Photo by tinker brad.

Shadoe Huard writes about his experience of using the iPhone as the sole general purpose computer in his daily workflow. His experience including the skepticism generally meets my own. Recently I have spent more of my work time using an iOS device than my iMac, and though all of the computers in our house have lost the lustre of being new, I feel no great urge to change them. The only exception thus far is presentations; though I have the adaptor and software I haven't had the courage as of yet to rely upon my iPhone for this particular use. For that I still use my ancient 12" Powerbook which I trust to just work.

His inspiration came from an article by Patrick Rhone which he quotes: "The real challenge is overcoming our comfort, convenience, limits and pre-conceived notions".

A simple inventory of my computer use during a typical day reveals how much I already depend on my iPhone for almost everything I do. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say that almost 80% of all my tweeting, RSS-reading, email checking and web browsing is done on my iPhone, even at home. In those regards, the iPhone applications dedicated to those activities are arguably some of the best there are.

These days, about the only activities I didn't use my iPhone for was writing and maintaining this website. And like Rhone, a keyboard and Plain Text are the only two things I needed to change that. Previously, before I bothered to learn markdown, I'd ditched the iPad as a publishing device because formatting articles for the web on iOS devices was a chore and quite often frustrating. Of course, those frustrations were of my own making. With markdown, formatting is as simple as I choose to make it. Which is to say quite simple.

Not included in the article is practical advice on what apps. to use, specific workflows or the belief that this would work for everyone. I think we all learn our own personal choices over time.

iPhone Essential

One of the many benefits to having an iPad