Yeah, it looks good. I’m usually not one to comment on these things, but as you’ll see below it took on a personal touch. I have to admit that I am very attracted to the iPhone, and as technology goes it’s simple and portable. This weekend an Apple store opened in Ann Arbor. I just happened to pass by during the opening while looking for a new pair of glasses at the mall (I ended up sticking to contacts).
I really like the idea of being able to access the web from anywhere or even just from WiFi hotspots. That the big deal for me. I like the idea of not having to pay a cell provider for access to the web even more. The iPhone is smaller and slimmer than I had envisioned from the pictures. I was surprised at just how easy and intuitive the interface was to use. Apple’s big breakthrough, the “finger zoom” I guess you could call it, works pretty well.
I did not like the high incidence of “false positives”, that is, times when I would go to zoom or move a zoomed-in page and accidentally click on an ad or some other link (lucky for Google). This seems to suggest some rethinking of web design for these smaller devices. It’s not that anything is smaller per se, but when your pointer goes from 2 pixels to 20 (your finger), you have to make icons instead of arrows and numbers for navigation. You might also have to have parts of the page that are link-free, going against everything the New York Times stands for with its “every-word-is-hot-linked” approach. Typing is also difficult, but I suspect that, like texting, it may be possible to overcome the limitations of extra-small keys on the touchscreen.
Still, I didn’t even begin to grasp the possibility until talking with my grandmother this weekend. We’ve been trying to find a solution for her to be able to access the web and send mail. Getting her a full-fledged computer is overkill, and she’s definitely a minimalist with not intention of having a big clunking box on her antique desktop. We got to talking about her new phone and how she never uses it, in part because the many functions make it difficult to navigate and simply enter her friend’s phone number. I asked her who her provider was, and then it dawned on me: The iPhone might solve her interaction problems. Leave it to Apple to make interaction interactive (..now about that whole sustainable environment thing…Steve).
I tend to typically assume that new technology and interfaces are more difficult to use and not easier. This is usually because some marketing department has gotten too invented in the design, trying to sell features and products that nobody needs or wants. The iPhone is actually pretty simple, and the icons make doing simple things like entering a phone number easy because you can see the navigational menu structure. Calling is the same as selecting a full name. I like the idea of Grandma being able to operate her computer form a small and portable device. She’s been wanting to surf the web, and she still needs an operable phone. Perhaps the iPhone is it, but she’ll have to be the judge.
I’m still waiting for the semantically important switch from iTechnology to uTechnology, but that’s me. I wonder how these things can help us collect data in the field and otherwise do science 2.0? Then again, Naoki hacked his pda a long time ago to enter info about his flowers and their levels of inbreeding.
