Gone are the days of everyone in the family sharing one desktop. These days almost everyone has some kind of personal device that they are browsing the web on. For most consumers, it’s an iPhone. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, the internet game changed in a big way. We had portable devices that could view websites, but nothing as accessible or interactive as the iPhone. Suddenly everyone had a full browser in their pocket.
That’s not the only change to the web. A few years later, Apple introduced the world to the tablet. Not the first of it’s kind, but the first to catch on to the mass public. A new category of devices was created. Suddenly there were users browsing the internet on their Desktops, Laptops, iPhones and now iPads. With four different screens, every website now had to be optimized to work across any device a user could throw at it. Following that, every other competitive company developed smartphones and competing tablets. Apple itself has changed the iPhone every year since it’s first iteration. That’s hundreds of thousands of different screen combinations that users can now view a single website on.
Later this year, Apple is hoping to continue their genre-building tech with the Apple Watch. Some smart watches are already out in the marketplace, and have been for quite some time. Apple is rarely the first to the marketplace with technology, but they often do it the most user-friendly and polished. Because people trust the Apple brand, they are able to create new ways for users to interact. Their hope is that the smart watch is the next big thing in technology. This would add a new element for the web. I don’t think we’ll be scrolling through websites on our wrist anytime soon, nor would I want to. However, I do think that website information will need to be made accessible through a quick search on a smart watch.
With all of these new technologies and devices users are adopting more widely, it is more important than ever to have your website accessible to the widest audience possible.
