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Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

suckbusters2.blogspot.com

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Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#21

Post by bitsoffreedom »

btmorex wrote: post #9
TomOfTTB wrote: post #3

This guy falls into the same trap a lot of UX designers do: He takes a good rule (keep it simple) and extrapolates too far in his conclusion. He assumes an average user isn't smart enough to grasp multi-function devices and multitasking. That said I don't blame him for his third point. I think a lot of people (myself included) were suprised at how little tactile feedback is missed on the iPhone.

I sort of agree about tactile feedback. People don't miss it much on the iphone. On the other hand, real buttons are still a far, far better interface. I basically don't use the virtual keyboard on my droid. I either use the real keyboard or voice search. Both interfaces blow the virtual keyboard away (and it's not even that bad). I guess what I'm saying is that both sides are right. Real buttons are better, but if y…

I don't want a touch screen on a point-and-shoot digital camera, for example.

Touch screens may turn into a technology that's omnipresent although "educated" consumers try to avoid it (like glossy laptop screens or high-megapixel cameras with tiny sensors)

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#22

Post by sliverstorm »

riffic wrote: post #8

>Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype's still hot. You heard it here first. AAPL on June 21, 2007 - $123.9 a share AAPL on September 4, 2010 - $258.8 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AAPL+JUNE+21,+2007 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AAPL+September+4,+2010

I can never understand why people give advice like that. If they are right, nobody will remember or credit them, and if they are wrong they look terrible.

I certainly avoid making such statements, as I cannot bear the thought of my advice destroying the wealth of the people close enough to me to listen to me.

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#24

Post by dasil003 »

joelmichael wrote: post #5

"There hasn’t been a packaged album side worth listening to the whole thing in order since Abbey Road." Comments like this are revealing.

Yeah I can name three from this year already: Janelle Monáe "The ArchAndroid", Arcade Fire "The Suburbs", and The Roots "How I Got Over"

Not better than Abbey Road, but definitely worth listening too in whole.

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#25

Post by dasil003 »

How embarassing for this guy. I guess the lesson is that armchair UI experts shouldn't underestimate Apple's product design skills. All his critiques are obvious issues that Apple was probably thinking about from day 1 of product design in 2005 or whenever. Buttons too small for touchscreen; make them bigger. No tactile feedback; make the UI super-responsive.

On the other hand you can cut the guy some slack since he made these predictions before release. It's actually quite a bit more embarassing when you hear an interview from Ballmer in 2010 floundering around trying to stick to his talking points about how an iPad is still a PC, and PCs will come in many form factors, etc.

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#27

Post by natfriedman »

sliverstorm wrote: post #22
riffic wrote: post #8

>Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype's still hot. You heard it here first. AAPL on June 21, 2007 - $123.9 a share AAPL on September 4, 2010 - $258.8 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AAPL+JUNE+21,+2007 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AAPL+September+4,+2010

I can never understand why people give advice like that. If they are right, nobody will remember or credit them, and if they are wrong they look terrible. I certainly avoid making such statements, as I cannot bear the thought of my advice destroying the wealth of the people close enough to me to listen to me.

You do have to give him credit for leaving the article up. I think I'd be busy purging it from every internet cache I could find if I'd written something this confident and wrong.

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#28

Post by ThomPete »

The problem with his article besides being obviously wrong in retrospect is his focus on usability as a defining factor for the success of the product.

Usability and simplicity isn't why a product succeeds, it needs to be understood in context with engineering, marketing, luck, timing and so many other things.

The iPhone succeeded because at the time it was such a fresh breath of air.

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#29

Post by dasil003 »

btmorex wrote: post #9
TomOfTTB wrote: post #3

This guy falls into the same trap a lot of UX designers do: He takes a good rule (keep it simple) and extrapolates too far in his conclusion. He assumes an average user isn't smart enough to grasp multi-function devices and multitasking. That said I don't blame him for his third point. I think a lot of people (myself included) were suprised at how little tactile feedback is missed on the iPhone.

I sort of agree about tactile feedback. People don't miss it much on the iphone. On the other hand, real buttons are still a far, far better interface. I basically don't use the virtual keyboard on my droid. I either use the real keyboard or voice search. Both interfaces blow the virtual keyboard away (and it's not even that bad). I guess what I'm saying is that both sides are right. Real buttons are better, but if y…

I think the stroke of genius in the iPhone (and I fully admit this is obvious 3 years later), is that people want to do a wide variety of simple things on their phone.

If you are sending tons of emails from your phone, then yeah, the physical keyboard blows the onscreen one out of the water. But when you are running a dozen apps with completely different functionality, but all of them are fairly simplistic, a touch-screen (especially a good one) does a better job on average, as compared to a keyboard where you quickly descend into the buttons being meaningless ala Nokia endless 2-button menu navigation.

Now obviously you can have both (I bought a G1 back in '08 and I like having both), but it took balls for Apple to make that decision and say that a touchscreen only would be sufficient. However the impact of that decision on the elegance of the form factor is undeniable, and something that I imagine had a large if unmeasurable impact on the success of the iPhone. It's the type of thing that you need a product visionary at the top to achieve, otherwise it's DOA at the first board meeting.

Re: Why the iPhone will fail (2007)

#30

Post by tyng »

This failure of this article to predict iPhone's success echos well with another article posted on HN yesterday ("simplicity is overrated") that UX simplicity does not equate simple functionality or single-purpose device. The killer product is often the ones with multiple powerful functions but also intuitive UX design that won't take long for the user to figure out how to operate it. Simple is about intuition.
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