George Graves <gmgraves2@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:19:25 -0700, ZnU wrote
> (in article <znu-D7C0D6.13192525062007@individual.net>):
>
>> In article <1182766023.944929.238320@j4g2000prf.googlegroups. com>,
>> zeez <UltimaUW@excite.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Jun 24, 6:09 pm, justincas...@gmail.com (Justin) wrote:
>>>> Rocky Mountain News
>>>>
>>>> Apple's iPhone top choice to buy, survey shows
>>>> By Bloomberg News
>>>> June 23, 2007
>>>>
>>>> Apple Inc.'s iPhone was a top choice in a survey of people who
>>>> plan to buy an advanced mobile phone in the next three months, a
>>>> sign the new device may take market share from rivals.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Lemme guess....the status seekers, right?
>>
>> Have you watched the videos of the iPhone in use? It provides by far
>> the best user experience of any handset on the market. As a desktop
>> operating system developer, Apple brings far more to the table on
>> this front than companies which have previously only designed UI for
>> simplistic embedded devices.
>>
>> I'm using a four year-old Nokia Series 60 phone simply because I
>> don't particularly consider anything I've seen recently to
>> constitute much of an upgrade. I'll probably be buying an iPhone.
>>
>> The people who sit around counting the number of bullet points on
>> spec sheets are seriously missing the point, just as they did with
>> the iPod.
>>
>> Apple's major recent successes practically all revolve around taking
>> technologies that are out there, but that regular consumers don't
>> quite get, into mass market technologies. They played a fairly large
>> role in doing this with WiFi, and they did it with the iPod. Apple
>> didn't do anything in these instances that was *technically* much
>> different from what others were doing. What they did was package the
>> technology to make it palatable to regular people, and create a use
>> case for it that regular people understood.
>>
>> They're now looking to do the same thing in the smart phone market.
>> Currently these phones appeal to business types and tech-heads.
>> Apple is going to make one that works for the iPod demographic.
>>
>> It's really dangerous to underestimate Apple here. To lift from a
>> post I made to CSMA a couple of weeks back:
>>
>> At first glance, in this market, it appears that Apple is going up
>> against well entrenched, serious competitors. Upon further
>> examination, however, one realizes that most of the players in this
>> space are, frankly, amateurs compared with Apple.
>>
>> Yes, I'm completely serious. Apple's established competitors in the
>> cell phone market (or the vendors they license software from) mostly
>> have backgrounds building simple embedded software systems for very
>> limited devices. A company that has been developing operating systems
>> for desktop computers for a few decades is in a far better position
>> to tackle the challenges of building a real platform for today's
>> mobile devices, which are no longer all that limited.
>>
>> Does anyone really see Nokia or Motorola or even Palm developing a
>> platform that can match OS X? Creating and maintaining a
>> desktop-class OS is not at all trivial. None of Apple's competitors
>> really has any serious experience with it except for Microsoft, and
>> Microsoft has its own problems.

> Thing is, that it's about time somebody who KNOWS
> how to do a user interface designed a phone.

Sure, but MS does and the result isnt that flash.

There's a variety of user interface approaches that are possible with a device
like a phone and its far from clear that what works with PCs is much use on
a phone, particularly one that doesnt even have a keyboard or mouse.

> I have a very simple Motorola V190. It's just a phone. No music
> player, no built-in camera, not even bluetooth. It is without a
> doubt the most illogically laid-out interface I've ever seen

Sure, but the same functionality Nokias are much better in that
regard. The most I ever have a problem with is which top level
menu a particular function that I hardly ever use like the timer is in etc.

> (who ever designed it must been on the Windows GUI design team).

Still leaves the DOS UI for dead.

> Its almost impossible to find anything in its menus and when you
> do, they are so illogically placed that you'll never remember where
> they are and every time you want to do "that" again, you've got to
> spend many minutes searching for it. Heck, I can't even find where
> they've hidden the phone's own number. I have to turn it off and
> back on again any time I need to note the phone's number,

Plenty of phones dont even show it then.

> because forget finding it in the phone's setup menus even though it IS there.
> David Pogue's TV show "Its all Geek to Me" on Discovery Science Channel
> did an episode on cell phones. From the people he encountered on the
> street, I get the idea that most phones are intrinsically user hostile.

Nokia's arent. But some things just have to be remembered, there's
nothing completely intuitive about how to say lock the keypad.