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I’m writing this while at lunch using the WordPress iPhone app.

When I got the phone, I needed something that was a cell phone, had various PDA functions and handled email.

The iPhone has lived up to my expectations. It works. The interface was good before and better, now, after the latest upgrade. The new apps that are available are icing on the cake.

I’m not an early adopter. I didn’t stand in line. The phone did what I needed before they let developers start publishing apps. Still….there are all these new apps, new things I didn’t realize I needed the phone to do!

The challenge, for me, is to avoid the temptation to turn this phone into a toy. Some apps, like the one I’m using to write this post, are useful. But for each app like this, there are a legion of apps that are toys, games or otherwise distractions given their limited usefulness.

Marketing is both brilliant and pernicious. At their core, most products do something we need. However, the more technically complicated the product, the more the human system in which we live pushes for these to be extended, to get “fun features” and to capture more of our time, attention and ultimately our money.

This is not a criticism. I don’t know if things can be any other way, given the system in which we live. It’s just an observation, written on a sunny day by a guy hunched over his phone, tapping away…