Handful of Nothing

Ok this is something already old, but it’s great to see.

The thing that keeps me amazing about the IPhone it’s not the UI itself. It’s the company’s culture of molding th hardware to allow the software and not the opposite. It’s focusing on the user experience than in the hardware experience. That’s for me is human software. Of course being a UI designer makes it easier to say that, but again lan kay’s tagline is becoming more and more the extra-bonus for companies in such competitive markets:

“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

And enter now the Iphone competitors…

Now, we will face the Iphone tsunami wave. There will be a lot of devices doing the competition. The sad part is that the in the beginning they will be just fake things. Why fake? Simply : they will be just “launchers” like HTC phones. They are just a set of screens to “wrap” the real application, but in the end, that UI experience is poor, because not all the UI was done like that. So, not that the UI for those guys is BAD, the problem is that it’s just a placebo.

This is what can be done when the company just add a better sensitivity sensor to it’s touchscreen, but doesn’t have the freedom or power to create the whole experience. Nice screens, but then…

In the end you get the same, old fashioned ui from Windows CE or the other OS host. So, it doesn’t matter that much if you managed to make a Cube transition, or a nice blocked photo based Address book. If in the end what you get is the old, ugly thing:

To close the matter… it’s time to push your requirements for products people!

Notice the young singer Céu, from Brazil on the CoverFlow UI on the Iphone AD! Nice surprise. Go to apple.com to see the AD is high quality quicktime movies.