iPhone: closed platform brings advantages
mocoNews has the most balanced coverage of the iPhone I've seen so far. The main points:
- "very cool, very limited"
- "Looking at the iPhone as an alpha, it's a heck of a feat […] Unfortunately, we're paying for a full-release version"
The iPhone looks much better than I expected. I can see them gaining a significant market share of the handset market in major American and European markets. This will be crucial if they are to maintain their position in the music player business.
I have been hugely disappointed with recent mobile phones. Until now nobody seems to have delivered a device that works as a phone but also has good email, web, audio, video and camera. Is that too much to ask for?
An example: I am currently using the Blackberry Perl, which is truly pitiful. Its phone functions are unreliable and the communications software is buggy. Camera, audio and video are a waste of time. A series of third party applications are needed to round out the feature-set (I use Opera, the gmail app, gcalsync the Google Talk client and the Google Maps client). By the time all that third party software has been installed, the device slows to a crawl and exhibits more unreliability. My network, Orange UK, is incapable of providing support for such a device. The blackberry's integrated inbox confuses their separate phone, text and data support teams, and they fail to even call me when they promise, let alone offer solutions to the problems. I hear similar reports from owners of other brands and on other networks.
Given my experience running 3rd party code, and trying to get support for a complex device, I can see the benefits of sticking to approved software and a single network. It pains me to say that, because generally openness brings many advantages. Making openness reliable is the challenge for those who wish to compete with Apple. Players like Nokia are good at open models, but still not good enough.
It seems that Apple have succeeded in shaking up the mobile phone industry. I still think I'll wait for the second generation device though.
Posted at 09:46 BST, 3rd July 2007.
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Open/closed and user experience
I have the Blackberry 8800, which has also disappointed me.
I don't think most of the Blackberry's problems stem from the open nature of the platform, and I don't think the reason why the iPhone seems so much better is directly connected to being closed. The difference in approach over platform openness between RIM and Apple is indicative of a difference in how the two companies value usability.
The Blackberry platform has a reputation as the best for mobile email, and it does have a lot of thoughtful usability touches, like auto-expanding "ive" to "I've". But the current user experience is full of annoyances: the Maps application requires you to manually start the GPS chip, and then fills a quarter of the screen with the news that it's searching for satellites; the native mail client "cleverly" doesn't download the whole of a message until you scroll down within it (perhaps a useful trade-off five years ago, but totally pointless in the era of 1Gb fair use limits, leaving you looking at only half a message on the Tube for the sake of saving 1012 bytes of data transfer); holding the mute button puts the phone in standby, except - unforgiveably - when you're using a J2ME app, or if you have an MP3 paused in which case it starts the track up again, blasting music across the office if you happen to have removed the headphones in the meantime; the native web browser wastes a ridiculous amount of time processing stylesheets and the menu system displays too many options at one level; and so on and so on.
Another problem I have is that T-Mobile has conspired to mess up the user experience further, jamming meaningless branding categories into the browser so that I have separate bookmark lists for "t-zones", "web 'n' walk" and "Blackberry", and a 'choice' of "t-zones" and "web 'n' walk" browsers which are both the native Blackberry browser. Apple would never have allowed AT&T to pull a similar stupid stunt.
It's only necessary to use Google's apps to round out the phone because RIM hasn't thought through how to make its own native mail and mapping apps the best they can be.
In contrast, Apple gets less value from opening up its platform because it has the expertise to provide decent native apps.
Apple has successfully imbued its own taste into third-party developers of desktop OS X apps - you only have to look at the miserable state of Windows third-party apps compared to the slick experiences on offer on OS X to see the value of this. I think that it will open up third-party iPhone apps through the iTunes stores, just as it has opened up an iPod games ecosystem. It just wants the new interface metaphors to sink in so there is a sense of what is "iPhone-like" in the same way that desktop OS X apps have to be "Mac-like" to be accepted by the user base.
The iPhone could have been launched as an open platform from day one, but J2ME apps would never have provided a coherent user experience, and it's that, rather than the security concerns Jobs cites, that stopped them. Down the road there will be an SDK and an iTunes iPhone store. It's not being closed that makes Apple better, it's just having the determination to put user experience first.