Understanding the root of Apple's design is how you win.
The Apple iPhone is more about the experience than the technology
The move by Verizon and Apple to release the iPhone 4 to the unwashed Verizon masses is great, albeit expected. (We all knew it was going to happen, we just didn‘t know when.) I’m an AT&T iPhone customer, and while I’m happy with my service–but never the bill–I’m excited to see long overdue competition on the iPhone front. My guess is that in 2012 there will be a third suitor invited to the high school dance with Apple.
So it’s great that Verizon users are going to get access to the iPhone. Good for them. But there are a few snags, including the much discussed network problem that Verizon faces: iPhone users on their network won’t be able to do both data and voice at the same time. Is that really such a big deal?
I’m remembering when I was still using a Blackberry and I started seeing the iPhone commercials. In almost every one, Apple was showing off the iPhone’s ability to do both voice and data. Honestly, I thought the idea was pretty pointless. If I’m talking on the phone I’m not really surfing the web, or vice versa.
But now that I have an iPhone I actually use that capability now and then, so 1 for Apple, 0 for me.
But I ask again, is this really such a big deal?
After facing a problem with my audio receiver at the house, which I’ll delve into more in a second, I’ve decided that I missed the point. And, at least for now, so has Verizon.
So, I have a Harmon Kardon AVR 247 for the receiver at my house. Unless you have just a TV and cable box, you probably have something similar. The AVR 247 lets me plug our digital cable, HD-DVD, AM/FM, and iPod into a single unit, and using a nice little Logitech Harmony remote control (highly recommended); I can easily transition from one input to another. This is great not just for normal daily Comedy Central fest, but it works great at parties since I can plug in the iPod and pipe the music throughout the house and in our back patio. Great stuff.
But there is one major defect: The AVR 247 always sets the iPod to the last song it played when plugged in. Frankly, I don’t know how or why this is happening. I just know it’s super annoying. And I haven’t figured out a way to disable this “feature”. And trust me, the design engineers at Harmon Kardon considered this a feature. But it’s not. In the iPod world, this is a horrible bug. Why? Because it defeats the concept behind the iPod.
MP3 players have been around for a while, predating the iPod. So what made the iPod so great? A great interface? Sure. Good sound quality? You bet. A way to seamlessly transition your music listening from one environment to another? Exactly.
What Apple is really good at is in making your experience seamless. Whatever that experience is. And with the iPod, you have a device that works so well, and is so portable, that you naturally want to bring it around with you. If you’re listening to an audio book in your car, chances are high that you’ll bring the iPod with you when you go inside or park the car outside the airport before a trip.
But the AVR 247 breaks that model. It stops the ability for the iPod to allow you to seamlessly transition. So that’s clearly a design flaw in the AVR 247.
Verizon is committing the same sin, although in this case it’s more a limitation of existing technology rather than an outright design flaw. (Although AT&T customers would probably argue that it is a design flaw in Verizon’s network.) With a Verizon iPhone, you lose the ability to seamlessly, without really thinking about it, transition back and forth from one mode (talking) to another, that of using the Internet (surfing, searching, sharing).
This may seem like a small technical limitation, and perhaps it is, but from a usability and interface design perspective, it breaks the Apple model: Don’t make people think about their technology as they navigate through life.
I think this is a great lesson for software developers and interface designers in general. What are the small concessions you make to move a release forward that end up having a big impact on the overall elegance of your solution?
