We just got new mobile phones.  I still call them mobile phones because to me “Cell” phone conjures up images of Jimmy Cagney talking to his mouth piece thru the glass at Sing Sing.  But Mobile Phone is so archaic, heretofore I will use the term Mobi (pronounced Mobee) to describe these devices.
We contemplated iPhones, but for $30 a piece I got the latest 4g droid technology and I didn’t have to switch carriers.  I have two simple rules when it comes to buying a Mobi,
does this add any real value to my lifestyle and does the cost match the benefit?
Sorry Steve,  but I can get much more for much less and fashion has never been a priority with me.
More on Steve later. 
My daughter discovered an “amazing” feature on our new Mobis…Voice to text translation.  Now, I am the first to admit that I marvel at Voice recognition capabilities in our smart devices.  It is truly an amazing technology, especially in such compact packaging.  But this “New” feature in our Mobis allows us to send Text messages to others, by speaking.  Let’s think about this; “Watson I need you” translated to text and sent to his device so he could read it?  Gee the telegraph was doing that 50 years before.  The miracle of the phone was Voice over wire.  The miracle of the Mobi was voice over Air.  Text over air was called paging and, while it was miraculous 30 years before Mobi, it’s really kind of passe’ now.  On the other hand, Mobi texting IS a significant advancement over passing notes in class. But the reason you pass notes is because you are not allowed to talk so Voice Recognition is not a particularly useful feature for texting’s primary purpose.  Also would you still speak “LOL” and “OMG” or would you actually say the words.  Now if you say the words and it translates them to Text speak…perhaps…no that would be SILLY.

Now back to Steve.  I virtually met Steve Jobs at a NEXT announcement event.  In those days he was considered a failure that had to be ousted from Apple before he ruined the company. Really.  Unlike his more recent ANNOUNCEMENTS, there were only about a dozen people in a small conference room in Phoenix, AZ huddled around an enormous projection device displaying Jobs behind his NEXT cube.  It was an amazing machine.  Doing all the things HE felt a “personal” computer should be able to do.  He was absolutely right, but at 6-10 grand nobody would be able to buy it.  20+ years later, most of these features are now in our Mobis.  We were allowed to ask questions via a land line(remember those) link to Steve, so I asked when these would be available to purchase.  As I recall, he replied with something like “we will be announcing availability in a month or so, but you can order one today”.  In exchange for my contact information I got a vhs video copy of the presentation and some flashy literature,  but I never heard from NEXT again.

Jobs had, once again, failed to meet the demands of the personal computer market place.  While he had the something WAY Better in terms of features and built to be Faster than anything, Jobs never really cared about the consumers number one demand “CHEAPER”. And held over from his Apple days, the question of reliability remained.

Jobs went from next to Pixar, where money was no object and his demanding, never good enough style set the animation bar so high that Disney had to buy the company to keep up.
Then he went back to Apple, and a consumer that, for some reason, was now willing to overlook higher price tags.  Not only can consumers not get enough iPods, iTunes, iPhones and iPads, they are willing and eager to replace last years model with the latest no matter what the cost.  Basically, Steve Jobs had become a fashion mogul.

Now he is gone and I suspect someone and something else will soon become the Apple of the consumers eye.