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Don't think the iPhone is a game changer?
- Thread starter thomasfxlt
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By far the best and easiest to use UI on any phone I have ever used or owned. It does quite a few things much better than every phone I have owned.
couldn't agree with you more ... everything it has is done better than other phones ... but it doesn't have everything that other phones have ... But i think that will just be a matter of time ...
This is exactly what I was going to say. You know you have a winner when competition starts to desperately try to copy it.
Didn't you heard Jobs when he was interviewed in this year Macworld? He said and I quote:
"You know the thing that makes us feel even better though than just the numbers, the customer feedback we get on the iPhone is just off the charts, people love their iPhones and I think to make a product thats so beloved you just know its gonna be really successful, people feel this way about it."
And its true, I really love my iPhone and couldn't live without it, Apple really nailed it in this one.
-Victor
"You know the thing that makes us feel even better though than just the numbers, the customer feedback we get on the iPhone is just off the charts, people love their iPhones and I think to make a product thats so beloved you just know its gonna be really successful, people feel this way about it."
And its true, I really love my iPhone and couldn't live without it, Apple really nailed it in this one.
-Victor
Hopefully you're joking.
There were dozens of touchscreen phones long before the iPhone was a wet dream. Some are far more powerful and have better displays. If it weren't for them, there'd be no cpus or radio chipsets for Apple to use in their device.
The difference is, they didn't have a super simplified UI or a Jobs to pretend it's all new.
The first part is pretty easy to fix. Just lobotomize them, removing as much extra functionality and options as possible. Like cut&paste, save page/image to disk, and a ton of other useful items.
The reasons why I like my iPhone are very simple. I have a Dell Axim X51 PDA that is not shabby by PDA standards. Large screen, big processor, replaceable battery, SD and CF slots, flash support, bluetooth, wifi, IR, etc....... Browser for the internet is horrible. You always have to scroll over to see the whole page and scrolling... don't even get me started on how hard it is to scroll in any useable way. Email programs are shotty at best. Programs for the PDA are built to kindergarden standards.
Then we have the iPhone. No flash support, no user replaceable battery, OS is locked. The speaker volume is low on the ear piece and the external is just as bad. Ergonomically it's a brick.... what ergonomics? ......BUT everything that it does is silky smooth and works perfectly. Seamless integration, intelligent design, even with the cons the pros are ten fold.
As a phone it's horrible. As a complete package it is amazing. I don't think anyone at Apple truly expected this to be a great phone. They needed to make it a phone so they could make it a go anywhere mobile because they needed the cell towers to be able to put the ability in it to go anywhere and get email and web. If they had not chosen a cell provider to use, they'd had to either build their own towers or negotiate the use of others, then they'd have to sell airtime and become a cell company. Too much work. Throw a mediocre phone feature in on the worlds best pocket portable and let the cell companies towers do the work for you of making it a go anywhere media device.
Then we have the iPhone. No flash support, no user replaceable battery, OS is locked. The speaker volume is low on the ear piece and the external is just as bad. Ergonomically it's a brick.... what ergonomics? ......BUT everything that it does is silky smooth and works perfectly. Seamless integration, intelligent design, even with the cons the pros are ten fold.
As a phone it's horrible. As a complete package it is amazing. I don't think anyone at Apple truly expected this to be a great phone. They needed to make it a phone so they could make it a go anywhere mobile because they needed the cell towers to be able to put the ability in it to go anywhere and get email and web. If they had not chosen a cell provider to use, they'd had to either build their own towers or negotiate the use of others, then they'd have to sell airtime and become a cell company. Too much work. Throw a mediocre phone feature in on the worlds best pocket portable and let the cell companies towers do the work for you of making it a go anywhere media device.
You will surely post links to this superior-released-months-before-iPhone "phones" you are referring to? And I mean touchcreen phones that actually could compete with the iPhone as you say, not some crappy pressure sensitive touchscreen which is too small to actually do anything useful.
Super simplified UI? How about a UI on a phone that actually works?
For goodness' sake, why torture yourself.
Ever try a different browser? Or an addon like PIE Plus? Either will give you fingertip scrolling. And smart one-column resizing. And cut&paste as well.
That's what third party apps are handy for... to fix stuff. Just as they might be used to give back missing functionality to the iPhone.
If the people who don't have an iPhone saw how much data the phone eats in auto processes such as checking email and such behind the scenes without your permission they'd never even consider trying to get around it.
I love my iPhone but the fact of the matter is we are in no position to even make these sort of statements. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as applications go.
With the upcoming release of the SDK were bound to see some dramatic improvements to the functionality of the iPhone. As amazing as it is now, its only going to get better.
With the upcoming release of the SDK were bound to see some dramatic improvements to the functionality of the iPhone. As amazing as it is now, its only going to get better.
I saw that earlier Thursday. I remember seeing a BlackBerry someone I knew owned a year or so ago. I couldn't figure out how to do ANYTHING on it. He had just gotten it for work and he had to learn it. It was ridiculous.
I have tested iPhones in an Apple store maybe 3 times for a total of 20 minutes. I could probably do most of the basic functions easily. THAT is why people flock to the device. As Steve Jobs pointed out at Macworld in '07, the touch screen is to the mobile phone what the mouse is to computers. Any computer function that doesn't allow you to use a mouse is extremely hard for most users. This is my main complaint with programming Cisco routers (and why I now think they will eventually give in to some sort of GUI or die).
Making something ridulously easy yet extremely useful = big sales, big bucks. For all the drawbacks the whiners on here point out time after time, don't forget that IT ISN'T EVEN A YEAR OLD. Rome wasn't built in a day, ya know. Go back and look at first generation iPods and tell me they weren't missing a ton of features (who had FireWire back then?).
Hm, that's weird. I just wrote an opposite post. I have a, I dunno, 1999 or 2000 Axim X5. The predecessor to your X51. What an awful, horribly outdated thing I remember it being. Funny though, that after using the iPhone for the last eight months or whatever its been, and realizing the Apple device wasn't capable of doing any of the few functions it does have 100%, I pulled the Axim back out to get through my work day, fired it up, and was surprised to remember just how useful and easy it is to use. The thing isn't noticably any slower than the iphone, but does everything, plays everything, holds more data, is expandable, lasts longer on a charge, has removable, spare, and high capacity batteries, 100% syncronization, total disk-access freedom, Cut/Copy/paste, has Wifi, Compact Flash, SD card slots, same slow internet, a voice recorder, can download and save off internet (not just the web) & email (& not just text & jpegs), infrared, bluetooth, a couple external keyboards, a finger-touchscreen, plus a stylus if desired (say for sketching), etc, blah blah blah... and yet, clean, simple and easy, and hadn't crashed in years. If I'd spent $250 on a cellphone Compact Flash card instead of $500 on the iPhone, this thing could be a cellphone too. Makes my iPhone look like a dumbed-down kids toy, and about as useful as one.
Since I found myself using the Axim for file transfers, Calendar, and To-Do lists, I now only use the iPhone as an overpriced cellphone, and a counterweight to my otherwise cockeyed belt.
One of these days my pants are going to give out, and I'll be standing pantsless in the middle of the office. I know it. And when they do, I'm just going to leave them lay there, and go buy a rotary phone.
Reminds me of a recent Gadget Guru blog, where Apple refused to fix his iPhone touchscreen gone bad (this is getting too common now!) because he mentioned he'd dropped it months before:
http://www.gadgetguru.com/DearMrJobs.htm
Went back to his old phone, and was surprised at all he'd missed.
Please go re-read your original post:
You said nothing about multi-touch. You appeared to claim that there were few touch screen phones before the iPhone, period.
For that matter, has every manufacturer come out with multi-touch screens because they're so useful? Nope. Heck, even the iPhone/touch only uses multi-touch for pinch-zoom (also allows double-tap) and the non-intuitive double-finger scrolling. So no, I wouldn't say that multi-touch has had an impact on the market.
Does every phone even have a touch screen now? Also nope. Far, far from it. They just get more press now when they do, is all.
The iPhone's biggest impact is two fold:
1) It has made touch friendly UIs more popular. This is good for everyone.
2) It has made decent browsers popular. This is also good for everyone. Good grief, it seems like a new browser is announced every day now!
Cheers, Kev
You said nothing about multi-touch. You appeared to claim that there were few touch screen phones before the iPhone, period.
For that matter, has every manufacturer come out with multi-touch screens because they're so useful? Nope. Heck, even the iPhone/touch only uses multi-touch for pinch-zoom (also allows double-tap) and the non-intuitive double-finger scrolling. So no, I wouldn't say that multi-touch has had an impact on the market.
Does every phone even have a touch screen now? Also nope. Far, far from it. They just get more press now when they do, is all.
The iPhone's biggest impact is two fold:
1) It has made touch friendly UIs more popular. This is good for everyone.
2) It has made decent browsers popular. This is also good for everyone. Good grief, it seems like a new browser is announced every day now!
Cheers, Kev
How about you go re-read the thread? That was my first post, the original one was by Luis. Also, you'll notice that I wasn't restricting my question to multi-touch 'phones, hence my saying "multi-touch phones/touch-screen 'phones with a genuinely great UI".
So far you've provided no evidence to substantiate your claim:
So, I'll assume you were making it up.
FWIW I agree with you about the browsers.
So far you've provided no evidence to substantiate your claim:
kdarling said:
So, I'll assume you were making it up.
FWIW I agree with you about the browsers.
(laughing) And I didn't mention great UIs. I said more powerful and better displays. E.g. faster CPUs with better radios, and VGA or better screens.
So we're both in need of reading glasses
I'm a bit jaded anyway. I've been programming touchscreens for decades, and industrial handhelds with them for about ten years.
We had flick-scrolling and big button matrix home screens and all of that junk, years and years ago. It's the commercial phones that were missing it, at least without third party changes.
Special effects are crowd pleasers, to be sure. That's something else the iPhone has demonstrated... and has allowed me to put them back in our own internal apps. Cool !
So we're both in need of reading glasses
I'm a bit jaded anyway. I've been programming touchscreens for decades, and industrial handhelds with them for about ten years.
We had flick-scrolling and big button matrix home screens and all of that junk, years and years ago. It's the commercial phones that were missing it, at least without third party changes.
Special effects are crowd pleasers, to be sure. That's something else the iPhone has demonstrated... and has allowed me to put them back in our own internal apps. Cool !
why? game changer as in it isn't just a new trend, it is THE NEW trend... touch screen with no keys... other than knockoff's all the other companies are still trying to match it...
yes it has its shortfalls but it won't for long... as i just read, evolution the iphone iwll evolve. and the updates (hopefully) won't cost us!
yes it has its shortfalls but it won't for long... as i just read, evolution
the iphone iwll evolve. and the updates (hopefully) won't cost us!So we're both in need of reading glasses
lol true.
I think we can probably agree that the iPhone has got awareness of that sort of UI feature into the general population for the first time. I like the iPhone, but to be honest I'm hoping someone comes up with a real serious competitor to drive iPhone progress forward. Competition has got to be a good thing.
I like the iPhone, but to be honest I'm hoping someone comes up with a real serious competitor to drive iPhone progress forward. Competition has got to be a good thing.
Is Apple a competition driven company? I think that's a topic worth discussing. My opinion is that they are not.