I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
Agree, the term "smartphone" has been muddied since iPhone, and you were right to ask. There are many phones being referred to as smartphones that to me, aren't in the iPhone class. But maybe they are all still smartphones, with the iPhone just being the easiest-to-use. (Just like there can be $20K sports cars that can't compare to $100K sports cars, but are still sports cars nonetheless.) The problem is that these categories do make a difference sometimes when people go shopping for a "smartphone", and just assume that the iPhone is really no different than any old touch-screen phone with a GPS and music player included.
By the way, Apple is going to mess up categories again when it releases its rumored "tablet/netbook/smartphone(?)" thing.
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
Exactly.
And, at the risk of being dismissed as a fan boy, Apple seems to be one of the only consumer electronic companies that operates this way, which is why their products inspire such devotion while merely infuriating people who don't get it.
While everyone else is content to let their engineers lard up their products with "features", consigning usability and actual real world functionality to afterthought status, Apple designs towards particular ideas about how normal people might want to use tools to do particular things.
So that for instance with the iPhone Apple considered what was on the market and decided that a functional, useful browser would be a "killer app" for a cell phone, and pored resources into making that work really well-- even though it meant they deferred some other features that the technorati were absolutely sure any decent cell phone absolutely had to have to be taken seriously (by them).
The people who don't get it shrug and point out that a mobile browser was nothing new, and what about cut and paste?
The spirited defenses of Nokia in this thread are an object lesson in this thinking. Nokia fans talk as if "usability" were some kind of Jedi mind trick, or a trivial bit of bling for the easily impressed. They assure us that the OS is sound, and the UI just needs a bit of tweaking-- as if the UI is a coat of paint that can be slapped on whenever someone gets around to it. They continue to maintain that Apple doesn't actually innovate, since they can't understand how integrating software and hardware into a seamless, intuitive experience that makes previously obscure and difficult to use functionality obvious and easy represents any kind of achievement.
As I have said, this is exactly the thinking that allowed Apple to make such rapid inroads in an industry that many said they couldn't master. They're increasing market share by selling iPhones to people that would never have considered a "smart phone", because, as Dr. Millmoss points out, they're not selling smartphones.
They're selling an experience, and the ability to do stuff. That's why Apple's iPhone ads, alone among their rivals, have consistently been nothing more than depictions of things being done with the phone. They don't talk about specs, they don't do stupid metaphorical fantasies of phones as magic carpets, they don't show the handset gleaming and rotating while techno pounds away. They show the phone accomplishing tasks, and the way it goes about accomplishing tasks is so straightforward you can actually understand what's happening just by watching.
It's almost comical to see some folks get so exercised by the idea that people actually like easy and fun to use over features and specs, as if that were some kind of character flaw or failing. And of course they are then obliged to fall back on the tiresome "Apple users are idiots" meme. Because the PC world has taught such people that the more difficult a piece of technology is to use, the more serious minded and capable it must be. For such people, "easy to use" equals "shallow and vapid", although for the life of me I can't understand why.
I agree with you. I've argued this from the day the iPhone was announced. That its essentially a blank slate that can perform just about any function. The primary reason the iPhone is able to perform the way it does is because of OS X and Cocoa development API's.
There is some ability to categorize. There are some basic elements that are the same for all smartphone models. I would not say the iPhone is something completely different from a Blackberry or Nokia N series phone. I agree they do have differences and their own strengths. Someone looking to buy this type of phone is largely going to look between an iPhone or a BlackBerry
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
I agree with you. I've argued this from the day the iPhone was announced. That its essentially a blank slate that can perform just about any function. The primary reason the iPhone is able to perform the way it does is because of OS X and Cocoa development API's.
There is some ability to categorize. There are some basic elements that are the same for all smartphone models. I would not say the iPhone is something completely different from a Blackberry or Nokia N series phone. I agree they do have differences and their own strengths. Someone looking to buy this type of phone is largely going to look between an iPhone or a BlackBerry
I've said it before, but IMO the difference between, say, a Blackberry and the iPhone is the difference between a highly evolved, highly specialized IBM Selectric typewriter with email functionality and a personal computer.
Sure, you can keep adding stuff to the Selectric to take advantage of changing technology. You can put a bigger, more colorful screen on there, add more memory, even put in a CPU and the ability to run applications.
But eventually, unless you start over, the legacy design decision become more hindrance than advantage and you're drifting into frankenstein territory.
Of course, legions of devoted Selectric users, who have come to appreciate a particular kind of keyboard or text handling or office system integration, will make it appear, for a while, as if an incremental strategy of bolting computeresque functionality onto a typewriter is working out just fine. But that's only because the personal computer is just starting to hit its stride and many people haven't yet quite figured out the sorts of things that are going to be possible, with a real general purpose computing device.
Apple is in the business of putting OS X into a pocketable form factor, and designing ways to make it really, really usable with only a small touch screen as both input and display device.
RIM is in the business of figuring out how to make a dedicated email device act more like a computer, although they may not entirely realize it yet.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. The BB is important for its core group. I have friends who work in business who feel they cannot move to an iPhone, because the BB does what they need so well.
I do agree what RIM badly needs is a new OS, a new HTML browser, and development platform to continue to successfully compete with the iPhone in the long run.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Apple is in the business of putting OS X into a pocketable form factor, and designing ways to make it really, really usable with only a small touch screen as both input and display device.
RIM is in the business of figuring out how to make a dedicated email device act more like a computer, although they may not entirely realize it yet.
By the way, Apple is going to mess up categories again when it releases its rumored "tablet/netbook/smartphone(?)" thing.
If I believe what I've said about the iPhone and the iPod (which I do), then I'm not going very much further out on a limb to say "absolutely." We'll see the product that some will insist is Apple's "netbook" when they've figured out how to erase that category. This will cause everyone else to sit up and take notice, to ask themselves "why didn't we think of that?"
Casting our minds back, we'll remember that the rumors of Apple's entry into the mobile phone market persisted for several years before they came true. What was Apple doing all this time? Not twiddling, but creating something better than a "me too" product. We can only guess at the number of rejected prototypes, some of them ground literally under Uncle Steve's heal.
Apple knows that they have to hit a home run every time they come to the plate, or it doesn't count. That's why they don't do products just to compete in existing categories. If they can't invent their own space, they're not interested. That's the story of Apple's success in this decade.
The spirited defenses of Nokia in this thread are an object lesson in this thinking. Nokia fans talk as if "usability" were some kind of Jedi mind trick, or a trivial bit of bling for the easily impressed. They assure us that the OS is sound, and the UI just needs a bit of tweaking-- as if the UI is a coat of paint that can be slapped on whenever someone gets around to it. They continue to maintain that Apple doesn't actually innovate, since they can't understand how integrating software and hardware into a seamless, intuitive experience that makes previously obscure and difficult to use functionality obvious and easy represents any kind of achievement.
Many who discount the overwhelming importance of the innovation of usability in the UI do so because they look at the Mac and see that historically, the UI failed to move people to buy Macs. What they miss is that other factors conspired to doom Apple's Mac movement in the 80s and 90s, and that all of those factors have been or are being addressed in the iPhone movement.
For example, 1) Apple didn't spur enough third-party Mac app development; now Apple has App Store, SDK, 100K developers, etc. 2) Apple Macs were too high-priced relative to PCs; now through excellent supply-chain mgmt, Apple is keeping the relative difference smaller via a $99 iPhone model, plus the purchase of an iPhone requires a much smaller one-time payment ($100 to $300) relative to household discretionary income (when compared to a $2500 Mac). 3) Mac entered the market without any ecosystem being a fairly clean break from the Apple II; iPhone enters with strong ties to iPod ecosystem, and reinforced by iPod touch. 4) Having fired Jobs and discarded Jobs' vision, Apple diddled with unproductive research that was slow to add capability to its Mac product; today with Jobs, I suspect his vision and "elevator-talk" leadership style are driving research into products.
There is some ability to categorize. There are some basic elements that are the same for all smartphone models. I would not say the iPhone is something completely different from a Blackberry or Nokia N series phone.
Definitely, and then you start listing the basic elements. When you're done and start looking at phones that meet those basic elements (features), you'll find that many phones have them, even though you're sure they're not in the same class as iPhone. For example, LG Incite, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia E71, Blackberry Storm seem to have all the same features as iPhone. And if wifi and 3G are not necessary features of smartphones, then the list grows even longer. (iPhone didn't have 3G originally, and may not have wifi for the China version so are those two items a smartphone necessity?)
Quote:
I agree they do have differences and their own strengths. Someone looking to buy this type of phone is largely going to look between an iPhone or a BlackBerry
True, if you're in the US. But if you're in Europe or Asia, it's an iPhone and Nokia (ExpressMusic? or Surge?) and Samsung (Omnia?) and LG ...
I've said it before, but IMO the difference between, say, a Blackberry and the iPhone is the difference between a highly evolved, highly specialized IBM Selectric typewriter with email functionality and a personal computer.
Sure, you can keep adding stuff to the Selectric to take advantage of changing technology. You can put a bigger, more colorful screen on there, add more memory, even put in a CPU and the ability to run applications.
But eventually, unless you start over, the legacy design decision become more hindrance than advantage and you're drifting into frankenstein territory.
Of course, legions of devoted Selectric users, who have come to appreciate a particular kind of keyboard or text handling or office system integration, will make it appear, for a while, as if an incremental strategy of bolting computeresque functionality onto a typewriter is working out just fine. But that's only because the personal computer is just starting to hit its stride and many people haven't yet quite figured out the sorts of things that are going to be possible, with a real general purpose computing device.
Apple is in the business of putting OS X into a pocketable form factor, and designing ways to make it really, really usable with only a small touch screen as both input and display device.
RIM is in the business of figuring out how to make a dedicated email device act more like a computer, although they may not entirely realize it yet.
Good analogy. And you know it when you see it. But exactly what is it that makes you think of the Blackberry as a Selectric, while the iPhone is a computer? I keep trying but I have trouble pinning down exactly what are all the ingredients in Apple's secret sauce. It seems to defy a list of features - which may mean it has to do with the intangibles of the UI (i.e,, the usability of the UI becomes one of the main distinguishing features).
Many who discount the overwhelming importance of the innovation of usability in the UI do so because they look at the Mac and see that historically, the UI failed to move people to buy Macs. What they miss is that other factors conspired to doom Apple's Mac movement in the 80s and 90s, and that all of those factors have been or are being addressed in the iPhone movement.
For example, 1) Apple didn't spur enough third-party Mac app development; now Apple has App Store, SDK, 100K developers, etc. 2) Apple Macs were too high-priced relative to PCs; now through excellent supply-chain mgmt, Apple is keeping the relative difference smaller via a $99 iPhone model, plus the purchase of an iPhone requires a much smaller one-time payment ($100 to $300) relative to household discretionary income (when compared to a $2500 Mac). 3) Mac entered the market without any ecosystem being a fairly clean break from the Apple II; iPhone enters with strong ties to iPod ecosystem, and reinforced by iPod touch. 4) Having fired Jobs and discarded Jobs' vision, Apple diddled with unproductive research that was slow to add capability to its Mac product; today with Jobs, I suspect his vision and "elevator-talk" leadership style are driving research into products.
That's an excellent point, re "ease of use" having a less than stellar track record as far as the Mac goes.
I suspect that Jobs sees the iPhone platform as his second chance to get it right-- to create the next "insanely great" computing device without being fenced in by entrenched business interests. He still wants his vertically integrated model, and there are some who would say that that alone dooms the iPhone to repeat the Mac trajectory, with commodity hardware running "good enough" software inevitably reversing early the enthusiasm for "ease of use."
Still, there are lots of ways that the iPhone market is not the PC market, including the factors you mention, plus the fact that there is no single monolithic competitor, outside of RIM no de facto standard, and the ongoing blurring of business/personal machines (there was a pretty long stretch there while PCs consolidate their hold on the business market that such devices remained luxury items for the home market).
Cell phones (or pocketable computers) are "personal" devices in a way that plays to Apple's strengths. Not many people walk away from their "work phone" at the end of the day, or have to concern themselves with making their "work phone" work with their "home phone"-- a dynamic that helped fuel the adoption of home PCs.
In fact, we seem to be moving the other way, with "what you're used to" serving to drive corporate iPhone adoption, instead of a "business phone" influencing what you buy for yourself.
Definitely, and then you start listing the basic elements. When you're done and start looking at phones that meet those basic elements (features), you'll find that many phones have them, even though you're sure they're not in the same class as iPhone. For example, LG Incite, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia E71, Blackberry Storm seem to have all the same features as iPhone. And if wifi and 3G are not necessary features of smartphones, then the list grows even longer. (iPhone didn't have 3G originally, and may not have wifi for the China version so are those two items a smartphone necessity?)
I said in my definition that at this point many features that used to be smartphone only are spread across all phone categories. What makes the best phones now is the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development.
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True, if you're in the US. But if you're in Europe or Asia, it's an iPhone and Nokia (ExpressMusic? or Surge?) and Samsung (Omnia?) and LG ...
Are the phones you listed really used as business phones in Europe? Are they used for advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing?
Good analogy. And you know it when you see it. But exactly what is it that makes you think of the Blackberry as a Selectric, while the iPhone is a computer? I keep trying but I have trouble pinning down exactly what are all the ingredients in Apple's secret sauce. It seems to defy a list of features - which may mean it has to do with the intangibles of the UI (i.e,, the usability of the UI becomes one of the main distinguishing features).
Right, it's kind of a matter of art and psychology, which is what makes dedicated gear heads so frustrated. It's like a colorblind person demanding to know why that should pay more or have any interest in a large screen TV with a (vastly) wider color gamut than the no name Walmart box, or a person with high frequency hearing loss mocking the very idea of decent audio equipment.
Except usability goes beyond a pleasant sensory experience straight to some kind of fundamental consciousness about how the world works. When a device operates or responds how we "expect" it to, particularly if we are used to devices that do anything but, I think we experience a kind of satisfaction. The device, which is an entirely opaque black box as far as most people's understanding goes, appears to be explicable. It appears to behave like millions of years of evolution have shaped us to believe things in the world should behave. There is predictable cause and effect. Things don't vanish arbitrarily, control surfaces don't abruptly change function, doing this always results in that.
I think that this sense of trust in the thing will become more and more important as our devices get more and more powerful. Time was that the mechanical, then electro-mechanical devices in our lives were fundamentally understandable, because they had sort of body analogs-- levers and pistons and switches and gears all behave similarly to things we've been using and touching since we wandered the Serengeti.
But digital electronics are literally nothing, to our fundamental selves. They might as well be powered by magic from the unicorn dimension, as far as our autonomic body knows.
As we become able to do unimaginably complex things with tiny devices we carry around like packages of Skittles, it is vitally important that those devices make it look easy in clear consistent ways that relate back to what we already know about the world.
The mistake most consumer electronic manufacturers make is to imagine that the "unimaginably complex" part will be so compelling they don't really have to sweat the "make it look easy" thing. And, of course, for a certain, disproportionally influential strata of tech enthusiast, that is absolutely the case. So much so that everything I've just said is touchy-feely nonsense.
That's where the whole "Mac people" eye-rolling starts up. But expecting ones personal devices to behave personably isn't an affectation of the rich, or the trendy, or the clueless. I think the next wave of pocketable devices are going to have to do a much, much better job of mirroring our actual habits of mind than the desktop computer generation did, because the psychic space between the thing in your pocket and the thing on your desk at work is much narrower.
I agree. Apple is clearly using the iPhone/iPod to push its own interests, which luckily also benefit the electronic industry as a whole.
Defacto standards are forming. H.264, AAC, mp3 are the entrenched media standards. HTML/CSS/javascript is quickly becoming the defacto development standard.
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Originally Posted by addabox
I suspect that Jobs sees the iPhone platform as his second chance to get it right-- to create the next "insanely great" computing device without being fenced in by entrenched business interests.
I assume Bloomberg got their figures from Gartner or other such reliable source.
You know what happens when you use the word "assume".
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They haven't included any feature phones in their figures. Please read the report. Nokia doesn't make any E or N series feature phones and most of the XXXX models included are explicitly stated.
I know it's very hard for an American to comprehend how many smartphones Nokia sells but please try.
For those who haven't seen it yet, there is a very interesting article today in the NY Times about why Japans "advanced" phones don't sell outside of Japan, and a couple of surprising remarks about the iPhone.
Interesting that in Japan next year, they expect a total of about 30 million phones to sell, mostly from 8 Japanese manufacturers, down from this year.
I said in my definition that at this point many features that used to be smartphone only are spread across all phone categories.
Yes, we agree that the original "defining" features of smartphones are now being spread across all categories. So the question is what is left to uniquely define the category of smartphone, not necessarily what makes the best phone (since smartphone does not by definition equal best phone). This definition might not matter to a user, but it does to those who measure sales (like even Gartner and IDC) and to those who market phones.
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What makes the best phones now is the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development.
But how do you measure or sell "the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development"? Note that even Symbian has multitasking sophistication, and tens of thousands of apps.
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Are the phones you listed really used as business phones in Europe? Are they used for advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing?
Not sure what you mean to say with these questions. Should the smartphone category be limited to "business phones"? Or to phones that have "advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing"? I don't think so.
But how do you measure or sell "the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development"? Note that even Symbian has multitasking sophistication, and tens of thousands of apps.
But how many of those apps are modern apps, and how many are old apps designed for older phones without the capabilities of their more modern ones?
It's like saying that the PC has tens of thousands of apps for MS-DOS, Win 3.1, 95, 98, 2000 etc., for machines going back to the 80288.
Yes, they are there, but does it matter?
What about all of Palms old apps? Some were quite good, but most were for old phones with terrible graphics that can't use multitouch in any useful way, because they were designed for a stylus. How many Pre owners will want most of that?
That's the situation for Nokia. As they discontinue the older phones, the apps hang around, but how useful, or desirable, are most of them on newer phones?
But how do you measure or sell "the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development"? Note that even Symbian has multitasking sophistication, and tens of thousands of apps.
What makes the best phone is known from using it. So there is no quantafiable measurement. A lot of it is opinion but I don't think it's difficult to tell.
What makes the best OS/UI is the ability and ease of the phones primary functions for the average user. There is no point to functions if they are too difficult or frustrating for people to actually use. What determines the best apps are the usefulness to the average consumer.
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Not sure what you mean to say with these questions. Should the smartphone category be limited to "business phones"? Or to phones that have "advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing"? I don't think so.
You said the iPhone is not competing so much with the Blackberry in Europe. So I listed the functions the BB is best at and asked if the phones you listed are just as good as the BB at those tasks.
For those who haven't seen it yet, there is a very interesting article today in the NY Times about why Japans "advanced" phones don't sell outside of Japan, and a couple of surprising remarks about the iPhone.
Interesting that in Japan next year, they expect a total of about 30 million phones to sell, mostly from 8 Japanese manufacturers, down from this year.
I think this highlights what is happening to a somewhat lessor extent in Europe, with their phones and services, vs. the iPhone and what it's doing.
interesting article.
2 phones ago, and pre-iPhone, i was using an i-mode capable NEC flip-phone (N410i) here in australia. whilst it was a dumbed-down handset compared to what was sold in japan, it was a brilliant phone. the UI was logical and easy to use, with sensible buttons to complement the menu system.
prior to the iPhone coming out, it was my perfect phone (even dumbed down), and i would have been happy to keep to NECs. 3G though killed i-mode here, which was basically 2.5G and more much limited in scope than in Japan. but i still use it as my alarm clock!
2 phones ago, and pre-iPhone, i was using an i-mode capable NEC flip-phone (N410i) here in australia. whilst it was a dumbed-down handset compared to what was sold in japan, it was a brilliant phone. the UI was logical and easy to use, with sensible buttons to complement the menu system.
prior to the iPhone coming out, it was my perfect phone (even dumbed down), and i would have been happy to keep to NECs. 3G though killed i-mode here, which was basically 2.5G and more much limited in scope than in Japan. but i still use it as my alarm clock!
Comments
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
Agree, the term "smartphone" has been muddied since iPhone, and you were right to ask. There are many phones being referred to as smartphones that to me, aren't in the iPhone class. But maybe they are all still smartphones, with the iPhone just being the easiest-to-use. (Just like there can be $20K sports cars that can't compare to $100K sports cars, but are still sports cars nonetheless.) The problem is that these categories do make a difference sometimes when people go shopping for a "smartphone", and just assume that the iPhone is really no different than any old touch-screen phone with a GPS and music player included.
By the way, Apple is going to mess up categories again when it releases its rumored "tablet/netbook/smartphone(?)" thing.
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
Exactly.
And, at the risk of being dismissed as a fan boy, Apple seems to be one of the only consumer electronic companies that operates this way, which is why their products inspire such devotion while merely infuriating people who don't get it.
While everyone else is content to let their engineers lard up their products with "features", consigning usability and actual real world functionality to afterthought status, Apple designs towards particular ideas about how normal people might want to use tools to do particular things.
So that for instance with the iPhone Apple considered what was on the market and decided that a functional, useful browser would be a "killer app" for a cell phone, and pored resources into making that work really well-- even though it meant they deferred some other features that the technorati were absolutely sure any decent cell phone absolutely had to have to be taken seriously (by them).
The people who don't get it shrug and point out that a mobile browser was nothing new, and what about cut and paste?
The spirited defenses of Nokia in this thread are an object lesson in this thinking. Nokia fans talk as if "usability" were some kind of Jedi mind trick, or a trivial bit of bling for the easily impressed. They assure us that the OS is sound, and the UI just needs a bit of tweaking-- as if the UI is a coat of paint that can be slapped on whenever someone gets around to it. They continue to maintain that Apple doesn't actually innovate, since they can't understand how integrating software and hardware into a seamless, intuitive experience that makes previously obscure and difficult to use functionality obvious and easy represents any kind of achievement.
As I have said, this is exactly the thinking that allowed Apple to make such rapid inroads in an industry that many said they couldn't master. They're increasing market share by selling iPhones to people that would never have considered a "smart phone", because, as Dr. Millmoss points out, they're not selling smartphones.
They're selling an experience, and the ability to do stuff. That's why Apple's iPhone ads, alone among their rivals, have consistently been nothing more than depictions of things being done with the phone. They don't talk about specs, they don't do stupid metaphorical fantasies of phones as magic carpets, they don't show the handset gleaming and rotating while techno pounds away. They show the phone accomplishing tasks, and the way it goes about accomplishing tasks is so straightforward you can actually understand what's happening just by watching.
It's almost comical to see some folks get so exercised by the idea that people actually like easy and fun to use over features and specs, as if that were some kind of character flaw or failing. And of course they are then obliged to fall back on the tiresome "Apple users are idiots" meme. Because the PC world has taught such people that the more difficult a piece of technology is to use, the more serious minded and capable it must be. For such people, "easy to use" equals "shallow and vapid", although for the life of me I can't understand why.
There is some ability to categorize. There are some basic elements that are the same for all smartphone models. I would not say the iPhone is something completely different from a Blackberry or Nokia N series phone. I agree they do have differences and their own strengths. Someone looking to buy this type of phone is largely going to look between an iPhone or a BlackBerry
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
I agree with you. I've argued this from the day the iPhone was announced. That its essentially a blank slate that can perform just about any function. The primary reason the iPhone is able to perform the way it does is because of OS X and Cocoa development API's.
There is some ability to categorize. There are some basic elements that are the same for all smartphone models. I would not say the iPhone is something completely different from a Blackberry or Nokia N series phone. I agree they do have differences and their own strengths. Someone looking to buy this type of phone is largely going to look between an iPhone or a BlackBerry
I've said it before, but IMO the difference between, say, a Blackberry and the iPhone is the difference between a highly evolved, highly specialized IBM Selectric typewriter with email functionality and a personal computer.
Sure, you can keep adding stuff to the Selectric to take advantage of changing technology. You can put a bigger, more colorful screen on there, add more memory, even put in a CPU and the ability to run applications.
But eventually, unless you start over, the legacy design decision become more hindrance than advantage and you're drifting into frankenstein territory.
Of course, legions of devoted Selectric users, who have come to appreciate a particular kind of keyboard or text handling or office system integration, will make it appear, for a while, as if an incremental strategy of bolting computeresque functionality onto a typewriter is working out just fine. But that's only because the personal computer is just starting to hit its stride and many people haven't yet quite figured out the sorts of things that are going to be possible, with a real general purpose computing device.
Apple is in the business of putting OS X into a pocketable form factor, and designing ways to make it really, really usable with only a small touch screen as both input and display device.
RIM is in the business of figuring out how to make a dedicated email device act more like a computer, although they may not entirely realize it yet.
I do agree what RIM badly needs is a new OS, a new HTML browser, and development platform to continue to successfully compete with the iPhone in the long run.
Apple is in the business of putting OS X into a pocketable form factor, and designing ways to make it really, really usable with only a small touch screen as both input and display device.
RIM is in the business of figuring out how to make a dedicated email device act more like a computer, although they may not entirely realize it yet.
By the way, Apple is going to mess up categories again when it releases its rumored "tablet/netbook/smartphone(?)" thing.
If I believe what I've said about the iPhone and the iPod (which I do), then I'm not going very much further out on a limb to say "absolutely." We'll see the product that some will insist is Apple's "netbook" when they've figured out how to erase that category. This will cause everyone else to sit up and take notice, to ask themselves "why didn't we think of that?"
Casting our minds back, we'll remember that the rumors of Apple's entry into the mobile phone market persisted for several years before they came true. What was Apple doing all this time? Not twiddling, but creating something better than a "me too" product. We can only guess at the number of rejected prototypes, some of them ground literally under Uncle Steve's heal.
Apple knows that they have to hit a home run every time they come to the plate, or it doesn't count. That's why they don't do products just to compete in existing categories. If they can't invent their own space, they're not interested. That's the story of Apple's success in this decade.
The spirited defenses of Nokia in this thread are an object lesson in this thinking. Nokia fans talk as if "usability" were some kind of Jedi mind trick, or a trivial bit of bling for the easily impressed. They assure us that the OS is sound, and the UI just needs a bit of tweaking-- as if the UI is a coat of paint that can be slapped on whenever someone gets around to it. They continue to maintain that Apple doesn't actually innovate, since they can't understand how integrating software and hardware into a seamless, intuitive experience that makes previously obscure and difficult to use functionality obvious and easy represents any kind of achievement.
Many who discount the overwhelming importance of the innovation of usability in the UI do so because they look at the Mac and see that historically, the UI failed to move people to buy Macs. What they miss is that other factors conspired to doom Apple's Mac movement in the 80s and 90s, and that all of those factors have been or are being addressed in the iPhone movement.
For example, 1) Apple didn't spur enough third-party Mac app development; now Apple has App Store, SDK, 100K developers, etc. 2) Apple Macs were too high-priced relative to PCs; now through excellent supply-chain mgmt, Apple is keeping the relative difference smaller via a $99 iPhone model, plus the purchase of an iPhone requires a much smaller one-time payment ($100 to $300) relative to household discretionary income (when compared to a $2500 Mac). 3) Mac entered the market without any ecosystem being a fairly clean break from the Apple II; iPhone enters with strong ties to iPod ecosystem, and reinforced by iPod touch. 4) Having fired Jobs and discarded Jobs' vision, Apple diddled with unproductive research that was slow to add capability to its Mac product; today with Jobs, I suspect his vision and "elevator-talk" leadership style are driving research into products.
There is some ability to categorize. There are some basic elements that are the same for all smartphone models. I would not say the iPhone is something completely different from a Blackberry or Nokia N series phone.
Definitely, and then you start listing the basic elements. When you're done and start looking at phones that meet those basic elements (features), you'll find that many phones have them, even though you're sure they're not in the same class as iPhone. For example, LG Incite, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia E71, Blackberry Storm seem to have all the same features as iPhone. And if wifi and 3G are not necessary features of smartphones, then the list grows even longer. (iPhone didn't have 3G originally, and may not have wifi for the China version so are those two items a smartphone necessity?)
I agree they do have differences and their own strengths. Someone looking to buy this type of phone is largely going to look between an iPhone or a BlackBerry
True, if you're in the US. But if you're in Europe or Asia, it's an iPhone and Nokia (ExpressMusic? or Surge?) and Samsung (Omnia?) and LG ...
I've said it before, but IMO the difference between, say, a Blackberry and the iPhone is the difference between a highly evolved, highly specialized IBM Selectric typewriter with email functionality and a personal computer.
Sure, you can keep adding stuff to the Selectric to take advantage of changing technology. You can put a bigger, more colorful screen on there, add more memory, even put in a CPU and the ability to run applications.
But eventually, unless you start over, the legacy design decision become more hindrance than advantage and you're drifting into frankenstein territory.
Of course, legions of devoted Selectric users, who have come to appreciate a particular kind of keyboard or text handling or office system integration, will make it appear, for a while, as if an incremental strategy of bolting computeresque functionality onto a typewriter is working out just fine. But that's only because the personal computer is just starting to hit its stride and many people haven't yet quite figured out the sorts of things that are going to be possible, with a real general purpose computing device.
Apple is in the business of putting OS X into a pocketable form factor, and designing ways to make it really, really usable with only a small touch screen as both input and display device.
RIM is in the business of figuring out how to make a dedicated email device act more like a computer, although they may not entirely realize it yet.
Good analogy. And you know it when you see it. But exactly what is it that makes you think of the Blackberry as a Selectric, while the iPhone is a computer? I keep trying but I have trouble pinning down exactly what are all the ingredients in Apple's secret sauce. It seems to defy a list of features - which may mean it has to do with the intangibles of the UI (i.e,, the usability of the UI becomes one of the main distinguishing features).
Many who discount the overwhelming importance of the innovation of usability in the UI do so because they look at the Mac and see that historically, the UI failed to move people to buy Macs. What they miss is that other factors conspired to doom Apple's Mac movement in the 80s and 90s, and that all of those factors have been or are being addressed in the iPhone movement.
For example, 1) Apple didn't spur enough third-party Mac app development; now Apple has App Store, SDK, 100K developers, etc. 2) Apple Macs were too high-priced relative to PCs; now through excellent supply-chain mgmt, Apple is keeping the relative difference smaller via a $99 iPhone model, plus the purchase of an iPhone requires a much smaller one-time payment ($100 to $300) relative to household discretionary income (when compared to a $2500 Mac). 3) Mac entered the market without any ecosystem being a fairly clean break from the Apple II; iPhone enters with strong ties to iPod ecosystem, and reinforced by iPod touch. 4) Having fired Jobs and discarded Jobs' vision, Apple diddled with unproductive research that was slow to add capability to its Mac product; today with Jobs, I suspect his vision and "elevator-talk" leadership style are driving research into products.
That's an excellent point, re "ease of use" having a less than stellar track record as far as the Mac goes.
I suspect that Jobs sees the iPhone platform as his second chance to get it right-- to create the next "insanely great" computing device without being fenced in by entrenched business interests. He still wants his vertically integrated model, and there are some who would say that that alone dooms the iPhone to repeat the Mac trajectory, with commodity hardware running "good enough" software inevitably reversing early the enthusiasm for "ease of use."
Still, there are lots of ways that the iPhone market is not the PC market, including the factors you mention, plus the fact that there is no single monolithic competitor, outside of RIM no de facto standard, and the ongoing blurring of business/personal machines (there was a pretty long stretch there while PCs consolidate their hold on the business market that such devices remained luxury items for the home market).
Cell phones (or pocketable computers) are "personal" devices in a way that plays to Apple's strengths. Not many people walk away from their "work phone" at the end of the day, or have to concern themselves with making their "work phone" work with their "home phone"-- a dynamic that helped fuel the adoption of home PCs.
In fact, we seem to be moving the other way, with "what you're used to" serving to drive corporate iPhone adoption, instead of a "business phone" influencing what you buy for yourself.
Definitely, and then you start listing the basic elements. When you're done and start looking at phones that meet those basic elements (features), you'll find that many phones have them, even though you're sure they're not in the same class as iPhone. For example, LG Incite, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia E71, Blackberry Storm seem to have all the same features as iPhone. And if wifi and 3G are not necessary features of smartphones, then the list grows even longer. (iPhone didn't have 3G originally, and may not have wifi for the China version so are those two items a smartphone necessity?)
I said in my definition that at this point many features that used to be smartphone only are spread across all phone categories. What makes the best phones now is the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development.
True, if you're in the US. But if you're in Europe or Asia, it's an iPhone and Nokia (ExpressMusic? or Surge?) and Samsung (Omnia?) and LG ...
Are the phones you listed really used as business phones in Europe? Are they used for advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing?
Good analogy. And you know it when you see it. But exactly what is it that makes you think of the Blackberry as a Selectric, while the iPhone is a computer? I keep trying but I have trouble pinning down exactly what are all the ingredients in Apple's secret sauce. It seems to defy a list of features - which may mean it has to do with the intangibles of the UI (i.e,, the usability of the UI becomes one of the main distinguishing features).
Right, it's kind of a matter of art and psychology, which is what makes dedicated gear heads so frustrated. It's like a colorblind person demanding to know why that should pay more or have any interest in a large screen TV with a (vastly) wider color gamut than the no name Walmart box, or a person with high frequency hearing loss mocking the very idea of decent audio equipment.
Except usability goes beyond a pleasant sensory experience straight to some kind of fundamental consciousness about how the world works. When a device operates or responds how we "expect" it to, particularly if we are used to devices that do anything but, I think we experience a kind of satisfaction. The device, which is an entirely opaque black box as far as most people's understanding goes, appears to be explicable. It appears to behave like millions of years of evolution have shaped us to believe things in the world should behave. There is predictable cause and effect. Things don't vanish arbitrarily, control surfaces don't abruptly change function, doing this always results in that.
I think that this sense of trust in the thing will become more and more important as our devices get more and more powerful. Time was that the mechanical, then electro-mechanical devices in our lives were fundamentally understandable, because they had sort of body analogs-- levers and pistons and switches and gears all behave similarly to things we've been using and touching since we wandered the Serengeti.
But digital electronics are literally nothing, to our fundamental selves. They might as well be powered by magic from the unicorn dimension, as far as our autonomic body knows.
As we become able to do unimaginably complex things with tiny devices we carry around like packages of Skittles, it is vitally important that those devices make it look easy in clear consistent ways that relate back to what we already know about the world.
The mistake most consumer electronic manufacturers make is to imagine that the "unimaginably complex" part will be so compelling they don't really have to sweat the "make it look easy" thing. And, of course, for a certain, disproportionally influential strata of tech enthusiast, that is absolutely the case. So much so that everything I've just said is touchy-feely nonsense.
That's where the whole "Mac people" eye-rolling starts up. But expecting ones personal devices to behave personably isn't an affectation of the rich, or the trendy, or the clueless. I think the next wave of pocketable devices are going to have to do a much, much better job of mirroring our actual habits of mind than the desktop computer generation did, because the psychic space between the thing in your pocket and the thing on your desk at work is much narrower.
Defacto standards are forming. H.264, AAC, mp3 are the entrenched media standards. HTML/CSS/javascript is quickly becoming the defacto development standard.
I suspect that Jobs sees the iPhone platform as his second chance to get it right-- to create the next "insanely great" computing device without being fenced in by entrenched business interests.
no de facto standard,
I assume Bloomberg got their figures from Gartner or other such reliable source.
You know what happens when you use the word "assume".
They haven't included any feature phones in their figures. Please read the report. Nokia doesn't make any E or N series feature phones and most of the XXXX models included are explicitly stated.
I know it's very hard for an American to comprehend how many smartphones Nokia sells but please try.
Perhaps the definition is different.
And don't be a wiseguy.
Interesting that in Japan next year, they expect a total of about 30 million phones to sell, mostly from 8 Japanese manufacturers, down from this year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/te...ref=technology
I think this highlights what is happening to a somewhat lessor extent in Europe, with their phones and services, vs. the iPhone and what it's doing.
I said in my definition that at this point many features that used to be smartphone only are spread across all phone categories.
Yes, we agree that the original "defining" features of smartphones are now being spread across all categories. So the question is what is left to uniquely define the category of smartphone, not necessarily what makes the best phone (since smartphone does not by definition equal best phone). This definition might not matter to a user, but it does to those who measure sales (like even Gartner and IDC) and to those who market phones.
What makes the best phones now is the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development.
But how do you measure or sell "the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development"? Note that even Symbian has multitasking sophistication, and tens of thousands of apps.
Are the phones you listed really used as business phones in Europe? Are they used for advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing?
Not sure what you mean to say with these questions. Should the smartphone category be limited to "business phones"? Or to phones that have "advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing"? I don't think so.
But how do you measure or sell "the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development"? Note that even Symbian has multitasking sophistication, and tens of thousands of apps.
But how many of those apps are modern apps, and how many are old apps designed for older phones without the capabilities of their more modern ones?
It's like saying that the PC has tens of thousands of apps for MS-DOS, Win 3.1, 95, 98, 2000 etc., for machines going back to the 80288.
Yes, they are there, but does it matter?
What about all of Palms old apps? Some were quite good, but most were for old phones with terrible graphics that can't use multitouch in any useful way, because they were designed for a stylus. How many Pre owners will want most of that?
That's the situation for Nokia. As they discontinue the older phones, the apps hang around, but how useful, or desirable, are most of them on newer phones?
But how do you measure or sell "the sophistication of the OS, user interface, and third party app development"? Note that even Symbian has multitasking sophistication, and tens of thousands of apps.
What makes the best phone is known from using it. So there is no quantafiable measurement. A lot of it is opinion but I don't think it's difficult to tell.
What makes the best OS/UI is the ability and ease of the phones primary functions for the average user. There is no point to functions if they are too difficult or frustrating for people to actually use. What determines the best apps are the usefulness to the average consumer.
Not sure what you mean to say with these questions. Should the smartphone category be limited to "business phones"? Or to phones that have "advanced email, calendar, and contact syncing"? I don't think so.
You said the iPhone is not competing so much with the Blackberry in Europe. So I listed the functions the BB is best at and asked if the phones you listed are just as good as the BB at those tasks.
For those who haven't seen it yet, there is a very interesting article today in the NY Times about why Japans "advanced" phones don't sell outside of Japan, and a couple of surprising remarks about the iPhone.
Interesting that in Japan next year, they expect a total of about 30 million phones to sell, mostly from 8 Japanese manufacturers, down from this year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/te...ref=technology
I think this highlights what is happening to a somewhat lessor extent in Europe, with their phones and services, vs. the iPhone and what it's doing.
interesting article.
2 phones ago, and pre-iPhone, i was using an i-mode capable NEC flip-phone (N410i) here in australia. whilst it was a dumbed-down handset compared to what was sold in japan, it was a brilliant phone. the UI was logical and easy to use, with sensible buttons to complement the menu system.
prior to the iPhone coming out, it was my perfect phone (even dumbed down), and i would have been happy to keep to NECs. 3G though killed i-mode here, which was basically 2.5G and more much limited in scope than in Japan. but i still use it as my alarm clock!
http://www.swotti.com/tmp/swotti/cac...c%20N410i2.jpg
interesting article.
2 phones ago, and pre-iPhone, i was using an i-mode capable NEC flip-phone (N410i) here in australia. whilst it was a dumbed-down handset compared to what was sold in japan, it was a brilliant phone. the UI was logical and easy to use, with sensible buttons to complement the menu system.
prior to the iPhone coming out, it was my perfect phone (even dumbed down), and i would have been happy to keep to NECs. 3G though killed i-mode here, which was basically 2.5G and more much limited in scope than in Japan. but i still use it as my alarm clock!
http://www.swotti.com/tmp/swotti/cac...c%20N410i2.jpg
Looks like the pre iPhone days of the Samsung both my wife and daughter had.