Apple's iPhone: True Innovation

Ok, so shame on me for writing so much about the iPhone without actually having used it, but I fixed that today by spending a couple of hours in an Apple (AAPL) store playing with the iPhone.

Granted this is much more limited than the experience of long-term use, but it was enough for me to get a pretty good feel for it.

(I tried to compensate for the limited trial by asking the friendly Apple Store guy if roadblocks I hit were just my ignorance of a feature, which in some cases they were, but in other notable cases they weren’t.)

For those of you still wondering whether I have suddenly become a gadget writer, I can assure you there is method to this iPhone madness — there is not a publisher or media company who shouldn’t be tracking the iPhone closely. The iPhone is a window into the future of media. If you’re in media, and you haven’t at least played with an iPhone, it’s as mandatory as spending time with this interweb, series of pipes thing.

Ok, here are a few of my observations:

1. The iPhone interface is truly like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Like using a Mac back in 1984 (which I did — my father bought the first one).

100% touchscreen is the only true multimedia UI, i.e. the only UI that works well (although not always optimally) for text, images, video, web pages, etc.

Resizing the screen with the two finger pinch and scrolling with a finger “flick,” as if you were working with a physical object, fundamentally changes the way you interact with a computer screen.

Browsing album covers is a deeply nostalgic experience.

Visual voicemail just rocks (to skip this message, press…).

2. The 100% touchscreen interface still needs work.

Placing your finger over the content you’re using in order to scroll it can be annoying because, for example, you can’t see what you’re doing, and on web pages, you can accidentally click a link.

It would be nice if you could easily activate a small dedicated scroll bar on the side to use if sticking your finger in the middle of what you’re doing doesn’t happen to be optimal.

Scrolling zoomed in web pages, especially those that have been sized to make the text fill the screen, often makes the page slip back and forth laterally — there should be a way (maybe there is) to lock the web page laterally and just scroll vertically.

3. The keyboard still needs work.

I trust Walt Mossberg, who had a breakthrough with the keyboard after five days of frustration — I trust that once you get in a groove, it works well — but when you first try it, it’s a train wreck. Everything I tried to type came out has gibberish.

You also have to point your thumbs directly down rather than rest them comfortably against a mechanical keyboard.

Rotating the iPhone when using the keyboard for email or notes doesn’t switch to landscape and the bigger keyboard — you’ve got to be kidding!

4. The iPhone isn’t optimized for text-centric use.

This may be heresy, but if you just want to read text articles, it isn’t necessarily an advantage to load the “real” version of a web page rather than the mobile version.

If I just want to read the NYT headlines and the text of the articles, why do I need to deal with the layout? Why reproduce the experience of a 15 inch screen — or, heaven help us, a print newspaper — on a 3.5 inch screen (which, sorry, is still pretty darn small)? Why not optimize for the device dimensions? (Maybe Steve Jobs spent too much time hanging out with the NYT front page print editor, given the cameos in all the commercials.)

When you load a web page with a dense, wide-screen layout, the text is SMALL, and it can be hard to get your bearings.

You constantly have to double tap to get the main text to fit to the screen without running annoyingly off the edge.

Removing the physical keyboard to provide full-screen viewing was a brilliant move, but it’s also a declaration that text input is less important than image viewing — that doesn’t mean text input doesn’t work once you get the hang of it, but in a mobile device with finite space, everything is a trade-off.

Given that 95% of my mobile device use is phone, email, and text viewing on the web, I’m not sorry I went with the Blackberry on Verizon — it’s optimized for text — and you can flick your thumb across the new Blackberry trackball same as your can on the iPhone screen; if I used my mobile device mostly for images, multimedia, and rich web-browsing, I’d be aching for an iPhone.

Oh, yeah, AT&T (at least in Tysons Corner, VA) is SLLLLOOOOWWW….zzzz….oh is that the web page I was loading? Still, once the page is loaded, it’s darn cool. (Ride ‘em hobby horse!)

That all said, there is more innovation in this one device than most companies can muster in a lifetime — I’m sure I won’t be able to resist buying a future generation that works out the kinks and is finally on an optimized network.

Comments

[wayne thompson:]

I have had a treo 600 and later a 650, At the start it took me about two weeks to become useful with the keyboard and how to get the best out of the touch screen on the treo. I am not a iphone lover but I do believe in give a real review of the product and have gone thew many cell phone all having major problems. The interface will change all mobile phones for the better I am now using a linux based cell phone some short comings but every thing work no reset which is a major problem with smart phone.

2007 Jul 09 09:19 AM

[Alan Williams:]

Like the iPod and competing MP3 players, iPhone resets the bar for cell phones. Like the iPod, Apple will continue to improve the iPhone. Unlike the iPod, Apple will be able to upgrade the first generation iPhone with software upgrades through iTunes. You want a landscape keyboard with every application, a vertical and/or horizontal scroll bar with the browser? It is all just a software upgrade away. The first version of the iPhone will renew itself and be current for years. Smaller, more affordable iPhones may follow.

One thing is for sure. If the competition does not take the iPhone threat seriously and innovate their way to equivalent ease of use, Apple's various iPhone models are going to grab a very large market share in a few short years.

2007 Jul 09 10:23 AM

[Tom B:]

"If the competition does not take the iPhone threat seriously and innovate their way to equivalent ease of use"

They won't. They'll make a model that sorta looks like the iPhone (the LG Prada) or comes in pink (the Zune). Old paradigms die hard. That's why so many suckers still use Windows.

2007 Jul 09 12:34 PM

[brewer:]

I don't have one YET, but I am looking to upgrade my iPod, and I think this is going to be bigger than iPod. A lot of business users are balking at the change, and it can be painful to change your habits, but it seems that everyone wants one. Everywhere I go, people are talking about this and there are always several who join in saying how much they want one of these. Incredible. The iPod had nothing like that sort of reaction. Even the die-hard Mac fans (who have a legendary fondness for the OS over any alternative) had no real enthusiam for iPod when it first came out.

The key wil be when (and it looks like it will happpen VERY soon now, as 'DVD Jon' as posted a method already) one can use this device primarily with wifi hotspots and only use the ATT network in an emergency. I live in a relatively small town, but I am in a wifi hotspot most all the time. Many of the features don't require the network. e.g. The camera is actually very nice quality, as good as my point and shoot digital. I carry my iPod just about everywhere, that would be a fantastic feature to have the camera available pretty much all the time. Heck, I want one just to be able to show my most recent shots from vacation, etc... the screen is STUNNING.

The network will improve if ATT has any clue whatsoever. That remains to be seen though, they are actually still running ads for blackberries on TV. I guess they think Apple should handle all advertisments or else Apple doesn't want them to advertise iPhone for them? Sounds really stupid to me, unless they are just trying to unload the 'crackberries' while they still can.

2007 Jul 09 11:59 AM

[Jon T:]

This guy sounds very much to me like he just can't afford an iPhone, and is looking hard for reasons not to switch from his Blackberry!

2007 Jul 09 02:38 PM

[Roy Privatte:]

I was disappointed to find that Apple and Yahoo failed to make the browser Safari and the Yahoo start page compatible with each other. With my new iPhone I can't download my Yahoo start page nor can I download the FireFox browser.

2007 Jul 09 06:20 PM

[Neil Anderson:]

Not too shabby for a first generation product.

2007 Jul 11 09:29 PM

[Tim Acheson:]

Innovation?

The touchpad interface, made famous first and foremost by Apple's very well-marketed products, is certainly an innovative feature.

But it seems that Apple may have stolen the idea, using it in "wilful, wanton and deliberate" infringement of the patent held by Tsera, in reality [apparently] the company that actually invented the idea.

www.timacheson.com/Blo...

Jul 21 10:03 AM