I loved my iPhone. I stood in line for 3 hours for it. I have devoured every post in the Apple Support Forums. I have even re-skinned websites to fit better on its wee screen.
And so I feel compelled to share (and defend?) my rationale for giving my iPhone back to AT&T on Day 11.
I have made a chart:
I should mention that I’ve had a PDA/Smartphone of one kind or another for 5 years now (Treo 180 –> 750 & BB 8100, 8800, 8300) and have 3 Macs at home. But the fact is – the iPhone is just not very good at the things I need a Smartphone to do most often.
Aside from all the good points made on other blogs about functionality shortcomings – from a “User Experience” perspective, I found a big downfall to be the sheer ‘number of clicks’ to get something done. Case in point:
Calling my wife from my iPhone:
Pick it up –> Press HOME button to wake up –> Slide to Unlock –> Press HOME button –> Press Phone Icon –> Press Favorites Icon –> Press her Name
Calling my wife from my Blackberry:
Pick it up –> Press & hold ‘J’
…I suppose it gets back to the discussion that Bill Moggridge has with Bill Atkinson in his excellent book “Designing Interactions“. As one of the original designers of computer input devices, Bill argued (paraphrasing here) that interfaces should be designed to be maximally efficient for proficient users to accomplish tasks…and that the pursuit of that ideal should not be sacrificed to make interfaces that are easily accessible by new users, but inefficient for experienced ones. Moggridge does make the point, however, that user-accessible designs have definitely won in the marketplace far more often than not.
And that, in a nutshell, sums up my experience with iPhone v1.0. Definitely easy for a new Smartphone user to pick up – but that’s not really me. So, I’m back to the Blackberry Curve – and am going to use the extra $400 to go buy a new iPod.
And don’t get me wrong…I plan to stand in line for v2.0 as soon as it comes out.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Alas, my dear friend Kevin, I fear that I cannot stand with you on this item.
I am more of the mind of the “Getting Real” crowd at 37Signals, who promote the idea that the most important job of software is to get people from zero to beginner quickly and positively. Without the feedback of instant success, then no one will invest the time necessary to use the more “efficient” approaches.
I am aware the the airline reservation systems and certain call center applications are more effective for being maximally efficient. But you will note that most of these highly efficient interfaces are in the hands of people who force them to use it, and the activities are highly proscribed.
More interesting to me in my own iPhone experience is that it has radically changed my internal hierarchy of digital communication. SMS is now top of the list, email second, and phone third. I find the phone to be a cumbersome way of communicating because of the many failures of the analog interface (sound).
And Apple has made SMS about 200x faster than on my prior devices.
Thanks for the comments Matt- and I agree with you philosophically. Zero–>Beginner–>Expert should be paved with positive feedback loops (presumably iPhone v2 will have a host of ‘expert shortcuts’ that speed things up).
To that end, one thing that surprised me about the iPhone keyboard was that I found the ‘learning curve’ to be more like an hour than a ‘week’ (per Jobs). After an hour, I was about as good as I was going to get…which was about 1/3 BB speed.
I should also mention that, from a design point of few, I felt like the hw and sw were in different leagues. The hw is gorgeous, spare and efficient. The sw felt a bit rushed. Good news is, sw’s easier to update OTA.