And the phone does consolidate many, many technologies that used to be disparate objects. Now, you can also live life without a camera, CD player or walkman, cookbooks, planner/calendar (i actually still use a paper one in addition to calendar/reminder apps), and letters coming in the mail, sure. But I don’t think you’ll get fat proposing that to everyone, and these are just a few examples. Not everyone is going to want to live a life of pure asceticism.

I think back on my parents’ stacks of mail and realize that searchable email is way better than that.

I also just bought concert tickets for a few shows in the summer. Yes, there is a paper ticket option, that you pay to have mailed to you. Have you ever lost a paper ticket before, or tried reselling them? Much easier to deal with with the AXS app.

A buddy visited a while back and getting him a transit card without using the smartphone option took about 30 minutes.

I think it’s just that after having centralized so many things into one device, there’s a new step function horizon to cross to make it more effective to use or come up with a new form factor.