The Tail that Wags the Dog: Has the first real killer app for iPad and Android tablets arrived?
We live through big changes without realizing how big the change really is… at the time. I find that rather startling.
Steve Jobs coined the phrase “killer app” to refer to the one application that will tip the balance and make people buy a product just for that one use. Before iTunes for the iPod and Word, Excel and Pagemaker for the Mac, the original killer app for Apple was the spread sheet VisiCalc, running on the Apple II.
For me, it was 1981 (okay, I’m a boomer) and I had the great good fortune to be one of the first people to be trained professionally on how to use a spread sheet.
VisiCalc sold 400,000 copies ($99.00) from its debut in 1979 to the end of 82 (and, in total, 700,000 over six years). Think about that… that meant likely 350,000 businesses in those first three years bought their very first computer (about $2,000.00 each, BIG dollars back then), just because they’d finally seen something that made total sense to them. They NEEDED to save the hundreds of hours pencilling in figures on columnar pads, or pricing inventory, or any number of things.
Talk about a good kick to get business computing rolling… this was it. Time Magazine called VisiCalc the “Tail that Wagged the Dog”… and it was a cover story! They saw it for what it was… a phenomenon.
I see another big change… the iPAD, and its Android brethren, have proved to be a big success, a whole new way to get things done, but I’ve been waiting for that “VisiCalc” moment… a program compelling enough to spur the adoption of mobile platforms within businesses to new heights.
I think I may have found it.
It’s called PODIO. It’s a collaboration tool for various business processes. I’ll say no more…you NEED to visit the PODIO web site.
What do you think? Will you use it? Do you agree it’s a game changer? Or is it no big deal?
I’m very interested in your feedback. Please let me know.
Regards,
Robert McNulty
Follow me on twitter @crankyphoneguy