Cellphones Are Like Icebergs

The Wall Street Journal’s Money section had a piece today that made me laugh out loud. It was Jason Fry’s reasoning for why he’s not ready or interested in the newest ‘all in one’ phone. He makes sense of our confused gadget-laced world.

“But the list of devices generally heralded as “the Swiss Army Knife of X essentially begins and ends with…the Swiss Army Knife. All the market opportunity in the world doesn’t make convergence as easier riddle to solve. Take the Universal remote…figuring out how to use it is so complicated that few users ever master one. You’re better off digging for the right remote than staring helplessly at the lone remote.

Cellphones are like icebergs, with a basic function or two visible and everything else lurking below the waterline. And users like me? We’re the ocean liners.

Quick quiz: If you’re on a call and another call comes in, do you a) cooly answer the new call, then smoothly go back to your original conversation, or b) panic? If you answered b, what makes you think the people who built your phone will be able to make navigating and playing thousands of songs easy?