What makes the iPhone so successful
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Marketting has to have something to do with it, but Apple stuff tends to be designed to be user friendly. In fact, reading your post, I think you just said the same thing.
Chris Maunder wrote:
I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
Every time I use Vista, I am reminded of how user hostile it is. I am hoping Weven is better. A friend of mine has an Android phone, and she can't work out how to use it. Is it really that hard ( that is, to write something as user friendly as the iPhone is ) ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
-
Marketting has to have something to do with it, but Apple stuff tends to be designed to be user friendly. In fact, reading your post, I think you just said the same thing.
Chris Maunder wrote:
I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
Every time I use Vista, I am reminded of how user hostile it is. I am hoping Weven is better. A friend of mine has an Android phone, and she can't work out how to use it. Is it really that hard ( that is, to write something as user friendly as the iPhone is ) ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista, give it a try.
Christian Graus wrote:
. Is it really that hard ( that is, to write something as user friendly as the iPhone is ) ?
I suspect that company's are scared that they might violate a patent or two.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
-
Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista, give it a try.
Christian Graus wrote:
. Is it really that hard ( that is, to write something as user friendly as the iPhone is ) ?
I suspect that company's are scared that they might violate a patent or two.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista, give it a try.
I will, I am intending on buying a Weven notebook next time I am in the US ( b.c it's half the price of buying it here ).
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
I suspect that company's are scared that they might violate a patent or two.
You're claiming that Apple invented the only possible way to have a user friendly system ? I don't mean that things have to look exactly like the iPhone, although I do think it's worth asking why Apple were the ones who were able to design something so usable. I mean, why can't Microsoft take the time to design something that's easy to use ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
-
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista, give it a try.
I will, I am intending on buying a Weven notebook next time I am in the US ( b.c it's half the price of buying it here ).
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
I suspect that company's are scared that they might violate a patent or two.
You're claiming that Apple invented the only possible way to have a user friendly system ? I don't mean that things have to look exactly like the iPhone, although I do think it's worth asking why Apple were the ones who were able to design something so usable. I mean, why can't Microsoft take the time to design something that's easy to use ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Christian Graus wrote:
You're claiming that Apple invented the only possible way to have a user friendly system ?
No. I'm claiming that other companies are running scared of the mighty Apple when it comes to ease of use apps.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Just bought one for my Wife, her answer to the question is a lot shorter. It's cute and pretty and does what she wants it to do! I like your answer better.
-
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista, give it a try.
I will, I am intending on buying a Weven notebook next time I am in the US ( b.c it's half the price of buying it here ).
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
I suspect that company's are scared that they might violate a patent or two.
You're claiming that Apple invented the only possible way to have a user friendly system ? I don't mean that things have to look exactly like the iPhone, although I do think it's worth asking why Apple were the ones who were able to design something so usable. I mean, why can't Microsoft take the time to design something that's easy to use ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
-
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista, give it a try.
I will, I am intending on buying a Weven notebook next time I am in the US ( b.c it's half the price of buying it here ).
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
I suspect that company's are scared that they might violate a patent or two.
You're claiming that Apple invented the only possible way to have a user friendly system ? I don't mean that things have to look exactly like the iPhone, although I do think it's worth asking why Apple were the ones who were able to design something so usable. I mean, why can't Microsoft take the time to design something that's easy to use ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Christian Graus wrote:
I mean, why can't Microsoft take the time to design something that's easy to use ?
MS is the 800lb gorilla. They were so used to simply forcing people to use their products that they lost the fire needed to do things in simple, elegant ways. They used to be different. But when they became the defacto OS of the world they lost the need to fight or even innovate much. The business world liked stability and familiarity. Only now that the business world is being populated by people that like new things, like intuitive design and want speed are they seeing the need to get off their duffs and move. They've got divisions that are as good at marketing as Apple. They have divisions as good at making fans as Apple, but these divisions aren't really in charge of the big stuff. (X-box is the noteworthy one) Weven is a good step in the right direction. But until ALL their people stop thinking that they don't need to listen, they aren't infalliable and they need to compete to survive, they are in trouble. They can't expand out of their market with Google and Apple dominating 2 of the markets they want and Sony and Nintendo fighting them in another. Heck, the biggest threat to the iPhone is a Google product. When Microsoft is called an "also-ran" in a market something is wrong. So why can't they do it? Cause they have a corporate culture that says they don't have to. They fix that and we might be really impressed.
-
So MS's inability to get patent cases moved out of Texas is their downfall? ;) Seriously, someone needs to put the kibosh on Texas juries handing anyone with a questionable patent a judgment.
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
New Year's resolution is it there Chris? Is next year going to be the age of touchy-scrolly-feely-designy Code Project, where articles look like articles, posts look like like posts and small green aliens called bob look like small green aliens called bob? CP Apps - you publish an API and people write Apps for That! (actually, you should do an iPhone app, and since it was my idea I want a 20% cut). Yeah, Apple do design well. Graphic Design, though, is a completely different discipline, skill set and talent than software design that not everyone can do, and not that many of those that can do it well. Which, of course, means those resources have to be brought in and that costs money. Money that could be better spent on making sure the software actually works as it's supposed to rather than adding "visual clues" all over the place. On the other hand, I'm all for a nice combination of both.
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Steve Jobs may be an exacting tyrant bent on ruling his cult with single minded determination approaching hubris, but he makes sure to do it with sytle and with creative people. Differences in MS and Apple: Ballmer is crazy and could care less about his customers. He hates and mocks his competition. He uses his employees. Jobs is a tyrant and could care less about his employees. He mocks his competition. He loves his fans/customers(they keep him young because he bathes in ... wait KSS).
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
It really is a joy to use ... plus the apps of course. Don't forget the apps! My current favourite is RedLaser, the barcode scanning app (it annoys the hell out of sales staff when you walk into a shop, scan a product and point out that it's cheaper on their web site!) I am still addicted to my iPhone 6 months later. Got the wife one for Christmas (which, sucker that I am, actually gave her weeks ago) and she loves it (and previously always bought Sony Ericsson phones.) I have a 16GB 3G model - not the 3GS - and my only complaint is I could do with more storage as I use the iPod feature *all the time*. My contract expires in September, so I'll no doubt upgrade like the fanboy I have become. Apple FTW!
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Nobody looks at Chuck Norris.
.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001 -
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Yeah. Too bad it's overpriced and on the ATT network. :( /rant on ATT has got to be the crappiest excuse for a cell phone network I've ever had the misfortune of being acquainted with. You know that Verizon commercial "we've got a map for that"? Verizon isn't lying about ATT's 3G coverage. Their non-3g coverage ain't so hot either once you get outside of a large metropolitan area. Sorry, first and foremost, I need my phone to be, well, a phone. A phone that gets service everywhere I go. I can live without the iPhone until "there's a map for that". /rant off
-Sean ---- Fire Nuts
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Thats funny, stumbling about a matter like this here @ CP. But you're definitely right. A couple of months ago, I made my dream come true and ordered a HTC Touch HD. Whats left is pure disappointment. Nothing really works. Phone calls, the real basics, are hard to make. Bluetooth works crappy, W-LAN looses settings again and again. No, that can't be the idea of a 'Smart-Phone'. I had a chance to play with a I-Phone twice for a couple of minutes. I don't like Apple, the way they are forcing users into certain decisions, the way they prescribe to use their stuff ... and that's why it is so damned hard for me to admit this: there is no such thing as an 'I-Phone killer' - it is simply (at the present) unreachable.
-
Yeah. Too bad it's overpriced and on the ATT network. :( /rant on ATT has got to be the crappiest excuse for a cell phone network I've ever had the misfortune of being acquainted with. You know that Verizon commercial "we've got a map for that"? Verizon isn't lying about ATT's 3G coverage. Their non-3g coverage ain't so hot either once you get outside of a large metropolitan area. Sorry, first and foremost, I need my phone to be, well, a phone. A phone that gets service everywhere I go. I can live without the iPhone until "there's a map for that". /rant off
-Sean ---- Fire Nuts
/rant on Oh yea?!?!?! Wait, this is spot on. We use AT&T and the only reason we do is because we were going to get iPhones a month or two after we swtiched. This is, of course, before me losing my job. Using an LG Neon has been a pain. Dropped calls constantly, calls never happening, voicemail randomly showing up a week late, and calls from Satan at all hours of the day. Living withing visual distance of a cell tower should not mean bad coverage. /rant off
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
To me it's responsiveness.
While I don't have one, I've seen people use them, and that is exactly what I am impressed with as well. It just flows, rather than what "the rest" seem to do, which is "klunk." Marc
I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner
-
To me it's responsiveness. I've been playing with one for a couple of days and I've been trying to nail down exactly what it is that makes it so easy to use. High on the list is the personality of the UI. It's friendly. It's familiar. A compass looks like a compass, the time looks like an old-fashioned timer and is designed to be spun using your fingers. This is huge. Then I started comparing my touch-screen notebook with the iPhone. Scrolling through a browser page is very jerky. Resizing a page shows jerks and flashes. The laptop is a tablet, so spinning the screen 90 degrees makes the whole screen go dark then redraw, window by painful window. The iPhone scrolls perfectly smoothly. When you change orientation it morphs beautifully from landscape to portrait. When I need to zoom there absolutely zero lag in redrawing. Compared to my Blackberry, or a Windows Mobile device the contrast is night and day. I think we as software developers, and Microsoft and RIM as the authors of OSs, need to go into the room of mirrors and have a good, long look at ourselves.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
I don't know what actually goes on at Apple, but it *seems* (to me at least) that they are asking "what sucks here, and how can we fix it", they brainstorm some ideas, weed out the unworkable ones, preumably by actually performing user testing of some sort, and then deliver some sort of solution. The solution is by no means perfect, but it's a good start. Microsoft, and it seems a lot of the rest of the development community, asks "what's some cool new tech for me and/or my team to play with", and then proceed to come up with more tech-du-jour, which solves few existing problems, creates new problems, but does serve to entertain those who like to play with new tech. Again, while Apple's solutions are by no means perfect, while the rest of the development community is busy navel gazing, they end up walking away with all the accolades. The irony of this is that Apple is a horrible company to develop for, as a third party developer they could largely care less about you, or at least that's historically been true, perhaps with the opening up of the AppStore, that will slowly change, but I won't hold my breath.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
-
Steve Jobs may be an exacting tyrant bent on ruling his cult with single minded determination approaching hubris, but he makes sure to do it with sytle and with creative people. Differences in MS and Apple: Ballmer is crazy and could care less about his customers. He hates and mocks his competition. He uses his employees. Jobs is a tyrant and could care less about his employees. He mocks his competition. He loves his fans/customers(they keep him young because he bathes in ... wait KSS).
ragnaroknrol wrote:
they keep him young because he bathes in
Ketchup? Lemon flavored olive oil? Mango and Passion fruit Jello? Organic Peanut Butter?
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
-
It really is a joy to use ... plus the apps of course. Don't forget the apps! My current favourite is RedLaser, the barcode scanning app (it annoys the hell out of sales staff when you walk into a shop, scan a product and point out that it's cheaper on their web site!) I am still addicted to my iPhone 6 months later. Got the wife one for Christmas (which, sucker that I am, actually gave her weeks ago) and she loves it (and previously always bought Sony Ericsson phones.) I have a 16GB 3G model - not the 3GS - and my only complaint is I could do with more storage as I use the iPod feature *all the time*. My contract expires in September, so I'll no doubt upgrade like the fanboy I have become. Apple FTW!
Rob Caldecott wrote:
I have a 16GB 3G model - not the 3GS - and my only complaint is I could do with more storage as I use the iPod feature *all the time*.
I got the 8GB iPhone and use Simplyfy Media to stream the music, 200+ CDs collection, from my house to my iPhone that way I don't have to keep any music on the iPhone itself. If I ever go somewhere that doesn't have Edge/3G or WiFi, then I will load the music on the iPhone. Pandora is my 2nd favorite music app. C