

IPhone users are suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome - quizbiz
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10414356-71.html

======
yardie
Shitty headline grabber from an even shittier consultancy. On my desk I've got
a Blackberry Curve, Samsung WM, and an iPhone 3GS. I write and test software
for the first two. The last is a new addition that I haven't gotten around to.

The firm has the idea that users are too stupid to know what they like. And
since the iPhone is the only option (really?!) then users are obviously
delusional. The poster has written a poor headline and should rescind it. No
one is being held hostage. Because other makers are still in business then
there must be a viable business for them to stay in it. And the goalpost is
always moving forward. If I've learned one thing about Apple, execution is
their business. If a feature: won't work, is buggy, or too complex they won't
implement it. They'll eventually do it, but not at 80%, not even 95% complete.

And finally, I didn't pay for my phone the company did. So this is as close to
an objective opinion your going to get. There is no buyers remorse here. I
have a cabinet of phones I could use if this one didn't work out. Some of my
colleagues have turned in their iPhones and gone back to BBs, WMs, and Nokias.

~~~
webwright
Speaking as a guy who just punted his iPhone for a Droid a few weeks ago,
there was definitely part of me who has been saying "Why did I put up with
that for so long?" 'It' being the awful call performance (data and apps were
great).

I'm sure I'm not the only one... So why DID I put up with it? Part of it might
be a love-affair with Apple due to their exceptional marketing and the near
mythical status of Steve Jobs.

Consumers aren't stupid-- but I can't imagine how you could think that all of
your decisions are rational... Or even most of them. Ever done any A/B
testing? Why would an orange button perform 20% better than a blue one?

What about priming studies?

(more thoughts in an old blog post: [http://www.tonywright.com/2007/the-fuss-
about-macs-priming-a...](http://www.tonywright.com/2007/the-fuss-about-macs-
priming-and-racism/) )

Here's the interesting bit:

Bargh and several colleagues chose a group of undergraduates as subjects and
gave them two scrambled-sentence tests. The first test was sprinkled with rude
words like “disturb,” “bother,” and “intrude.” The second test was sprinkled
with polite words like “respect,” “considerate,” and “yield.”

In both cases, the tests were indiscreet. None of the subjects picked up on
the word trend consciously. But it primed them subconsciously.

After taking the five-minute test, students were asked to walk down the hall
and talk to the person running the experiment about their next assignment. An
actor was strategically engaged in conversation with the experimenter when the
students would arrive. And the goal was to see how long it would take students
to interrupt.

"Bargh wanted to know if the subjects who were primed with polite words would
take longer to interrupt the conversation than those primed with rude words.
They thought the subconscious priming would have a slight affect. But the
affect was pretty profound in quantitative terms.

The people primed with rude words interrupted, on average, after only five
minutes. But 82% of the people primed with polite words never interrupted at
all. Who knows how long they would have patiently and politely waited if the
researchers hadn’t give the test a ten-minute time limit. [Note by Tony: Those
damn ethics committees... Milgram would never be able to get away with his
experiment today!]"

~~~
jimbokun
'"Why did I put up with that for so long?" 'It' being the awful call
performance (data and apps were great).'

Maybe it was because the data and apps were great?

~~~
webwright
I don't think so. There were virtually no apps on the iPhone that were
important to me (though it is a touch faster than the Droid in terms of data
speed). My iPhone was, for me, first and foremost a phone. And it was TERRIBLE
at that (dropping calls constantly). (note: I'm in Seattle-- from what I
understand, it's a problem that's most common in NYC, SF, and Seattle)

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bensummers
Perhaps iPhone users accept the limitations because the stuff it does actually
do works so well for them?

This explanation, however, doesn't provide a good headline, so obviously isn't
plausible.

~~~
rpdillon
So because it makes a bad headline, it obviously is? It's worth investigating
why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so
lacking in features is so popular. We've established that iPhones are locked
to a carrier that has the worst customer service ratings in the industry, and
that it can't do basic things other smartphones do, like multitask. Yet, it's
the gadget to have and continues to fly off the shelves years after its
release. I think that's pretty interesting, and simply saying "yeah, it's just
_really good_ at making those phone calls" doesn't cut it (considering a 30%
drop call rate is considered OK, saying it's really good at making calls would
be a stretch).

Listen, I've recommended friends and family of mine get iPhones, and I'm
typing this on a Mac. But the best thing you can do for companies you like is
call them on their crap. And a lack of basic chat functionality on the iPhone
is a sad state of affairs, and no one really seems to talk about it. Apple
does some stuff wrong, but they tend to cover it up through marketing. My
wife, who used to use an iPhone, just pointed out to me as I was typing this
that iPhones are a status symbol, and many people buy them more because they
are iPhones than out of any real analysis of the features. Once bought, people
want to validate their own decisions, so they'll defend the inferior product.
Such is the power of marketing.

~~~
jsz0
The iPhone has feature parity or superiority with most other SmartPhones. It
seems the goal posts keep moving on features. No one was going to buy the
iPhone because:

-No copy & paste -No MMS -No stereo Bluetooth -No third party apps -No video recording -No Flash

Except they did. They bought it and liked it -- many of them bought another
one (3G/GS). So it appears to me it's not really a feature-driven industry.
It's a usability driven industry. Making a complex device easier to use is
more important than offering every possible feature.

~~~
lsc
you have a good point; more features, all other things being equal, means more
complexity.

------
watmough
Like the first Mac, the iPhone is the first phone good enough to criticize.

Sure, plenty of limitations, but overall, the iPhone completely redefined how
well a phone could work, and has massively expanded what people expect from
their phones.

To the benefit of users of the iPhone _and_ competing devices alike.

~~~
lsc
See, I still don't get it. I mean, to me, the nokia communicators of 10 years
ago look like better devices than the iphone.

But then, I guess most people really like the touch screen interface, and
apple (maybe? I wouldn't know. I can't stand touch screens) was the first to
get the touch screen right.

~~~
jsz0
Maybe the E90 but, come on now, a circa 2001 Nokia Communicator doesn't have
3G or wifi. It has a 66Mhz CPU. It's browser was a bit useless when the phone
was released and probably completely incapable of rendering any non-WAP web
page today. I don't see how it's even remotely possible to compare the two
devices. It would be more apt to compare the 2001 Communicator to a Newton.

~~~
lsc
Yes, clearly I am exaggerating. the 9290 doesn't even have EDGE, so there
really isn't a comparison. (I have one on my desk right now, actually. I find
the phone aesthetically appealing, which probably says a lot about why I don't
"get" the iphone. [1] but without EDGE, at least, it's not particularly
practical. The intent of the designers was that you would do dialup, but
something changed in the GSM protocol so dialup no longer works, making the
phone nothing but a giant sms device and decent offline (and thus obsolete)
PDA.

(as an aside, I think the newton is interesting because if it's handwriting
recognition was good enough, we'd be seeing handwriting recognition as a
dominant input method for PDAs today. The thing is, it wasn't, and by now,
even if someone comes up with absolutely perfect handwriting recognition
software, too many of us have grown up not knowing how to write. the time when
handwriting recognition could have worked is over.)

However, the 9500 was released in '04, and I think it can reasonably be argued
that it is as 'advanced' as the first generation iphone. It doesn't have 3g,
but neither did the first iphone. it does have wifi, edge, and a /keyboard/
making it a much more useful device, imho, than the iphone. I understand that
the keyboard vs. touchscreen debate is subjective, and probably has more to do
with what you are used to than anything else, but aside from the touchscreen,
I'm not sure how else the iphone is more 'advanced' than the communicator
9500.

Now, if you want to compare modern devices, check out the n900. it's pretty
slick. it's got a touchscreen and a keyboard, and the screen is absolutely
beautiful, even in full sunlight. Under the covers, it's linux, and it's sold
unlocked, so you can play with it. The maemo linux stuff is pretty close to
regular linux, so you have a chance of understanding it too. Again, the apple
software is better /if it does what you want/ while the nokia hardware is
clearly superior, and the nokia software allows you to do exactly what you
want /if you know how/.

I'm not saying the iphone is bad- If you have the same needs that apple had in
mind when they designed it, it's a really great phone. But I think what they
took out was probably more important to that than what they put in. As far as
I can tell, apple didn't do anything particularly innovative in terms of
features or technology, but they certainly made a lot of users happy. My
belief is that part of their success was that they made the interface /just
right/ for a certain class of users, by removing the sort of features those
users don't want. (unfortunately, I don't belong to that class of users.)

Now, previous nokia communicators were status symbols in other parts of the
world, but here, they never were. The iphone was the first smartphone to
impact your image positively in the US. I'm the last person you should ask as
to why that is, but I will give you my opinion anyhow: the Iphone was the
first smart phone that cool people could effectively use.

[1] the thing is big and blocky. It looks as tough as it is. You can drop it,
throw it, stick it in your pocket with your keys, and assuming your pockets
are large enough to handle it, there's not a problem. I like clamshell designs
for this reason.

------
rbanffy
Maybe the article fails to notice that most iPhone buyers are not the typical
smartphone (feature-driven) users. The fact it does many things a common
smartphone does is just a nice free and welcome extra they did not want.

The iPhone, as it is, appeals to a variety of different user profiles. There
are people who buy it for the cool factor, others that buy it because it's
from Apple, others that want games, those who get it for the web browsing and
still others that buy it as a phone with an integrated iPod. And, of course,
those who buy it as a smartphone. The fact it fills all these roles adequately
with a nice GUI makes it a top seller.

It may not even be the best seller in any market segment I described, but even
being an average seller in a dozen segments can make any marketing exec smile.

------
javery
People will always defend something they buy, ask people similar questions
about the limitations in a laptop vs. a desktop, an Xbox 360 vs. Playstation
3, a Lexus vs. BMW, and you will see very similar answers.

This is really a joke of a "research report", it's more like a bad high school
paper.

------
Hoff
Troll Apple users, get web hits, sell ads. Duh.

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rauljara
The iPhone is feature poor? How many tens of thousands of apps are there these
days? Those improve the functionality of my iPhone infinitely. They kind of
seem like features to me.

------
bmalicoat
I've only been using Apple products for about 3 years. Currently I have a
MacBook Pro and 3GS. The main reason I switched, since most feaures I cared
about could be found on multiple platforms, was build quality. It would be
hard to deny that the unibody laptops Apple makes are incredibly solid and
long-lasting. Same goes for an iPhone with a basic amount of care. The side-
effect of this is resale value. Of course the iPhone's resale value is
inflated due to the unlocked market, but even the laptops have insane resale
value. It's nice to know that when I need to upgrade I can pay for 30%+ of a
new model with the proceeds of selling my current one. Go out and pay $2000
for a plastic laptop, use it and abuse it for a year and try to sell it. Paint
will be rubbed off, there will be squeaky loose panels, people will only
laugh.

Again, these are just my personal reasons for choosing Apple at this time, I
am more than willing to give other companies a chance if they can manage to
make great hardware to go with their great software. So I really don't feel
myself held hostage by anyone but AT&T and I am definitely not in love with
them, so no, there is no Stockholm Syndrome here.

~~~
lsc
heh. I am on the other end of that curve; I buy a year old $1500 lenovo
ThinkPad X series and I get the keyboard feel I love in a 'just right' sized
laptop with reasonably good Linux drivers for $450. Sure, the resale value
will be zero, but let's be honest; after 3 years in my messenger bag, anything
but a high-end toshiba toughbook is going to be unusable.

------
compay
I liked the iPhone because the features that were lacking at the time were not
very important to me, and the features that _were_ implemented are for the
most part extremely well done; not because I'm some delusional fanboy.

My needs have changed a bit and so I'm using an Android phone now. But I was
pretty happy with the iPhone for quite a while, despite its limitations.

~~~
rbanffy
It's not because you don't think you are crazy that you are not ;-)

And that's the more perverse thing in this article - it short-circuits any
iPhone users' defense because they are all delusional.

~~~
compay
No, the giant bunny sitting next to me says _you're_ the delusional one.

~~~
rbanffy
So you see him too...

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ErrantX
I see what they are saying; but I have a different counterpoint.

I got an iPhone because it looks nice and I figured the apps would be cool.
Well it looks nice but the apps, for the most part, don't do much but divert
me. There are some I use - but not as frequently as I use the phone, email and
calendar features.

I toyed with ditching the phone but now I cant: im totally sold on the phone
functionality.. it's the best set up I've ever had.

And there I think is the hook: the iPhone really does _just work_ as a phone.
Lots of smart phones never manage that :)

(there are plenty of "wtf" moments... but they havent yet completely
frustrated me - which is rarw)

