Bunk suggests getting a pen and paper. Bunk, where’s the geek in you? That’s far too efficient and environmentally friendly! All of this did trigger some interesting and useful thoughts though, I promise.

iPods and GTD

I’ve been using my iPod as a universal capture device (see here), but I miss being able to capture things visually as well as in audio. The iPhone hits the UK shortly, so may be I’ll be able to join Steve’s experiment in due course. Whatever workflow you create for getting things done, it does need to be efficient, but also functional for your style and needs. The challenges for me are that I work across multiple locations and countries, and other people need access to my system. I am attracted by the idea of web-based systems, but connectivity in the UK isn’t ubiquitous enough to depend on them yet.

Talking to yourself

Personal productivity is about our ability to communicate with ourselves. This might sound odd, but think it through for a moment. Task lists, reminders and diaries are all ways that we send messages to ourselves. In order to do that well, it is important to understand your communication style, just as with it is in communicating with others. There three main styles:

• Auditory:linear - tend to love lists and to work sequentially. Like to hear things.
• Visual:spacial - think in pictures and in a non-linear way. Like to see things.
• Kinesthetic:tactile - a rarer style. Like to feel, or experience, things.

What type are you?

You will probably do best with a capture device that fits your style. Visual people will love Steve’s camera method. Auditory people may prefer the voice memo method, or a written list. Kinesthetic folks, I’ll still thinking on what the ideal system for you might be. I suspect a pen and pad would work well. Let me know!

Discover which communication style works best for you and use that to communicate with yourself and see how it boosts your productivity. If you are enthusiastic about your organizational system, you are more likely to use it and much more likely to get results from it.

Related Posts

• It’s the User Experience as much as the Technology!
• Learning Your Way to a Better Memory
• iPod to Go – The iPod as a GTD capture device
• Too Late To Learn?
• How to Write a Speech in 5 Minutes