Forget Apps: Soon You'll Just Text AI to Get Things Done

Remember when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007 by describing it as three products at once — a music player, a phone, and an "internet communications device"? Most people nodded along, but almost nobody understood that the internet part was the real revolution. A new essay argues we're in the middle of a similar moment right now with AI. We keep thinking of AI as a chatbot you visit. The bigger shift is that it becomes the thing you talk to instead of using apps at all.

The author points to messaging as the pattern that wins. Phones started as information devices, but the killer use case turned out to be human: texting. We already spend hours a day in chat windows, so talking to an AI fits how we live. Years ago, Facebook tried to make itself the centre of your phone and failed, because people don't want one app hogging everything — they want dozens of tiny tools, each doing one job.

AI agents (software that can actually take actions for you, not just answer questions) could collapse all those little tools into one. Instead of opening a travel app, a calendar app, and a payment app to plan a trip, you'd just say what you want. The author's own phone grew from 151 apps to 689 over the years — a sign of how bloated our devices have become, even though we rarely open most of them.

The honest catch: this future is real but unevenly distributed. A few people already work this way; everyone else is still tapping icons. And when one AI handles your bookings, purchases, and messages, a single company sees an enormous amount of your life. Convenience and privacy will be trading blows for years.