January 9, 2008 – Las Vegas, NV
(AP) First there was iPod, then iPhone, and now the latest addition to the iLife family.
The next phase of Apple’s plan to reinvent itself as a consumer electronics company was unveiled Tuesday at the 2008 CES by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and it received a warm reception from Wall Street. The touch-screen-controlled device answers the phone, babysits the kids, watches soap operas, shops for groceries, and has a unique killer app: a reminder function.
Jobs received a thunderous applause for the unveiling of iWife, the digital spouse for all of us. Steve Jobs announced that iNag would be the biggest draw. “Imagine a device that not only remembers your undone tasks, but also finds novel ways to nudge you about completing them,” Jobs said. The feature licenses a SmartSense technology that ratchets up the frequency of reminders and decibel level of the alarm as the task gets more postponed. “We couldn’t sell it without a snooze, but this gives us an edge,” he said.
The biggest technological hurdle in iNag was the interface. “Let’s be honest,” Jobs added. “The sort of person who puts off tasks probably puts off the entries too. We settled on a streamlined interface that works transparently in the background.”
The iRemember function logs all tasks into the iNag queue. iRemember also stores snippets of the owner’s conversations, and is well-equipped to bring those statements back in the future. “Who wouldn’t want a record of everything he ever said?”
Analysts were even more bullish on Jobs’ announcement that the iNag would eventually come in other configurations. The initial iNag, marketed to men, will reach sales targets by exploiting those men who are compelled to be on the bleeding edge of technology. The “iNag for women” will come with some key modifications. “I know a lot of working women who’ve stated their wish that they could have a wife at home doing the chores while they’re at the office. iWill ought to be just the ticket, taking out garbage, cleaning gutters, lawncare, and a whole host of home-improvement tasks.
Jobs predicted less friction toward the iWill penetrating the female demographic, as many women have become accustomed to replacing men with mechanical devices.
[tags]iPhone, humor, Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Steve Jobs, Apple[/tags]
If Jobs is planning on penetrating the female demographic with mechanical devices, he’ll need yet another name for it: iVibe.
Ha! Great post. I’m going iCrazy with all this Apple gushing.
An iWife that “babysits the kids, watches soap operas, shops for groceries…” — sounds like the 1970s, not 2008. And iNag? Wow, not even sure what to say about that.
You are in trouble with the women Pigott, tread lightly. Plus, this can go two ways:
In response to the announcement by Apple, Cisco announced that they were introducing the iHusband — it doesn’t do anything at all but complain about how the iWife steals its thunder.