A first generation product nails it. Microsoft must be scared. Jon Honeyball thinks so.
So the launch of the year has happened. I’m not referring to Vista, of course. No, this launch was big.
You couldn’t miss it, people were even stupid enough to fall for the “only two per customer” line and plonk their new purchases on Ebay, only to find there was no stock supply problem and each item lost money. I laughed into my gin and tonic when I read that.
The iPhone, for it is this, has now been dissected like no other product in computing history. It hasn’t just been pounced upon by the hacker, cracker and fanboy community. Almost every blog has had something to say on the subject. A few weeks after release, it’s clear that the outrageous expectations attached to the poor thing were never going to be satisfied. It would have required the iPhone to come preloaded with a solution to world hunger and minute-by-minute maps of the ozone layer being depleted before anyone would believe it had truly delivered on the promise.
All of which is a pity. I’ve now played with one fairly seriously for well over a week, and my view has changed. At the risk of the “mindless fanboy” tag being stuck on my forehead, I have to say it’s a remarkable device. Talking to sources inside Microsoft and other phone vendors, it’s clear they’re in full-blown panic mode. They don’t know how to respond, but are putting on their best PR face, notable for the quivering edges to their mouths.
The reality is the cellphone manufacturers have been stuck in a rut. On the one hand, we’ve had the various attempts by Microsoft to come up with an OS that works well in a phone. And the company has kept failing. The usability of every one I’ve tried has been poor, because there’s an implicit reliance on the easily lost toothpick to move around the user interface. Finger operation is nasty on the cramped keyboard, and just plain horrible on the touchscreen. Worse still, there’s an explicit prevention of satisfactory end-user customisation, especially in the email accounts area, and the application software in the shape of Word, Excel and Internet Explorer are feeble.
And that’s being polite.
Other manufacturers haven’t fared any better. Nokia, Sony Ericsson and the rest have come up with baubles. Their UI attempts have also verged on the laughable, and every one is different.
Worse still, many have been buggy beyond belief, and they’ve had the gall to pull software support on many.
The iPhone blows them all away. Yes, I accept that a person addicted to their CrackBerry will find the soft keyboard a little annoying. Someone who dials lots of phone numbers directly might prefer a mechanical keyboard rather than looking up a contact by name. But the iPhone isn’t aimed at the Exchange Server wielding BlackBerry aficionados. It’s designed for the rest of us.
The iPod functionality is stunning. The calendaring, phone books and other data synchronisation make ActiveSync in Windows look sick. The auto-rotate, dim and so forth just ooze quality and thought. And that’s just the software. The hardware is something that can only be called magical. The touchscreen is a solid glass-like substance, with none of that nasty thin plastic layer required for a toothpick. The build quality is beyond reproach, and it feels like a million dollars.
No wonder its competitors are running scared – as a rev 1 product, this is a statement that the rules of smartphone design and UI have changed forever. But that’s not all. Apple has defined a new UI paradigm based around finger touch. Take an iPhone and visualise it as an in-wall room controller. Double the size and have it as a Wi-Fi-driven, IP-enabled, universal remote control complete with video camera support for your front door security. Drop in VoIP as a sideline, and the possibilities take off.
With this design and user interface as a starting point, imagine an A4-sized radical tablet computer, complete with soft keyboard (and Bluetooth-attached real keyboard and mouse as an option). There’s no better platform from which to launch a true voice-controlled solution, either. The possibilities are endless, and the initial release as a phone is just the start. Where does this leave the competition? Up a creek without a paddle.