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.
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?
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!]"
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)
"So your explanation for the iPhone phenomenon is that Apple use its (certainly smaller) ad budget supernaturally better than everyone else...?"
No, I didn't say that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man ). The closest thing I did say to that was "Part of it might be a love-affair with Apple due to their exceptional marketing and the near mythical status of Steve Jobs." A big part is certainly the UI. People love the Apple/iPhone brand for a lot of reasons-- many of these reasons are perfectly rational.
My point was that consumers tend to over-estimate how rational their decisions and their brand loyalty are.
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.
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.
It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular.
From my perspective, the feature-driven nature of the industry is exactly what left the door wide open for someone to invade with fewer features and greater usability. The dogged pursuit of feature bullet points and checkmarks may help you sell to a particular demographic, but most people were never able to exploit those features.
The most dramatic illustration of this is how Mobile Safari appeared in HTTP daemon logs out of proportion with the market share that the platform had relative to existing smartphones that already had mobile browsing.
Edit: Actually, that's the 2nd most dramatic. The most dramatic illustration, to me, is how the device was so simple to use that the TV advertisements could demonstrate it by showing a pair of hands. Sure, the ads stretched the truth on the performance, but nevertheless they were essentially tutorial in nature. Meanwhile, other smartphones showed people dancing and smiling: anything but how their phones were used.
A feature-driven industry is an industry ripe for invasion by someone who has internalized what Antoine de Saint-Exupery meant when he said "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
I wish I could vote this up a hundred times. I get tired of people complaining about how much the iPhone can't do. I like the iPhone because it avoids feature bloat.
I didn't suggest the opposite. Bad headlines do not equal truth.
The iPhone appears to be driven by a vision of making certain things easy and safe, at the expense of everything else. Since these things are desirable, whether technical or marketing driven, users are willing to live with the decisions made by Apple.
This is not defending any of the "crap", this is recognising that the choices made are very successful.
To respond specifically to the issue of multitasking, I am still surprised that this is such a big deal. Maybe I have atypical phone usage patterns, but the only application I have every wished I could run in the background is Pandora. Anything else I find I only need to run when I'm looking at it, or already mutlitasks. I can listen to music (both from the library and from streaming sources online through Safari) in the background while doing other things. I can stay on speakerphone with someone while I run other apps. People get all in a huff pointing out that the iPhone can't run multiple apps at the same time, but the two things I want, phone and music, work in the background. If AT&T's advertising is to be believed, the Droid wouldn't let me be on the phone and use data at the same time, which to me is almost the be all and end all of multitasking, so instead of gaining something I'd be losing.
For those of you curious, I listen to this radio station streaming, and consider it a great example of a way to embrace Safari for the iPhone:
http://c895worldwide.com/web/streaming/iphone/iphone.html
It lets me add a bookmark to my home screen with an icon it gets from the page itself, and when I start streaming music, it keeps going even when I leave Safari and do something else.
When did it become a race to implement the most features? I like the iPhone because it has just the right amount of functionality for what I want to do. Add anything more, and it wouldn't be as good.
>>It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular.
The arguably best UI around is a killer feature. That is something which generates love. Great usability makes the UI just "disappear", you don't think about it.
Just look at which phone users really manage to use them for data traffic (and the carriers' trouble with that).
This isn't unique to Apple. I buy pens (Pilot G-tec C4) which break really easily. That is not really smart, but their thin writing is a killer feature for me. I buy them a dozen at a time without even cursing.
Disclaimer: I don't really care if I use Ubuntu or Mac.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.