Well, on the eve of the iPhone launch, I thought I’d post a couple of questions I have. I do plan on checking it out in the store shortly (though not the day of the launch or anything ridiculous like that). I’d like to see, in person, what the responsiveness of the device is (really), what the fingers on glass feels like, and – of course – how the on screen keyboard really works.
However, while watching the online demo video (20 minutes, hey I had time to kill and didn’t want to do “real” work), I noticed a couple interesting items:
- Consistency of finger motions between applications: There seems to be a real lack of HIG consistency between the various apps on the phone. Example: zooming out for the map application (double-tap) vs. zooming out for Safari (single-tap). This could be just an issue of incorrect demo, or perhaps both work for all apps (and what happened to a “reverse pinch” for zooming out, doesn’t that make more consistent sense when used in conjunction with the pinch to zoom in?). However, it is worrying that the demo shows different ways in different applications to do the same conceptual action.
- My music as a ringtone: This feature was noticeably absent from being highlighted in any of the literature or the demo. I suspect this is a victim of the Apple and AT&T negotiations. Carriers love that their users will pay them to get a ringtone on their phone, often for a song that they already own. For that matter, so do the record companies. However, this just seems broken for a phone that will have a huge subset of my music library on it (even Windows Mobile devices let you load wav files of your own creation as ringtones).
Observation #1 makes me worry how many other UI and finger action inconsistencies are there. Is this going to be another flavor of Apple doing, seemingly for no reason, different UI/look/action behaviors for different applications on the same platform? It’s been something that has long been a criticism, admittedly by purists, of OS X (how many window look and feels do we really need?) and is claimed by Jobs to be addressed in the coming OS X release. I’d argue that inconsistencies will be even more glaring on a device like a phone, where muscle memory really will come into play.
Observation #2 just makes me wonder how many other concessions Apple had to make to the carrier and/or record companies to get the phone built. I suppose only time and many more in-depth reviews will tell.
