Steve Jobs, iPhone and the "jamban" experience

This week's iPad launch in the U.S. is momentous. This one is a likely gamechanger...until Steve Jobs creates the "iScroll" (it's one of my fanciful thoughts where technology meets the ancient). The gamechanging is actually in the field of publishing and book-reading. But, I'll leave that for another time.

Stephen Fry's piece in Time that coincides with the iPad launch has this passage:

A little calmer, I remind Jobs that at the product launch of the iPad in January, he had stood in front of two street signs, one reading "Liberal Arts," the other "Technology." "This is where I have always seen Apple," he told the audience, "at the intersection of the Liberal Arts and Technology."

I suggest there's a bit more to it than that; surely Apple stands at the intersection of liberal arts, technology and commerce? "Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense," Jobs concedes, "but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience. You seen an iBook yet?"

It's about the iPhone that I want to talk about. It's about my using the iPhone as a reading window into blogs, media news and e-Books.

The catch here is the venue in which I use the iPhone as a reading tool.

I'm a voracious reader and news junkie (aren't we all?). So, like many (I think) I will obssessively clench when Nature calls until I can get my hands on a book or a magazine. Not just any book or magazine. It must be one that interests me at that moment in time. Sometimes that clenching reaches epic proportions with audible flatulent rushes (which is already too graphic to bear for you, the poor reader).

Thus, Steve Jobs may be interested to know my "user experience" with the iPhone in the jamban (the Malaysian word for a water closet).

Long before the launch of the iPad, armed with the iPhone, I have already reduced my book and magazine purchases.

As an experienced user, my user experience is relevant. Clever alliteration, right?

Be forewarned that you will need to clothe your precious iPhone with a non-slip silicone jacket because slippages do occur and, you may make an inorganic deposit that may annoy IWK not to mention emotionally scarring your sensibilities.

If you are a jamban smoker and a reading junkie, you will have to be even more dextrous, which is where the touch screen comes in. The touch screen is the most sensible innovation ever. I don't believe that one can ever be a jamban smoker cum reading junkie and, still be able to use any other smartphone. But, you can do that with an iPhone.

All of which brings me to this troubling thought; the iPad is lovely to behold.

But, I can't use it in the jamban. So, how now Steve Jobs?