I-TenX, Yes or No.

I-Pod, I-Phone, I-Give-me-a-break.

A while back, a programmer that I have worked with bought an I-Phone. Now....this was no ordinary consumer. He had built 2 of this own decks at home. He introduced me to the home built modding market. He had a collection of his own mobile history; palm pilots, pocketpcs, smart phones and so on. He gave up on the mobile market until the I-Phone. After much deliberation (and a crashed smartphone), he broke down and bought the I-Phone.

It has been a TenXfactor moment for him. He now is listening to Podcasts, he is now surfing the mobile web. The I-Phone rescued him from the frustrations. What appeals to him is the convenience factor that is missing from the mobile market. As Apple has promised, they have one solution that solves the angst of the mobile user.

TenX is relative to the context. If you have never used a pocketpc or a smart phone the I-fill-in-the-blank is a TenX moment. But at what cost? The convenience factor is a trade-off with a bit of your privacy, with a bit of restricted development with a bit of compromise to the proprietary solutions.

To look at TenX, think of a light switch. You turn it on. The room lights up. The holy grail of consumer computing is to deliver a product with that reliability, with that ease of use. When I turn on a light switch. the power comes from one source, the switch from another, and so on down the line. But when I flip the switch the light goes on. Yes?