Some of the smartest people in the world are like Larry, they just
don't get it.
Read this fascinating article from EE Times.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/s...leID=206504012

EE Times: Latest News
Users' love affair with iPhone stumps Mobile World panel

David Benjamin
EE Times
(02/14/2008 6:14 AM EST)

BARCELONA, Spain -- A blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and
technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain
agreed that the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications
user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc.
-- the iPhone.

Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study
showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as
"very satisfied" with their user experience.

In an ominous note for mobile operators, the iPhone respondents
credited their happy experience not to AT&T, the channel through which
iPhone services were delivered in the U.S, but to Apple, the device
maker.

The panel, whose title was It's the User Experience, Stupid agreed
that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but
they reached little agreement on how to follow.

One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing
and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is
to manipulate users by identifying their "need states" -- including
such compulsions as "killing time," and "making the most of it" -- and
fulfilling them subliminally.

Adobe's Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving
the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through
better interface design. Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for
Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into
users' "neural networks" to navigate a mobile phone interface "using
touch and pre-touch input."

Panelists cautiously agreed that the current user experience -- at
least compared to the iPhone -- is not very good. Predolin said that
one problem is that many people are reluctant to tap the vast
potential of mobile communications -- especially the mobile Internet --
because they fear the eventual cost. With so many telecom companies
advertising heavily the cost of their services per minute, users
hesitate to explore possibilities that might devour their precious
minutes.

Predolin said that this deadline consciousness is so strong among
mobile users that they even constrained their consumption of minutes
in a Buongiorno-sponsored trial in which participants were given
mobile phones free for a week. "Operators are putting together cost
plans that people can't understand," said Predolin. "It is not just
cost but the way you market your cost."

Panelist Mike Yonker, general manager of worldwide strategy and
operations for Texas Instruments' wireless terminals business unit,
said that the way for the user to get the rich content now available
on a mobile handset is through the "search" function. But this isn't
so easy. He compared the limitations of a mobile handset to a full
personal computer screen.

Searching on a computer, he said, is like going to a store, where the
customers sees every product displayed, and can make comparisons,
touch the products, even try things on for size. Doing the same search
on a mobile, he said, but like trying to shop in the same store but
"through a drive-up window." No matter how much stuff is in the store,
you can only find out through the cashier at the drive-up window.

The dilemma, left unsolved by the panelists, was how to squeeze the
user through that window, past the cashier, to sample all the things
in the store, without guilt, while still feeling grateful to the
cashier who seemed, all along, to be standing in the way.

Everyone agreed that, so far, only Apple has been able to turn this
trick. For users, "the content is the core," said Lipman of Power2B
somewhat ruefully, "and we have to get out of their way."






Discuss This Article
6 message(s). Last at: Feb 15, 2008 4:58:42 PM

*
Davemill
Dude
commented on Feb 14, 2008 12:54:22 PM

This story is really sad. The iPhone is in this sense an open
book. The iPod is not an portable media player, like its competition.
It is a total portable media experience, coupled with iTunes. After 6+
years, the competition has not figured this out. The iPhone is not a
cell phone or MP3 player, like it's competition. It is a total
portable media & communications experience, coupled with iTunes and a
commodity communications provider (AT&T). As this article clearly
demonstrates, the competition has not figured this out. This year we
will see a dozen iPhone clones. They will have brighter or bigger
screens, or more memory, or more features, or more technobable in
another category. They will not replicate any substantial portion of
hte iPhone total experience, so the iPhone will increase its market
share in the face of this clueless competition. Does anyone care to
bet against me on this?
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gewanbrown
Designer/Producer
commented on Feb 14, 2008 2:51:43 PM

I second that. In addition, the competition always looks at the
ipod or iphone and breaks it down into parts. Then they assume they
can boost the specs on features at a lower price and have a winner.
Apple surpasses the competition based on the sum of its parts, which
in turn is a large part of the experience. Add a really well thought
out yet simple human interface and you have something that everyone
can get into. My father-in-law and parents, all technophobes, now text
me and keep digital schedules because the technology in the iphone is
accessible. Apple also knows how to throw features away. Don't give
the user too many options because in the end it is less productive.
Too many options and a user will play with settings all day rather
than get work done.
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Mike Fischer
Basic Research
commented on Feb 14, 2008 2:53:28 PM

I won't bet against the Dude. It's not just six years, it's 30+.
In 1976 and 1977 there was a thread of systems designed by Apple
(Wozniac/Jobs) and Commodore (Chuck Peddle/Tramiel) where instead of
coming up in a job control language as CP/M and later DOS, you came up
embedded in a tools environment, initially a basic interpreter from
which you could issue OS instructions, but in which you could also
write little bits of code in which these were embedded, write short
programs to do odd bits, control peripherals, write text and play
games, even doodle with graphics manually. You could, of course,
achieve the same thing in CP/M (and later DOS), but it was more
disjoint. Additionally, Apple and Commodore had plug and play
peripherals from the beginning, on-board drivers and with a consistent
way of addressing all peripherals. Both also had a simple graphics
environment, apple bit-mapped and commodore using special block
graphics that could be deployed from text strings. When Apple
popularised the GUI, Commodore introduced Amiga, Tramiel moved to
Atari and produced the ST using GEM, and both copied Apple's Lisa/Mac
approach (and int erms of key ideas we could say the Smalltalk
approach, except that Apple already had the same philosophy and
innovated the approach). They worked in a way that Windows has not
replicated to this day. Whereas in a Mac you open into a tools
environment, surrounded by your files and applicatons, Windows is
still just a desktop you put things on. Like with CP/M this is subtle
but very different. The difference between working on a table and
working on a table through a glove-box. The Newton and later the iPod
and iPhone simply carried this idea onwards. The only other
manufacturer (other than Commodore and Atari) who ever 'got it' was
Psion, who designed the framework that became Symbian, but in doing so
stripping out the environment trading for a desktop. Early XWindows
did successfully copy this idea in early desktop managers, but it has
evolved in Linux to emulate the Windows approach. Until people who
create complex devices realise it is not a collection of functions but
an environment for making these work together, they are not going to
improve very much.
*
isights
Developer
commented on Feb 14, 2008 6:25:32 PM

The best you can do, I think, is to focus on the niches that
Apple isn't covering, and by providing something that a given set of
users may want more than a phone with an iPod. Gamin is doing this by
marrying their best-of-class GPS technologies with a phone. Nokia
created the N93 with strong photo and video elements, hoping to appeal
to photographers and others who want or need a camera with them at all
times. See: http://www.isights.org/2008/02/the-apple-ecosy.html
*
JameKatt
owner
commented on Feb 14, 2008 10:42:10 PM

The primary problem is that no other company designs the entire
widget. No other company does the system software development, the
hardware design, the application design like Apple. No other company
is more independent of other companies than Apple. This allows Apple
to create a more cohesive, enriched, easy to use, easy to update and
advance environment than anyone. No company also has the expertise in
creating the user interface like Apple. Apple's products are user
centric - not IT centric. You do not struggle with an Apple product
like you would with a Microsoft product, for example. It just works -
better than the competition. Thus Apple is extremely difficult to
copy. A hardware manufacturer does not own their destiny unless they
do the software as well. And they don't. Sony has crappy programmers,
for example. Most manufacturers have to depend on a third party for
their software - for which it is design by committee - like Windows or
Linux. There is not the integrated feel of an Apple product. Apple's
products improve over time because of this integration. Other cell
phones have to be thrown away and a new model bought. But not the
iPhone. With frequent software updates, it is like having a new phone
all the time. When one buys an iPhone, it is good for years to come.
The average Mac lasts 7+ years in useability. The average Windows PC
is thrown away after 2 years. The average cell phone is thrown away
after a year. Thus there is less value in the non-Apple product
because it can't be upgraded in software - either the manufacturer
can't (because they don't own the software) or they can't because they
don't have good enough programmers. Here again, Apple's model is
impossible for other companies to follow. They do not make the whole
widget. Period. Too bad. Apple will take the cream of the crop users -
the high profit users who will forever buy Apple products. You can
have the bottom throw aways.
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larsonst
dev management, strategy, training
commented on Feb 15, 2008 4:58:42 PM

@ JameKatt This a very informed comment and IMHO clearly *****s
out why Apple is something special. Few seem to understand that the
lame and troublesome PC experience is a choice and not the choice. The
cost differential is small unless you are a home computer builder and
that only works when you give up your time for $5/hr. Who wants to
save a few bucks to buy uncomfortable shoes? I have been a Mac guy for
nearly 2 decades and despite working PC 8 hours a day I will never
waste my money on one. This Monday I got the iPod Touch (the no phone
iPhone) and by Tuesday I could do everything on it w/o even opening
the manual. BTW, I am on my third Blackberry year (company supplied)
and it is impossible to do many things without puzzling through the
process. 3 YEARS! and it still sucks. Forget about using the Internet;
Blackberry makes Google search look decorative. And to your final
point, Apple is truly skimming off many of the premium customers. They
offer a BMW experience at Buick prices. Really a good value if you
like nice things that just work.


› See More: INSIGHT: It's the User Experience, Stupid!