iPhone
Written by lerble on January 10th, 2007
So, Apple has finally come out with the long rumored iPhone. I think they have hit a home run with this one, and they will eventually come to dominate the ’smart phone’ market with this offering.
Here is a summary of what I think Apple has done right with the iPhone, along with things that I am disappointed with:
Interface
I have always thought that the tiny plastic keys for alpha numeric input on phones were inflexible and a waste of space. They force cellphone interface designers to create highly modal interfaces that require multiple key presses in navigating deep hierarchical menus. They also take up a lot of precious space. People want their phones to be small, which makes implementing a full qwerty keyboard with buttons big enough for my fat fingers to push very difficult to do.
Apple has shrewdly eliminated these problems by offering a touch screen where their designers can create usable menus that are appropriate for the desired interaction. When a keyboard is required to input text, one appears on the screen. When a numeric pad is needed to dial a number, one is provided. When I want to watch the newest episode of “The Office”, those pesky input devices disappear allowing the majority of the phone’s surface area to be used for the task at hand.
The one drawback to this type of interface is the lack of tactile feedback that you get from physical buttons. I assume that Apple was smart enough to include the tiny iPod-like audible ‘click’ each time you successfully activate a ‘button’ or ‘key’ on the screen, yet the feel of the button on the tip of your finger will never be present in this type of interface. Currently, I can grab my phone and press-hold the ‘2′ key to auto-dial my wife without looking at the keypad of my phone. This type of intuitive action will not be possible on the iPhone, which may or may not be a significant interaction problem. We will have to wait and see.
OSX
Yes, this phone runs on the Mac OSX kernel. Hopefully this means that the list of current applications and ‘widgets’ is just the beginning. The demo of the Safari web browser was VERY impressive, and I am sure its implementation will be light-years ahead of the crappy Openwave browser on my LG V phone. I have long hated the necessity of viewing stripped down versions of web pages to accommodated the tiny screen on my cell phone. With Safari in the iPhone, you get the full version of the web page, not a crippled version intended for a mobile browser:
It will be interesting to see how the iPhone version of Safari will differ from the desktop version. Will it have full Javascript/Ajax capabilities? I am hoping the answer is “yes”!
Widescreen video iPod
It has long been rumored that Apple would release a wide screen iPod. I don’t remember anybody predicting that the wide screen iPod and the iPhone would be the SAME device. Hopefully Apple will soon offer standalone iPod with the same wide screen format. I remember seeing a patent with Apples name on it the showed the iPod click wheel on a touch screen interface similar to the iPhone. We can only hope that Apple will bless us iPod junkies with such a great innovation.
4GB or 8GB
I can’t imagine only having 4GB of storage for an music/video player. 8GB seems like it would be the bare minimum for storing any significant amount of music and video. As flash memory and SSD storage becomes less expensive, Apple will probably up the amount of storage on these phones along with their iPod Nano line of music players. What about removable storage? There was no mention of this ability, a strange oversight in my mind.
Conclusion
I think this phone will be a hit. I know I want one. I also know I will be angry when I buy one, and one month later the 16GB version comes out at the same price as the 8GB one I just bought. Apple is notorious for this, yet people (namely ME) NEED to have their cool new gadgets. So as we part with our hard earned money, we are temporarily awed by the wonders of the technology and eventually disappointed when our precious is one-upped by the newest bigger and better device. So is the life of the lowly gadget geek.
