I recently visited my sister and her family. The youngest of her boys is two years old. He’s just learning how to talk; he looks at me with great sincerity on his face and issues forth a long string of gibberish that his mom has to translate. The older one is a rough-and-tumble four-year-old.

After dinner the older one began throwing pillows at my head, trying to provoke a tickle fight. The younger kid picked up his mom’s iPhone. He entertained himself quietly while his brother and I tore the living room apart.

As I drove back to my hotel that night I thought, “Wow. Just wow. You can be pre-verbal and still use an iPhone.” My two-year-old nephew pushed the home button to turn on the phone, opened the Photos app, and began flipping through pictures. When he got to an image with a triangle on it he touched the triangle to make the video play.

Apple has changed the game forever.  Business technology that requires extensive training will have gone the way of the dinosaur long before my nephews enter the workforce. Technology that is not intuitive and fun to use will be supplanted by technology that delights, entertains, and enlightens its user.

A page from Apple’s own playbook: “A user interface that is unattractive, convoluted, or illogical can make even a great application seem like a chore to use. But a beautiful, intuitive, compelling user interface enhances an application’s functionality and inspires a positive emotional attachment in users.”

Business technology must be more than inspired by excellent consumer technology. It must live and breathe the same principles of design. User interfaces must be based on the way people think and work, not on the capabilities of the technology. It’s a tall order. Daunting, in fact. But those are now the rules of the game. The business technology providers that get it right will capture the hearts, minds, and wallets—of the workforce.