Engadget has the usual full cover up of the event. I was amazed because I only expected a xcode based tool, but they again come with a end to end solution (also controversial : 100 bucks for the dev license).
If the community did a incredible amount of apps with a hacked sdk, let’s see what the real apple developers will do with that (we saw some)
What pisses me off, is that is not about the apple thing, but the apple way to promote design more, and how this create a very powerful community because even a simple app looks nice. Looks does matter. Looks does matter!
Well, after what some considered the “biggest” iPhone review, I really tried going back to my previous cellphone. The problem is that like an friend said, when you are not using, and making critics to something new you maybe mistake a little bit what the old one was. So I admit: I was not able to return to my N95. Here goes the why’s :
I used the web a lot, and the browser (even being webkit) just feels awkards enough to make me hate it.
It tries to “shrink” the pages, to fit better in the screen. This approach is just not as good as showing the minimap and choosing the section. So using my blog’s wordpress administration was just impossible.
Not enough ram to multitask. the iPhone do crashes a lot, but it’s incredible that I’m able to open 5 or 6 pages on the iphone, while opening 2 on my n95 will make the browser crashes. Actually it looks that some memory is leaking because the behavior is not well predicted. I do make sure nothing was “open” when opening the browser.
Flash is not present in both browsers, but the javascript in the iPhone worked better than in the N95
The music application works fine, but (when on the headphones) the quality is not as good as in the iPhone
Video playblack (specially in the plane) was also better in the iPhone
The email application on the iPhone is simpler, the settings are synchronized and has rich html email that doesn’t crash.
So I still miss the hardware keys for music, the powerful speakers and the better reception as a phone. But I grew dependent on the superior browser, superior email client and the iPod application.
I was really hoping to be satisfied once I returned to my previous, much powerful phone but it really didn’t happen. The iPhone still have all the problems I said in the last review but it also brought the best multimedia and internet suite packed in an enjoyable UI experience.
To close: I’m not saying that the iPhone is a overall superior phone, but as I started the previous post about it I end this one : For a hardcore internet and multimedia consumer it really fits better. And I realized that I just don’t use the phone that much.
Well, this deserves a post because it’s exactly what I have been saying in all my talks over the iPhone. It really takes more than just “let’s do something to mimic” and what we see in the market is a bunch of frankstein trying to awfully copycat the phone without having the thing that really makes what the iPhone is: A guy who understand that user experience is everything, and that pushes it down into the company’s organization in such a way that what you get in the end is a device that was able to in it’s first incarnation set all the mobile manufactures 2 (I would say more) years behind when it comes to user experience (I already said that feature wise and hardware wise it sucks).
To be able to produce inspired software, the top boss has to believe in great user experience and kick everybody’s ass to get it done. In huge companies a VP will do, but management below that level will be sidelined when trying to implement proper interaction architecture and usability processes.
In the meanwhile what we get is a lot of FranksteinPhones.
My highlights from his texts :
on Features :
This circle of dependancy is diabolic. Users and features are like children and candy. They never say no, even if stomach pains will surely follow. For developers, it is the easiest thing hand out. New features are a commodity. If you have no clue how to improve your software, you can always add new features.
Incrementally improving a mobile so that it leaves the cluster and approaches the iPhone is impossible. It is actually easier to join the iPhone’s position from above, below or the right. The only way to get there, is to jump.
If like me you love quicksilver, and can’t live without it, you probably running across the internet trying to find out why the site is down. So here goes the salvation (thanks to the guy responsible for that):
Quicksilver and it’s plugin are available, just download install quicksilver and unzip the plugins to the /Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/ folder
Well, I was reading the frankstein review in Gizmodo and I was surprised (or not) by people reactions to one comment from the reviewers :
“It’s easier to find stuff on leopard than on Vista”
people were REALLY pissed off, saying that Vista’s search was incredible and that it was not right to say that. I think people lost the point. Is really not about the search but actually about 2 new features: The cover flow and quicklook integrated into finder.
This “small features” actually provide you a “visual” glance based search that no metadata based engine can provide you. I was already happy flickering through my backups looking for things and when a suspect appears I can just press space bar to see if is really what I want.
People appears to : 1) misunderstand the comment, 2) forget about our physical capabilities: We can just flick pretty fast across our files and if something that resembles (in case of pictures, presentations, pdfs) appears when can just slow down and fine tune the search.
Why I think that’s very important? Simple, I believe there’s a lot of people like me out there, that sometimes has lost images (no names, tags, nothing) lost ppts, that you can’t just remember any information to search for. You are just “trying to figure out what you really want” and this ” visual search” not only gives you this but also helps you find things there could be lost. Of course this does not replace a conventional search, but the search result in Leopard gives you this view also only in the results so you can combine a regular search with a glance search.
Killer. Incredible focus on find and browse your stuff. Incredible focus on keeping things organized.
Along with faster, and a bunch of small details that solved a lot of annoying issues, that’s how a define what I like in Leopard.
Ok, so I took the chances (actually I read all reviews) and decided to try leopard. All data backed up, everything set, I prefer the clean install (always) and one hour later voila, I have Leopard running.
It does indeed feels faster, and I like the additions (spaces, stacks, the new finder etc) but one thing bothered me a lot: I was not able to read my addressbook backup file ; /
Let’s see how this cat goes over the week, and I will try to post a brief summary of what’s really good about for people with profiles that a similar to mine.
And as pointed by Marcelo, here goes my screenshot :
Warnings: This is a very long and personal review*. I don’t go into the issues like closed to applications, locked, or those that people are tired of reading about.I look to the device in my daily life and why it’s going to be replaced by the old one. So you can start reading it, and if you decide to go on, just click the keep reading button.
detail: I’m not saying here that the Nokias (that I compare the iPhone with) are flawless. Actually they have so much faults that I ended up using the iPhone. Small RAM, sluggish UI, hidden multitask, confuse IA, confuse configuration, long and wide road for simple features are also problematic in the S60 devices, but they actually are great as phones, and you will understand that the “change” is related to a series of critical failures.
Another forgotten detail: I now have both versions available, and I’m aware of the 1.1.1 news and the critics still valid for that version too.
Well, now after a while really* using the iPhone as my daily phone I got to one conclusion: for me, it sucks. Not hard, but it sucks. The reasons to that conclusion could be a little to “specific” for an user (me) but at some point an clarify IMHO where Apple screws nicely the device. I will let clear here that the review is based on a kind of user (me, multitask, music oriented, internet user, cares for UI speed and so on)
It’s also clear to me that fan boys (and not that much fan boys) can start flames about this problems being small, or any other apologies, but the fact is that Apple is far from being perfect in the product itself, but it’s for sure the best marketing company in the world. People accepts the product’s fault and worst start to blindly advocate for it. Come one people, if you want Apple (and the whole industry) to improve, the first thing to do is complain.
So, I’m a tech guy, or a early adopter and I really like to use one device. It’s convergence time right? Sure it is, and from the fact that I’m a interaction designer I cannot say anything less but “omg, this is amazing” in the matters of the UI. While it still has a lot of problems its simply a really advanced, state preserving, no-need-to-teach how to multi-task ui, that as far as I can imagine was simply the result of a lot of research about: What do you think is boring or could be better on your phone?
Well, for the first time I will totally disagree with people comments on the latest announce from s60. It doesn’t look (based on the movie) like a iPhone rip off. It looks a lot more like nokia and builds on top of s60 to offer the touchscreen people were expecting to have on s60. Before that only the 77xx phones had touchscreen on the Nokia portfolio but they didn’t see too much light =)
What I think stills a little bit too close with the iPhone is the concept phone shown, as you can see in this second video:
(the video also show the availability of sensors, and the most important : flash lite 3 with video support : rocks hard)
As far as I think the “home” button is crucial (instead of a enigmatic menu “icon” button) again, making it rounded and with a white circle can draw too much bad attention to the device.
Again, Nokia is “reacting” quite well to the critics made to it’s industrial design. Look at those announced Xpress music phones :
This guy in particular is so sexy (you need to hold one in your hands to understand better) that there is no particular reason other than bad feedback to Nokia use any of the key design elements on the iPhone at least in a particular first touch based model.
Another thing that keeps me thinking is : how Nokia is going to provide a very good stylus & finger driven interface. If you say that you’re going to support fingers and stylus one thing is a hit : every single thing should be accessible by the finger (as it needs to be bigger) and of course you can easily replace the finger by the stylus (and use some n800 pressure tricks to pull down the correct keyboard for the task). BUT please the whole ui should REALLY take care of these small details to do not fall in the N800 problem : Some things are finger driven, and react like that and others aren’t. They are simply “stylus” only and they will be quite hard to use without one (system tray etc). Apart from that the shown interaction of pop down menus also can be quite complicated for a main screen menu. Unfortunately there’s one thing about touchscreen devices: you need to use the whole screen to give users options in a high level menu. It just doesn’t make sense to organize them in pop down menus, and expect the user to : select, scroll and then select again in a list that gives you a little bit more probability of pressing the wrong option. (Of course this is based on a low quality you tube video, but it’s my impression as ui designer).
Look how small this list is for a real world finger interaction
I really want Nokia to do one thing right: The phone part. “One hand calling” shouldn’t even be there because it’s not a must it’s mandatory on any phone. Even the iPhone with a “crap” phone part do that. So how Nokia can prevent some of the worst iPhone errors (like at least 2 touchs to go back to the phone in the first version, fixed on the second part), bad call log (no distiction between missed, incoming and out calls ) - (more on the review). Nokia already has this on the phones, so it’s time to just put on even better use.
Apart from some comments, I Really like the flip the phone thing to silencing it, but if I was granted the permission to copy one thing from the iPhone (or from the phone who did it before) it would be simple switch for silence. This is truly a great feature from the iPhone, and makes me pretty happy just to switch it instead of pressing the power button (on top of my n95), if it locked I need to unlock it first, then press power button again, then comes the menu, I need to go down a few times and press select. It’s just too much effort to do something that should be as simple as switching a button.
Apart from that, one detail funny when thinking of Canola was the scrolling screen. If you observe well, there’s a selection, that keeps itself there while the list is scrolling, and then “magically” moves to a touched item. While I understand the goal of “hey let’s put a selection here to allow the user to browse with a 4-way rocker, I also see the design complications of such choice, specially when you are using fingers and have a lot of selection based screen transitions. So just for a notice, we killed that on Canola (sorry hardware guys) you’re a really going to make some lcd pretty dirty.
So, it seems that the market leader is fast on the track to regain the position as UI ruler in the mobile world, and I really expect that this turns out to be the best thing the iPhone did : Woke up the incredible UI sense that Nokia left back in the navikey era.
Why I cheer for that? Expect to see my full “ok, after using the iPhone here’s my review” post about why the iPhone is a INCREDIBLE (but crippled) internet tablet, but a really, really poor phone, a crippled ipod, and a particularly bad communication device, and why I really want a up to the iPhone-UI for a Nokia device.
So, cross fingers and let’s cheer for a whole industry improvement on the UI side.
ps: A observation goes to the fact that the video is almost 60% of the lady running on her life and only 40% or less of UI action. I know Nokia wants to make clear : That it is not stopped waiting, and that the older video is not really the UI plan, but the video just looks again a little bit like a placebo. A fake or vaporUI just to calm down the ones who are asking for a “punch” back from Nokia. Nokia knows how to do it, and will do it in the right time given the actual scenario. Round 2… fight!
update (also in comments) to the “do we need stylus & finger driven ui”:
“I also think so, BUT as there is a demand for finger, there’s also a demand for stylus based(or I will supposed there is because I don’t have any data on that).
I know that a lot of people gets quite upset with the fact that your screens goes REALLY dirty when using fingers. Come one.. I have an iPhone and a N800 and they both are really dirty. So there’s no real way today of keeping your screen clean unless you use a stylus (but other problems arise from that)
So After physical feedback, the killer think will not be a UI will be a screen with some crazy advanced nano technology that keeps things clean =)”
I knew some of the complains I had were not “simple a bunch of users bothered” it was really a matter. Also the fact that return to music controls could be a drag also needed a shortcut.
Enters the ” Double click on home button ”
If you double click it it will take either to your favorites or to your music shortcuts. What if I’m listening to music and want to make a call? Still need to go the regular way.
Well, this just show how smart (not saying that the update via itunes is working nicely 100%) is the format of providing a solid simple device, and add features along, as you need to keep the users with you, even if your device is a old lady in feature wise matters.
I know the other manufactures had done this (SE with OTA firmware update, Nokia with the PC suite update) but the fact that they have hundreds of models would become impossible to do what apple is doing thus this will count as positive to the end users that don’t see the “whole” picture (and should not see, just look for a device that fits their needs).
This is were I get pissed: another issue that is going to be known as an Apple advantage, but is only possible because of the Iphone and Apple’s nature: a reduced line of products. Less hardware = less software = less problem = better solutions in the same time the others need to do the same for 100x more hardware versions.
Ok, A lot has been said but I haven’t heard this too much lately so it’s also good to show the iPhone downsides, and believe me: they are quite serious.
Why? Because the phone in the iPhone brings a heavy task to the device: To be someone’s phone. This implies in 2 basic things :
1) Good reception, thus good quality on your calls
2) Good volume
The iphone is CRAP in these 2 statements when compared to any of my Nokia phones. I have been walking on a low signal place with both phones and the iphone is out 50% of the time. A shame.
In the volume matters, the iPhone speakers is at the limite of usable (for voice) and it’s quite lame for music listening.
So, if you have a carrier that is “not that good”, but your Nokia/SE/Samsung phone works ok on it think twice before changing to an unlocked iPhone because you’re going to be surprised how many times it will be without carrier coverage.
Also, if you are into listening to music in your iPhone one thing REALLY bothers me: No music keys. Sometimes I just want to change music. Just that… I don’t want to slide to unlock, and then try to find the forward button just to listen to the next tune.
I think I will make a hack to allow volume to change music instead of rising the volume =) but even with that I really like my Nokia devices when it comes to music.
Conclusion: iPhone is like a “Gorgeous” cake but a little rotten on the inside. I really like to have a incredible UI but I need to remember one thing: Its using my sim card, to its my phone, and the first and most important thing is to be able to make and receive calls. I think this makes pretty clear the advantages of being “mature” on the market.
Hello Apple : a little more love on the Antennas and speakers next time ok?
Ps1 : I know some fan boy can say “but the iphone was not tested on this carrier… or your carrier sucks not the phone”, but I have been using several phones that were not even released on Brazil (thus, not tested) without carrier problems until now.
Remembering my old days of street fighter 2 player, I can imagine apple in one side and Nokia in the other while I looked at the new products from Apple.
Itunes music WIFI x Nokia Music Store
Nokia announced last week it’s service and was received well, maybe with a little bit of doubt about it’s price (no more doubt: only 1 cent above itunes price) and also microsoft DRM (not so big problem). Today Apple unleashed not only the client but the service running on WIFI. For people where carriers already offer good price for full access in data packages this seems to not be a competition, but for places where wifi is widely available and you use more wifi than celular networks to get data, the services are quite similar and Apple is for sure ahead with lower price.
Both offers seamlessly integration with your desktop. Just a shame that both have DRM.
Ipod touch x Nokia N800
This is very hard for me. I just like my n800 too much, but everyone is going to say it so here it goes:
Ipod touch is a really competitor to the N800 or nokia internet tablet family. Why? How can you be so sure without ever using it? Well, I have an iPhone for quite a while now and I can garantee : It’s the best mobile browser experience. But it was more expensive, with contract and so on. Now it’s 50 or 100 dollars cheaper, same capacity (16 gigas, but not included on the N800 and that would make the price goes up at least 200 bucks). So I can see this is REALLY a serious threat to the N800 positioned as a “internet tablet device”. The Safari works better, zooming is better, snappier.
What’s funny is that everything points to the fact the the Ipod has the same hardware as the Iphone, so a 600mhz CPU against the 320mhz on the N800. How this thing is cheaper? The camera is not enough to make the N800 more expensive, and the battery life of the touch is a lot better than on the N800 (ok 640 screen x 800×480) but come one, we deserve a better price =)
Ringtones : HA!
this was really, one of the first things on my mind when they announced the iPhone. “how apple could make more money? Unmm… ringtones for sure”. It’s funny that people are complaining, but it’s quite common here in brasil to pay twice a song price for a ringtone, that sometimes are even MIDIS (so : no band recorded, no studio was needed, just a keyboard and a license of a simple media software).
It sucks for users, but was a brilliant step for Apple, and of course makes the life of people that are not tech savvy easier.
Price drop on the iPhone
This was REALLY a surprise. 200 dollars LESS from the 8giga bytes? (I’m so happy I sold my 4 giga fast enough) This makes the 8gb iPhone quite a deal for those who want to be AT&T slow network slaves. I think a lot of buyers are also pretty pissed with that :)
The new iPods
The “phatty” was real. The new nano is really something, unm, let’s say, of a doubtful taste. Ok, I have the most incredible respect for the design team at apple, and I can’t see another way of doing such a small device with that screen without killing the scroll wheel but : it is VERY funny. Almost a joke. Looks like a mockup of someone in the web. Apart from the form factor the nano is amazing, thin, metal on the back and a real nice and high resolution display. But I need to say: I can’t stand watching videos on small screens like this. So it’s more for “screen satisfaction” than for “real video watching screen”.
The classic has now a full metal body and a really big 160gigabyte disk. That’s some storage for a media player but it’s not something really new.
Shuffle now is also in PRODUCT RED. Ok, so what.
But what I really want to know is
Now that I’ve briefly talked about what you can read on several more professional web sites, I will say what I really want to know about this devices:
1) Does the Ipod touch will be able to have MAIL? Come one Apple, you placed safari. You gave it the youtube but no MAIL? is there, just scp the application package to the image and release to your future customers.
2) Is the Touch hackable like the Iphone? Can I install native hacked applications on it ? =)
3) GAMES. Iphone games please.
4) Ringtones of music we already own? Can we do it?
5) Does the itunes store update coming to the iPhone, closes the 3rd party hacks =)
6) Where is the goddamn iPhone software unlocking solutions?????
Update, I made a typo on the n800 speed. sorry, thanks Cfit.
So, Now it’s a journey of almost 24 hours travelling / wandering across airports (JKF, Dulles, Cumbica, Rio, Recife) to get home only tomorrow afternoon. Damn it.
About the UXWeek: I will make a detailed post later, but what I can say is that it had it’s moment and for sure a lot of great things were learned and I think I was also capable of sharing a little bit of knowledge in mobile ux.
I’m bringing in my bag 2 iphones (one to pay the other) and a lot of information on how to make the team I work with, work better and more creatively.
Let’s see what we can gather in real life with the things said in the week.
I have to admit : the keyboard correction works quite well. The thing that bothers me is the vertical keyboard . I just can’t use it with my thnx like the horizontal one.
After we publish some videos (the keyboard and the scrolling) I lost a little bit of my time reading some comments on the sites that posted something about it, and I got really impressed by the way the people:
1. Really think we are doing or we want to do some kind of Iphone copy
2. Really believes everything that is in the IPhone was invented by apple, thus using it is copying apple.
Again folks, sorry to disappoint you, but apple is not the god of innovation. Even the click wheel or other nice things were not done by them (like the ipod ui). So please stop bothering yourself to post about:
“apple invented the error correction”
“apple invented the kinetic scrolling”
“apple invented the multi touch”
“apple invented the pinch gestures”
“apple invented __________________(just write whatever feature in the iphone here)”
It’s just not like that. Apple’s made a good job of putting a lot of features together in a simple, very intuitive ui. But did not invented the actual pieces of it. Deal with that. I sometimes get really pissed about people that are blinded in the matters of religions, but getting blind in the matters of what apple excels (marketing) is really out of this world. Get a little bit of knowledge.
Just to close: there was user who said this, when asked about the ability to use the keyboard on the horizontal position in more situations than the safari browsing:
This guy in particular is so sexy (you need to hold one in your hands to understand better) that there is no particular reason other than bad feedback to Nokia use any of the key design elements on the iPhone at least in a particular first touch based model. 
