I must have missed this lesson in physics class.
Instead of….
Go for….
I am not one to judge others, but this sure makes me feel normal. Oops, there I go judging others.
The best kept secret of Seattle is Monday nights downtown (specifically in Belltown). It is completely dead. You can walk the double-yellow line and not worry ’bout a thing. This is a good thing.
It’s like your own private playgroud. Fresh air. Hardly any noise. Some great restaurants to check out with absolute no lines and primo seating. Street parking a plenty. Heck, even Taco Del Mar celebrates with 2-for-1 punches on their value card with every jumbo burrito.
Check it out sometime.
Apple Computer Inc. recently announced the launch of their latest product, the iPhone. As with the iPod, which isn’t really a pod at all, the iPhone is not a phone. At least, it’s not just a phone. In the seemingly endless quest to consolidate more and more products into a single device, the iPhone promises to offer the functionality of a phone, PDA, music player, and a digital camera. Oh, and it runs OS X, so lots more functionality can be loaded up as well.
But is consolidation really the right way to go? Some may see the bundling of multiple products into a single device as a great all-in-one solution. They’ll never be caught without their camera when they really need it just because they weren’t planning to take any pictures that day. There are, however, downsides to consolidation. While the iPhone’s camera is fairly high quality as far as cameraphones go, it only offers about 20% the resolution of the latest Canon digital Elph. A pessimist’s view of the iPhone might be that you are really getting is a sub par version of each individual product that comprises it. Some level of consolidation makes sense; adding email capability to a phone is an obvious win, since you’re getting a device that is all about communication. The need to tack on music and video is less clear, unless you are one of those Very Important People who can’t miss a phone call during the twenty minutes you spend on the elliptical trainer at the gym. Now you don’t need your iPod Nano AND your Treo, you can just grab your iPhone.
Perhaps the real innovation here is in the touch screen interface offered by the iPhone. Touch screens are not new – perhaps you have heard of a Tablet PC? However the Tablet’s touch screen wasn’t solving a real user problem, it was an over-engineered solution targeting scenarios that may or may not actually exist in the real world. With the iPhone and similar devices, however, there is a very real problem: a phone, no matter what you bundle it with, still needs to took something like a phone. It needs a speaker, and a microphone, and some way to dial numbers, and adjust the volume. Cameraphones for the most part essentially retrofitted their functionality onto this interface, using generic “Menu” and “Select” buttons that change roles depending on what you’re doing. Despite everyone’s need to tell you how to use their digital camera when they ask you to take a picture of them, nearly every camera – digital or otherwise – works the same: you press the little round button on the top right to take a picture. Digital cameras have optimized UI for browsing pictures you’ve taken, adjusting exposure settings, switching to video mode etc. Similarly, digital music players have an interface optimized for browsing, organizing and listening to your music. A phone has a numeric keypad and some other random buttons which change functionality based on your current mode. A touch screen interface, which can change dynamically to present a number pad, a qwerty keyboard, or a scrollable list of songs, could potentially solve all this.
Or it could fail horribly. Adaptive user interfaces, which dynamically optimize to accommodate the task at hand, aren’t always perfect. Imagine adding adaptiveness to the user interface of, say, a word processing application. You might be able to infer things about the text being entered and do something appropriate, such as auto-numbering a list of items. You could detect when a date was being entered and auto-complete the name of the month. You might even deduce that the user is writing a letter, and offer them some assistance in formatting it. If you did, you would have created Clippy. And a lot of people would hate you.
What are your thoughts? Do you prefer an all-in-one device for its convenience, or do like to pick and choose single purpose devices targeted to your needs? Is the iPhone innovative? Will it be a hit? If it is, will it be because of the Apple brand appeal that has been created over the last few years, or because it is really a superior product? Is it worth $500?
Expect Great Things.
