
Why the iPhone will fail (2007) - aneth
http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-to-flop-product-to.html
======
karzeem
> The designers and technophiles who encouraged development of the iPhone have
> fallen into the trap of all overreaching hardware and software designers;
> thinking that their users are like themselves.

Actually, I think both the worst and the best designers think their users are
like them. It's just that the best ones are right.

~~~
erikpukinskis
The best designers have an accurate mental model of their users. In their
mind, they can put their product in the hand of the 30 year old floor manager
at the Borders at the mall and predict what will happen with shocking
accuracy.

They can predict it because they've watched the floor manager interact with
past products in the usability lab dozens of times.

And because they have watched that person dozens of times, they know that even
thought they can predict extremely well how that person will react, they know
they have to run tests anyway, because the best designers know how often
they've been surprised in the past.

The best designers have a great mental model of their users, and know when to
use it.

The worst designers just use themselves as a model of their users, and their
designs are accordingly screwy.

~~~
ThomPete
Well with regards to testing,

Apple don't do any kind of usability testing in any normal sense.

They build products they want themselves and then they see what happens. The
feedback they get back from that is the feedback they use.

~~~
aaronsw
Of course Apple does usability testing and has since the beginning. Here's a
full guide on how they do it:

[http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExp...](http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGDesignProcess/XHIGDesignProcess.html)

Obviously they use their own judgment and market feedback as well, but the
notion that they launch products without testing them first is crazy.

~~~
ThomPete
No one is saying they aren't testing them. Of course they are.

They are just not testing them in any normal sense.

I.e. they don't invite users to test it in usability labs or any other typical
test environments.

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925608....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925608.htm)

------
nostromo
We're all wrong at times. I can forgive that.

What I can't forgive is quoting your own made-up "laws" like you've discovered
deep truths about the natural world...

"Because [Apple's] designers forgot Platt’s First, Last, and Only Law of User
Experience Design ('Know Thy User, for He Is Not Thee')" -David Platt

~~~
adriand
I think this applies even when you're right or when in fact you did discover
deep truths about the natural world.

------
TomOfTTB
This guy falls into the same trap a lot of UX designers do: He takes a good
rule (keep it simple) and extrapolates too far in his conclusion. He assumes
an average user isn't smart enough to grasp multi-function devices and
multitasking.

That said I don't blame him for his third point. I think a lot of people
(myself included) were suprised at how little tactile feedback is missed on
the iPhone.

~~~
btmorex
I sort of agree about tactile feedback. People don't miss it much on the
iphone. On the other hand, real buttons are still a far, far better interface.
I basically don't use the virtual keyboard on my droid. I either use the real
keyboard or voice search. Both interfaces blow the virtual keyboard away (and
it's not even that bad). I guess what I'm saying is that both sides are right.
Real buttons are better, but if you don't have them normal users will still
buy the device.

~~~
dasil003
I think the stroke of genius in the iPhone (and I fully admit this is obvious
3 years later), is that people want to do a wide variety of simple things on
their phone.

If you are sending tons of emails from your phone, then yeah, the physical
keyboard blows the onscreen one out of the water. But when you are running a
dozen apps with completely different functionality, but all of them are fairly
simplistic, a touch-screen (especially a good one) does a better job on
average, as compared to a keyboard where you quickly descend into the buttons
being meaningless ala Nokia endless 2-button menu navigation.

Now obviously you can have both (I bought a G1 back in '08 and I like having
both), but it took balls for Apple to make that decision and say that a
touchscreen _only_ would be sufficient. However the impact of that decision on
the elegance of the form factor is undeniable, and something that I imagine
had a large if unmeasurable impact on the success of the iPhone. It's the type
of thing that you need a product visionary at the top to achieve, otherwise
it's DOA at the first board meeting.

------
bbuffone
>As I expound in great detail in my book Why Software Sucks (Addison-Wesley,
2006, <http://www.whysoftwaresucks.com/>) your user is not you.

Seems that the author was really looking for a promotion vehicle for his book
and looked to take a big product launch like the iphone and use it to his
advantage.

Everyone that bought the book based on this ridiculous article should get
their money back like everyone that bought a mini vanilli album (I might be
dating myself).

~~~
josephcooney
A minor point - it's Milli Vanilli (although mini vanilli sounds interesting)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli>

------
riffic
>Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype's still hot. You heard it here
first.

AAPL on June 21, 2007 - $123.9 a share

AAPL on September 4, 2010 - $258.8

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AAPL+JUNE+21,+2007>

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AAPL+September+4,+2010>

~~~
sliverstorm
I can never understand why people give advice like that. If they are right,
nobody will remember or credit them, and if they are wrong they look terrible.

I certainly avoid making such statements, as I cannot bear the thought of my
advice destroying the wealth of the people close enough to me to listen to me.

~~~
natfriedman
You do have to give him credit for leaving the article up. I think I'd be busy
purging it from every internet cache I could find if I'd written something
this confident and wrong.

------
KirinDave
In case anyone is wondering what happened to this guy, he's writing for
Microsoft now.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/ee532402.aspx?sdmr=...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/ee532402.aspx?sdmr=dontgetmestarted&sdmi=columns)

Which makes sense. He's got that fantastically wrong sense of intuition in
design that makes someone come to all the wrong conclusions with the data; the
kind of person who couldn't see the iPhone was a Big Deal in UX. This means
he's a great fit for the Microsoft UX base, because he can tell them what they
want to hear.

P.S., I suppose this statement will anger people and they'll furiously hit the
down arrow next to this comment, but I don't care. Having worked in Microsoft,
I can assure you that the people who succeed in MS UX roles are the people who
tell middle management what they want to hear (while the upper management and
actual engineers watch helplessly).

~~~
flatulent1
>In case anyone is wondering what happened to this guy, he's writing for
Microsoft now.

Perhaps he was writing for Microsoft then too??

Between the shills and those just after page hits, there sure are a lot of
articles not worth the paper they could have been written on. It's funny
seeing the guy cite himself though.

Pity the iPhone is so hard to use and lacking that keyboard. People with the
urge to hit control-alt-F7 obviously weren't consulted. And his point about
multiple functions... Perhaps he figures there's still a market for dedicated
word processors or something.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#WP_Market_Col...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#WP_Market_Collapse)

------
jarin
"The user has to interrupt her blissful reverie, open her eyes, come back
visually to the yucky airplane that the beautiful music from the iPhone has
been helping her escape. She then has to pick the phone up in one hand, lift
it up to where she can see it, use her other hand to press the forward button,
and put the phone back down. Instead of a one-hand, no eye operation, it's a
two-hand, two-eye operation."

Or you can just double-click the button on the earbuds. One-hand, no eye
operation.

------
dasil003
How embarassing for this guy. I guess the lesson is that armchair UI experts
shouldn't underestimate Apple's product design skills. All his critiques are
obvious issues that Apple was probably thinking about from day 1 of product
design in 2005 or whenever. Buttons too small for touchscreen; make them
bigger. No tactile feedback; make the UI super-responsive.

On the other hand you can cut the guy some slack since he made these
predictions before release. It's actually quite a bit more embarassing when
you hear an interview from Ballmer in 2010 floundering around trying to stick
to his talking points about how an iPad is still a PC, and PCs will come in
many form factors, etc.

~~~
nanairo
Is it? I think maybe we can cut him some slack for his predictions... but it
takes a special kind of arrogance to make predictions when you haven't even
touched/tried one.

------
joelmichael
"There hasn’t been a packaged album side worth listening to the whole thing in
order since Abbey Road."

Comments like this are revealing.

~~~
philwelch
I was about to come here and write a comment about how you could barely go a
sentence through the post without finding a patently absurd statement, and
that was going to be at the top of my highlights list.

Since you stole my headliner, I'll post a few other false or highly
questionable remarks that would have had me dismissing this as shallow
linkbait as early as 2007:

"...crash in flames the way Apple’s late and unlamented Newton did, only much
more loudly and publicly because of all the hype it’s gotten" (the Newton was
just as widely hyped at the time)

(about the iTunes store) "You could listen to the whole song before you bought
it, not just a small clip." (the opposite of the truth)

"Consider the case of an airline passenger relaxing in her seat, eyes closed,
iPod mini hung around her neck with a cord, or maybe just lying in her lap --
the very picture of relaxation. Suppose she wants to skip forward or back in
the song list. She just presses the forward or back button....Now think of the
same thing with in iPhone, which doesn't have separate forward or back
buttons, just an icon on a touch screen. The user has to interrupt her
blissful reverie, open her eyes..." (or she could double-click or triple-click
the headphone cord)

(And, back to the original point, I own at least a dozen albums made since
Abbey Road worth listening to in their entirety--in fact, each of them is more
worth listening to in their entirety than Abbey Road itself, in my opinion,
and one was even produced at Abbey Road Studios!)

------
Osiris
Reading this, I was thinking that this might very well describe a poorly
designed mobile OS, like Windows Mobile or maybe even Android 1.0. Even my
myTouch 3G is a pain to use because of limited RAM and a slow CPU.

Apple, I think, overcame a lot of the usability issues this guy was afraid of
by carefully designing the OS and software to be as user-friendly as possible.

I think Android still has quite a ways to go before the OS is capable of
producing the same level of simplicity and elegance as the iPhone.

 _Note: I've only used an iPhone in passing. My phone is an Android_

------
ThomPete
The problem with his article besides being obviously wrong in retrospect is
his focus on usability as a defining factor for the success of the product.

Usability and simplicity isn't why a product succeeds, it needs to be
understood in context with engineering, marketing, luck, timing and so many
other things.

The iPhone succeeded because at the time it was such a fresh breath of air.

~~~
gnaffle
True, but I actually think it succeeded very much because it was the first
usable "smartphone". The author of this blogpost didn't realize this. Although
he could do exactly same stuff on his old Nokia N-series, it wasn't until my
dad got an iPhone that he began sending mails, browsing the web and listening
to music on his phone. Now my mother's got one as well and she's doing the
same.

~~~
ThomPete
Yes

What Apple realized was that you can't extend the current desktop metaphor to
the mobile screen.

So yes certainly usability have much to do with it. But factors such as
control over the user experience also had a lot to do with it.

In other words, apple could probably have done a worse job and still be
successful because they controlled everything on the phone.

And obviously the ecosystem have been a huge factor just as it was for the
iPod.

------
ElbertF
The first comment hit the nail on the head though.

 _[...] Now the iPhone. When it hits the streets I guarantee it will sell like
hot cakes (though not to you or me!). It is the must-have yuppie accessory of
the decade. I predict they will sell millions of the things before anyone even
stops to evaluate what they have actually bought._

~~~
nanairo
Lol... yeah, keep telling yourself that. How did it go?

first day: massive queues ==> Everyone on the net: "This is meaningless: they
are just the Apple drones following their Apple master's orders"

first month: still in high demand ==> Everyone on the net: "Sure, it's going
fine now. But wait until all the Apple zealot have got one and then demand
will collapse"

first year: still in high demand ==> Everyone on the net: "Of course it's a
good design, but I may as well buy X from company Y that will only come out in
Z months: it's going to completely kill the iPhone. Anyone who is not a zealot
will get one".

The common theme is that from day one people dismiss Apple gadgets as
something that will only appeal the yuppies or the zealots. They said the same
of the iPod. But they ended up selling more than 250 million iPods and
something like 100+ million iOS devices (though there's a slight overlap
between the two groups).

At which point do those that buy Apple gadgets stop becoming the minority of
zealots/yuppies and _you_ become the minority?

------
akamaka
There's a pretty big mistake in his logic, even without the benefit of
hindsight.

The iPhone didn't have to be as easy to use as an iPod. It's competing against
other phones, and only needed to be easier to use than those.

(In any case, I do find an iPhone easier to use than an iPod.)

~~~
dualboot
I certainly agree.

His biggest mistake was not underestimating Apple, or it's potential
customers.

His biggest mistake was ignoring how terrible every other smartphone offering
to date actually was.

Certainly there have been plenty of well built and designed "phones" but the
smartphone offerings were and have always been mostly painful experiences for
end users.

There was always a massive compromise that greatly effected usability.

The iPhone chose a different set of compromises and I dare say it was a pretty
spot on decision (in retrospect).

------
KevBurnsJr
"... users will detest the touch screen interface due to its lack of tactile
feedback ..."

is like saying

"... people watching moving picture films will reject the experience due to
its lack of olfactory feedback ..."

Still waiting on that smell-o-vision...

~~~
catshirt
tactile was certainly a poor choice of words- but nobody can deny there is
room for improvement. i still can't type without looking.

~~~
forensic
it's really not that hard. the buttons are always in the same place

i can type with like 70% accuracy without looking on the iphone, with 1 hand

~~~
wlievens
My fingertips are too big to type accurately. It's a pity because I really
like my iPod touch.

------
prs
Why the iPod will fail (2001)

<http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257>

~~~
smcnally
And both Taco and Diego made reasonable points at the time.

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad" all true, like "no tactile response,"
etc were / are.

The complete package and ecosystem have made iPods / iPhones compelling.

And the firm belief on taco's and diego's parts that this "senselessness"
would be clear were just clearly - in hindsight - wrong.

W

------
tyng
This failure of this article to predict iPhone's success echos well with
another article posted on HN yesterday ("simplicity is overrated") that UX
simplicity does not equate simple functionality or single-purpose device. The
killer product is often the ones with multiple powerful functions but also
intuitive UX design that won't take long for the user to figure out how to
operate it. Simple is about intuition.

------
xenophanes
linkbait title. and not very accurate. makes it sound like present day
article.

~~~
amayne
They did say "2007" in the title...

~~~
pg
I added it after his complaint.

~~~
aneth
Funny it ended up with the same title I gave it the first time I typed it. I
like thinking of articles like this as a failed present that never happened,
because I find that to be a deeper way of considering wrong predictions.
That's the reason for the title as I wrote it, but straightforward works too.
;)

I do give the guy credit for making a call though, just not sure I'd buy his
book.

------
Tycho
Usually when an expert prediction is wrong I'm fairly ambivalent because I
wouldn't know what to say either, and hey they can't all be right at the same
time. But in this case it contradicts my own observations and gut feeling
about the iPhone from when it was first demo'd (reinforced when I got my hands
on one). Sometimes folks instincts are just so off about things it amazes me.
I think it happens in other walks of life too, like music critics who totally
fail to detect hits on a new album. I don't like the word 'overthinking' but
there definitely is some sort of phenomenon whereby experts become blind to
the obvious.

------
phjohnst
I'd be curious to know, a few years on now, what type of phone he's using.

I'd have to say that as far as simplicity, iOS seems to be the leader right
now (maybe not the most powerful/customizable though), in comparison to
RIM/Android.

------
np_complete
some of the points (like the flaws of touch-screen buttons) are only _not_
true for iPhone. other competitors (say, Android phones) have very poor
experience with non-responsive onscreen keys.

------
tyng
With regard to tactile feedback, I think it's rather a learned experience.
People who have never used phone-sized physical keyboards (like myself) won't
care much about "losing" that experience.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
And some people (like myself) that were used to phone-sized keyboards just
hated it. People that like bigger screens and a solid thing instead of mobile
parts. I never understood people in University class writing messages under
the table, multitasking is slower and inefficient.

------
asanwal
This guy made a guess and also picked a title likely to engender some debate
or get page views. Good for him I guess as he took a stand. Unfortunately, he
was totally off the mark.

All this proves is the best strategies and ideas are usually written after the
fact. Once something works, it gets celebrated, becomes a best practice,
becomes a subject of books, and companies with no interest in creativity
assume they can copy them and succeed.

~~~
aneth
You've got to admit that Apple has an uncanny ability to find such things
though. It's no random event.

~~~
asanwal
No doubt. They've done remarkably well but this (1) hasn't always been the
case with Apple and (2) they do benefit from a brand halo they have from the
iPod which did change the game.

It'll be interesting to see if they can extend their wins into a new realm
like with their social network - ping. That would be a testament to the firm's
brilliance.

~~~
nanairo
I think (1) is always the case with a "brilliant" company (whatever that
means).

Apple got successes because they didn't shun risk. Often they got it right
(e.g. the iMac, dropping the floppy, etc...). Others they got it wrong (e.g.
the Mac cube, and their adding DVD players instead of CD-RW back when you
couldn't have both easily).

But if you don't risk you get nowhere. Sony used to take risks... sadly not so
much now (apart from the play station, but they got so burnt with the PS3 that
I doubt they'll try again). I miss more gutsy companies.

~~~
dualboot
Sony is failing now because they really just don't like their customers.

------
jasonlotito
Reminds me of all those "Why Ping will fail" articles.

------
rythie
His logic for why people bought the iPod is flawed since he doesn't back it up
with any evidence. I don't think iTunes had as much of an impact as he says,
most people imported the majority of their collection from CDs in the early
days of the iPod or downloaded it illegally which had nothing to do with
iTunes. Also Apple was making the smallest harddisk MP3 player with the
longest battery life for a few years and that's why I bought one (2nd gen,
Feb. 2003) and later recommended it to others. I don't think the ease of
loading the iPod was any better than other players in the early days, since
flash based MP3 players were as easy or easier since you could just drag the
files on or just their own simple tools. In fact to this day iTunes seems to
hated by a large pencentage of my friends with iPods (who mostly use Windows
BTW)

He also makes the mistake that the iPhone would be about music even though it
was clealy a step backwards in terms of the capicity (4 and 8gb) and the
controls as he points out. It was clearly designed for the Internet,
Apps/games and video - though that is easier to see in hindsight.

------
raquo
[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Why+the+iPhone+will+fail%2...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Why+the+iPhone+will+fail%22)
Just one in 103,000

------
imasr
I think this gives further credit to apple achievements and makes even clearer
that designing good products goes far beyond any rule list anyone could make.

------
DannoHung
This guy's first point is so shitty that you can discard the rest of the
article based on it ALONE:

> First, the iPhone ignores the main reasons that the iPod succeeded:
> simplicity and ease of use. The iPod is very easy to play and very easy to
> load, much more so than any other device had ever been. Even more important,
> the online ITunes store made buying music much simpler and easier than it
> had been. You didn’t have to drive to the store, you didn’t have to even
> wait for the UPS man to deliver a CD from amazon. You could listen to the
> whole song before you bought it, not just a small clip. And you could buy
> individual songs that you liked instead of having to buy a whole CD of
> mediocre gunk to get those one or two good songs. (There hasn’t been a
> packaged album side worth listening to the whole thing in order since Abbey
> Road.) You didn't have to carry the CDs around with you and change them and
> worry about losing them. The iPod was a success not because it made complex
> and sophisticated things possible, but because it made simple things
> (listening to the music that you liked) simpler and easier than they ever
> had been before. _The iPhone is doing the opposite._

I have highlighted the only section in which he lists complaints against the
iPhone with respect to simplicity and ease of use.

~~~
steveklabnik
Yes, but you have to remember that at that time, we were all using feature
phones. Smartphones hadn't really taken off yet, and they _did_ seem
significantly more complicated, since they do so much more. I had a RAZR, and
it could _technically_ play MP3s, but I certainly didn't want it to. I think
that this complaint was totally reasonable, given the time period and the fact
that it hadn't come out yet.

And by reasonable, I mean "still wrong, but understandable at the time."

~~~
DannoHung
His complaint is without any substance. That's what I'm getting at: "The
iPhone is too complicated! Here's a bunch of things not related to the iPhone
that are simple. The iPhone is complicated."

------
c00p3r
_As I expound in great detail in my book Why Software Sucks (Addison-Wesley,
2006,<http://www.whysoftwaresucks.com/>) your user is not you._ Why this
narcissistic, self-praising blog post of an obviously incompetent at least in
marketing person is hanging on top of HN? Caturday?

------
vjk2005
related » <http://j.mp/ideath>

------
k-zed
The only mistake of this man is that he didn't account for the reality
distortion field.

