iPhone: What to make of it?
January 11, 2007My first shock was the clown fish wallpaper; what the hell were they thinking? I hate to say it, but I get the impression that the company that brought us the computer for the rest of us, is building a phone to appeal mostly to the rest of them! Namely: Microsoft users who were impressed by the interfaces of Zune and Vista. Just because you have 64000 colors available, doesn’t mean you have to use all of them on the front page.
There’s a shot from the keynote doing the rounds that shows Steve Jobs off to one side and the iPhone on the big screen, showing its home screen with the rows of glossy rounded brightly colored buttons. Now imagine if the same phone was a Windows Mobile, in a shot with Bill Gates to one side, at the CES conference. I’ve no doubt that if that were the case, there’d be Mac fans commenting that it’s just another example of Microsoft’s heavy handed and gaudy interface design, unlike the clear and (insert the over worked phrase:) “minimalist” approach adopted by Apple.
Uses OS X. Well, no. It uses core animation techniques in the style of OS X, but it’s not OS X as we know it; there won’t be developer kits, there won’t be apps and addons. Steve has decided that a phone should do four or five things really well, and no more, because that’s what HE wants from a phone. This is his baby, and billionaires don’t use phones in the same way that most of us do. Truth be told, up to now he threw whatever phone he had to his assistant and yelled, “Get me Jonathan.”
Why “Uses OS X?” Because ten months from now when there are zillions of iPhones in use, Apple will release OS 10.5 which will use chunky button icons and whooshing effects on the new iMac. And the Headline will read:
From the Makers of the iPhone…
