what i didn't know i needed

So a family friend got an iPhone (not i don't have one yet... too cheap) and i asked her the other day what she thinks. She said she orginally thought that it would be a slick phone and that the ipod part would be nice sometimes to have. Now, after about a month of use, things have totally changed. She discovered the full internet with her at all times. She checks email in between driving the kids around for all their stuff (sports, piano, etc...). She can do online banking cause it works (thanks to a full-scale browser) and feels she can get more done and spends less time in front of her PC at home.

I look the same way at our appletv -- yeah i thought it would be nice to have a decent interface to navigate our music in the family room, but the behavior is different. Its the photos on the appletv that are amazing. as a family we look at photos WAY more often than before. just the other day, my son asked "can we look at the disneyland photos?" sure -- so we watched the photos from our last trip to disneyland in a slideshow as it played some tunes in the background. previous to the appletv, photos were looked at MUCH less and with less interest... now i'll kick the screen saver in on my apple tv as i work late at night.

of course - that makes me think back to when we first got high speed internet -- the yellow pages went away, then we stopped buying Thomas map guides, then we stopped getting a newspaper - heck even our phone bills dropped.

no - none of this is revolutionary. but if you asked me each time ---

"What if your computer could replace your newspaper?" (but i like to read the paper each day - yet.... gone)

"What would you pay to have ALL your photos on your family TV?" (already on my computer in iPhoto - don't need it, yet....)

"What would you pay to have REAL internet access with you on your mobile phone?" (ah, doesn't work that well or i have it on my PC --- yet now...)

The lesson? Sometimes we can't ask our customers what they want -- cause sometimes they don't know they need it -- till you give it to them.

The action? Dream a little -- build the products -- and yes, sometimes they will come.