Wii vs. iPhone
My old friend Cliff had some thoughts about the Wii and iPhone that I thoroughly disagree with, so I thought I'd respond. I started this as a comment on his blog, but it got so long I thought it would work better here.
I've never used an iPhone so I can't speak from experience, but I have to disagree with a few of the things Cliff's said in his post.
First of all, he writes that Apple had the opportunity to make using a phone simpler, but didn't. "They just made them prettier."
Granted, the iPhone UI is pretty, but "just" prettier? Don't belittle pretty. One of the reasons for Apple's success in several areas is that their products are visually appealing, and in many ways ugly products and UI are disincentives to use them. I know there are some possibly useful pieces of software that I don't use simply because they're ugly. Appearance is an integral part of any user experience, and products that are attractive are more usable, and used more. In this day and age, it's amazing to me that many, many companies still don't get that.
I suppose I agree that a multitouch screen doesn't make basic telephony features much easier, but let's face it, basic telephony is pretty easy to begin with. Picking someone's name and phone number off a list to call them is pretty darned easy. Even so, Apple did make it easier (at least from my perspective since my phone is a horrible Sony-Ericksson T68i). Hardest part of calling someone? Scrolling and keying through the address book and finding the name. That flick-your-finger scrolling looks pretty sweet to me. And fun to play with too. I'll bet people will sit and just flick that list up and down, jabbing their finger on the phone to stop it suddenly, and get it going really fast and watch it bounce back when it hits the end. I say again: People are going to play with that feature. When was the last time you played with a basic phone UI element because it was fun?
The claim about the iPod interface not being responsible for it's success is just flat out wrong, and I speak with some authority on this point. I spent good couple of years of my life working on iTunes support for third party audio players, so I've worked with most of the competing products at one time or another and I've seen first hand how truly awful they were. And they were truly awful years after Apple showed everyone how to do it. Even Creative, who apparently "invented" the iPod interface couldn't resist filling it full of confusing crap and extraneous, half-broken features. Even without iTunes and the Store, the iPod is a brilliant piece of consumer design, and I believe this had a strong bearing on its success. And I note parenthetically that the iPhone's scrolling feature has vastly improved on the iPod's interface.
(That's not to say Cliff's wrong about the "package" being important; iTunes is certainly a success factor for the iPod. But a great many now-defunct audio players also worked with iTunes, so on that score, at least, those players were on a near-equal footing with the iPod, and they're mostly gone now.)
What the Wii does that makes it so great, is that it enables a much more direct mapping from the real environment to the virtual one. You can use nearly the same body motions for Wii bowling, golf, tennis as you do in the real world. (I don't own a Wii, but I'd call myself a wannabii :-). This makes the Wii appealing to people who haven't trained themselves to use game controllers*, which are just about the most awkward, complex horribly designed UI devices that exist today. This is certainly a great leap forward for sports and FPS style games, but it's not clear to me that it's going to make, say, your Tetris experience dramatically better.
Ultimately, I think that using a phone is more like playing Tetris than bowling. You can't really leverage the natural body motion involved in three-way calling. If the iPhone is less of an interface leap than the Wii, it's because current telephony experiences suck less than video game UIs, not because Apple dropped the ball on the iPhone's UI.
JMTC
* It's interesting to note that the Wii controller enables you to use natural body motions, but doesn't require it. Watching my nephew play Wii tennis is like watching a prairie dog having a petit mal. Whatever that means.
I've never used an iPhone so I can't speak from experience, but I have to disagree with a few of the things Cliff's said in his post.
First of all, he writes that Apple had the opportunity to make using a phone simpler, but didn't. "They just made them prettier."
Granted, the iPhone UI is pretty, but "just" prettier? Don't belittle pretty. One of the reasons for Apple's success in several areas is that their products are visually appealing, and in many ways ugly products and UI are disincentives to use them. I know there are some possibly useful pieces of software that I don't use simply because they're ugly. Appearance is an integral part of any user experience, and products that are attractive are more usable, and used more. In this day and age, it's amazing to me that many, many companies still don't get that.
I suppose I agree that a multitouch screen doesn't make basic telephony features much easier, but let's face it, basic telephony is pretty easy to begin with. Picking someone's name and phone number off a list to call them is pretty darned easy. Even so, Apple did make it easier (at least from my perspective since my phone is a horrible Sony-Ericksson T68i). Hardest part of calling someone? Scrolling and keying through the address book and finding the name. That flick-your-finger scrolling looks pretty sweet to me. And fun to play with too. I'll bet people will sit and just flick that list up and down, jabbing their finger on the phone to stop it suddenly, and get it going really fast and watch it bounce back when it hits the end. I say again: People are going to play with that feature. When was the last time you played with a basic phone UI element because it was fun?
The claim about the iPod interface not being responsible for it's success is just flat out wrong, and I speak with some authority on this point. I spent good couple of years of my life working on iTunes support for third party audio players, so I've worked with most of the competing products at one time or another and I've seen first hand how truly awful they were. And they were truly awful years after Apple showed everyone how to do it. Even Creative, who apparently "invented" the iPod interface couldn't resist filling it full of confusing crap and extraneous, half-broken features. Even without iTunes and the Store, the iPod is a brilliant piece of consumer design, and I believe this had a strong bearing on its success. And I note parenthetically that the iPhone's scrolling feature has vastly improved on the iPod's interface.
(That's not to say Cliff's wrong about the "package" being important; iTunes is certainly a success factor for the iPod. But a great many now-defunct audio players also worked with iTunes, so on that score, at least, those players were on a near-equal footing with the iPod, and they're mostly gone now.)
What the Wii does that makes it so great, is that it enables a much more direct mapping from the real environment to the virtual one. You can use nearly the same body motions for Wii bowling, golf, tennis as you do in the real world. (I don't own a Wii, but I'd call myself a wannabii :-). This makes the Wii appealing to people who haven't trained themselves to use game controllers*, which are just about the most awkward, complex horribly designed UI devices that exist today. This is certainly a great leap forward for sports and FPS style games, but it's not clear to me that it's going to make, say, your Tetris experience dramatically better.
Ultimately, I think that using a phone is more like playing Tetris than bowling. You can't really leverage the natural body motion involved in three-way calling. If the iPhone is less of an interface leap than the Wii, it's because current telephony experiences suck less than video game UIs, not because Apple dropped the ball on the iPhone's UI.
JMTC
* It's interesting to note that the Wii controller enables you to use natural body motions, but doesn't require it. Watching my nephew play Wii tennis is like watching a prairie dog having a petit mal. Whatever that means.
posted by Brent at 12:25 AM
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