iPhone Analysis – It’s The Gestures, Stupid
There has plenty been written already about the new iPhone from Apple. The interesting thing is how many people don’t seem to “get” the innovations in this device, and how important they are. I can’t help wonder if the big mobile players – Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft/HTC, etc. will understand these either. As someone said to me today when we were discussing this – “You might be right, because if they did understand this stuff, they would already have done it.” In this post, I will cover what I think are the key things Apple got right, and also what I think they got wrong.
What Apple Got Right
What is the single most important innovation in the iPhone? It’s the user interface. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said that most developers simply don’t understand or know how to think about user interfaces. So, what specifically about the iPhone user interface is so great? It’s the gestures e.g. the flick of the screen that starts the scrolling, or the pinching to zoom in and out of photos. Compare that to dragging a tiny scrollbar with a stylus, or pressing small hardware buttons. Usability is just in a different category.
Many people working with computers will be familiar with the idea of gesture-based user-interfaces. However, they’ve never reallly been that impressive before. That’s because gestures aren’t really that amazing when used with a mouse, or a laptop trackpad. Gestures can be great when combined with computer vision, but that’s still difficult to implement, and not yet ready for prime-time.
No. The killer application for gestures was always going to be touch screens. And, multi-touch gestures are a key part of this (for example – the pinching gesture). Apple’s multi-touch gestured-based UI looks fantastic, and is a quantum leap ahead of the competition. Apple’s IP may even mean their competitors can’t copy it (as they didn’t seem able to copy the iPod’s scroll wheel).
Talking about the UI, though, it remains to be seen how well the QWERTY touch-screen keypad works in practice. There is a lot to be said for having a separate QWERTY keypad, not taking up screen real-estate. Steve Jobs says it works much better than the keypads on competing phones. That might be true. Just a little over a month ago, I asked the question – Why Are Cell Phone QWERTY Keypads So Bad? However, that’s just because they’re badly designed. It might be possible for a well-designed physical keypad to work better than an on-screen virtual one.
The other really important thing Apple got right is the form factor. Specifically, the 11.6mm depth of the device. Consumers want sleek devices – not clunky-looking bricks.
Also, it’s worth drawing attention to the market they’re going after here. You saw a graph in Steve Jobs’s keynote yesterday. Here’s one I made for a blog entry back in October 2005:
The point is: content is going to gravitate to where the volume is. iPhone is a super-smart move, because with the iPhone platform (not just this product, but future ‘iPhone nanos’ etc), they could see sales volumes much greater than they ever saw on the iPod.
What Apple Got Wrong
The commercial terms. Apple has got the commercials terms for this device wrong. They will need to fix this. Being tied to a multi-year contract, and still paying upwards of $500 for the device will be unacceptable for many, many people.
Why did they do this? Apple decided that they wanted to “reinvent” the way the phone worked – they wanted random access voicemails. I think this requires the phone companies to change the way they do voicemail. This is a bad idea. It’s not that random access voicemail is a bad thing. It’s not – it’s a nice feature. It’s just that I’m not sure it’s really necessary. And, if the price of that new voicemail feature is being tied to particular phone operators, I don’t think it’s one that is worth paying.
The solutions are: sell the iPhone unlocked at a realistic price. If they can sell this device unlocked for $499, they will grab market share like you wouldn’t believe.
The other big mistake – maybe the biggest mistake of all – is that the iPhone appears to be a closed device (if I’m wrong on this, I will be very happy). Phones that are smart are computers. People want applications for computers – and Apple and its handful of partners like Google and Yahoo! are not going to build them all. They should have made this phone a Java CDC device, and provided Java extensions to let people program to the gesture UI. It’s fine that iPods are closed. Those are not computers. But, can you imagine if people couldn’t write software for Macs? It would be a disaster. And, if people can’t write software for iPhone, well, it might not be a disaster, but it does mean they won’t get the market share they could. (Update: Apple developers are starting to lobby Apple about this issue, by filing bug reports).
Conclusions
The iPhone catapults Apple into the lead in the mobile phone space. Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Microsoft should be very worried. They need to start working 18 hour days (at least) to catch up. Apple has left a few angles on which they can be attacked – so all is not lost… yet. To all those who say, “I’m not impressed with the iPhone. My 5 year-old phone can do everything the iPhone can do, and a whole lot more” – you’re missing the point. It’s the gestures, stupid. It will make iPhone a dream to use, compared to other mobile devices. This is a revolutionary product; and one that will be extremely desirable in the market.
The iPhone signals the death of the MP3 player. It’s been obvious for at least the last five years that the mobile phone would eventually be the one device that people carry around with them. The only question has been when – because technology limitations haven’t previously made it possible to make the perfect “converged” device. But, just as Microsoft launched its MP3/video player, the Zune, Apple has, with this device, announced it’s best-ever iPod. Forget about compromises of converged devices – the iPhone is the best iPod, and therefore the best MP3/video player, bar none.
LULOP.org [opensource] » Naturally interacting with Apple on 11 Jan 2007 at 9:09 am
[...] Simon Blocklehurst note what really makes the iPhone a ground-breaking device “It’s the gesture, stupid !” [...]