Will you take your iPhone or laptop?

With my Dad in the hospital after surgery for the next 6-8 days, I’ve been spending a lot of time there. Thankfully they have free Wifi and I’ve taken my laptop along so I can get stuff done during down times or when he’s sleeping.

Yesterday I took only my iPhone. Getting it connected to the hospital Wifi was incredibly easy and when I came back later in the day I took only it and not my laptop. This got me to thinking about how many times I’d hoped for a smartphone (like my Treo 700p) which could’ve functioned as a laptop replacement for those trips or outings where I would’ve preferred to not take my briefcase with a 6 pound computer in it.

I’m not suggesting that I can be anywhere near as productive with a smartphone as I can with a laptop…especially one where I can also boot up Windows (in Parallels) and use that OS too. I use Photoshop, InDesign, Powerpoint and Keynote, Word, Excel and many other applications where screen real estate is key. But as more of my life migrates to the Web — as I’m certain yours is too — having such an easy to use device as the iPhone is critical.

I expect a triangulation to occur soon that will make the iPhone even more productive. There will be a middle man between the iPhone, the desktop and the cloud (i.e., the Internet) called an actually and finally useful .Mac service. Since it’s been laughingly simplistic for only the most newbie Mac user or family, having Steve Jobs publically say that Apple will “make up for lost time” with a new .Mac service, I expect a lot will happen. Perhaps I’ll be able to access my files and folders, use Google Docs and Spreadsheets in some sort of unified fashion, sync the iPhone with my digital life and feed the dog.