A good example of this is voicemail. Although I admittedly don’t know too much about cell phone technology, I assume that almost everyone’s voicemail works the same way as it does on my phone; that is, you call a special number, an automated system plays back your messages one by one, and waits for your command to save or delete each message. I should mention that I somehow always forget which number is the “delete” command (probably because I don’t get a lot of voicemail), condemning me to wait until the prompt at the end of the message (“to delete this message, press 7”), even if I already know I want to delete it halfway through.

Maybe at a subconscious level, I realized that this was pretty clunky, but I never gave it much thought because everyone’s voicemail worked the same way, and I came to accept it as The Way Things Are. I certainly never went around complaining about how much voicemail systems suck. To quote Jonathan Ive (again), “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use.”

Then Apple introduces Visual Voicemail on the iPhone. It’s not a particularly ground-breaking feature in that it basically just gives an email client–like interface to voicemail, but it’s one of those things we look at and think “Well, duh. That’s how it should have been all along.” The question is, if Apple hadn’t done it, who would’ve?

P.S. Thanks for your comments about the site :)

By the way.. about doing one thing and doing it really well.. honestly, how can you do a phone (alone) “really well?” There’s only so much you can do about a phone.. in fact, I think most phones nowadays are already really well done, as just a phone and nothing more… :)

By the way, your comment box extends in height as I type, instead of adding a scroll bar.. interestingly, the page design actually allows for this to happen quite seamlessly.. neat feature. Man, the nice design of your pages somehow encouraged me to use good grammar and punctuations and capitalizations and such. I don’t normally type like this. :/

But you’ve got to be kidding… it takes more than a few days for the Jobsian RDF to wear out, man. ::chuckle:: A couple weeks is about right. ;-) Write a follow-up post then.