This isn’t about doing a lot of things at once on your iPhone – which is an crucial topic, too.  But that is about what else you can do, beyond the iPhone, in the world, when you’re using your iPhone.

And that topic – or the reply to the question of what else can you do in the world when you’re using your iPhone – points to what the most widely used features of the iPhone will be, in the enlarged run.

Consider, for starters, what else you can do when you’re listening to the radio vs. watching television.  You can listen to the radio and drive, doze at home, take a shower, dash from room to room.  whether you try doing any of those things when you’re watching television, you either won’t be able to watch it, or, in the case of driving, worse.

In a nutshell, that gets at the difference amoung hearing and seeing.  Hearing gives us much more of an opportunity for multitasking than does seeing.  See my book, The Soft Edge, for more on the history of hearing and seeing in media.

How does that apply to the iPhone?  Well, to expand on what I was saying yesterday about the iPhone’s iPodic functions:  while there are certainly many crucial and delightful and useful things we can see with the iPhone, these will get in the way of driving, dozing, taking a shower.  In contrast, listening to music, talking on the phone, and the like allow us to do lots of other things at the same duration.

I think the path to the most frequently used features of the iPhone is clear.

Original post by Chris