Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 6th Oct 2009 20:21 UTC, submitted by Moulinneuf
Before the iPhone, we were content with stylus-based interfaces that worked well - mostly - for what you needed to do. Then came the iPhone. From a pure feature perspective, it was (and is) lacking, but it more than makes up for it by being a polished product that's easy to use. The iPhone shook the entire industry up, and while newcomers have done relatively well (webOS, Android) Windows Mobile is now so far left behind you can barely see it any more. Windows Mobile 6.5 is supposed to be the first step towards modernising Windows Mobile - but it fails miserably.
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Member since:2005-07-06
"Then came the iPhone. From a pure feature perspective, it was (and is) lacking, but it more than makes up for it by being a polished product that's easy to use.
Why does it seem like we're always having to trade features for ease of use? It's like a product has to be gimped in order to have polish and be user-friendly.
I guess it's merely a power user's wet dream to have the best of both worlds. "
Well, it depends. A new product sometimes needs to decide one or the other, and as it matures it fills in the gaps.
Microsoft and Apple had two very different paths, and I think we all know which won in the marketplace.
Microsoft went for functional. I had a WinMo-based TMobile HTC phone in 2006-2007. It had a lot of functionality, some of which the iPhone didn't have when it came out. But it was painful to use. Web browsing as awful (in terms of speed and UI), setting up email on my personal account would always lock up the device to the point of requiring not just a reboot, but wiping the entire phone's configuration (too many imap folders, although every other mail app never had a problem with it).
When the iPhone came out, they went for usability straight away. There was no stylus. This dramatically made it less combersome to even interact with. Email worked beautifully, and it handled my IMAP just fine (with encryption even!). Web browsing was slow (EDGE network), but at least the browser wasn't painful. I've had it crash maybe once or twice a year, where WinMo would crash every week.
Add to that the great iPod interface for music, and the iPhone blew the WinMo out of the water. WinMo could do a few things the iPhone couldn't, but it didn't matter. I switched to iPhone and never looked back. If I left iPhone, it would be for WebOS or Android. Certainly not WinMo.
Member since:2005-07-06
"Microsoft and Apple had two very different paths, and I think we all know which won in the marketplace. "
Indeed we do - Nokia.
(But the difference between Microsoft and Apple is much less than, I suspect, you would be thinking, and WM beat out iPhone as recently as Q4 2008).
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/08/21/canalys-iphone-outsold-all...
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Member since:
2005-11-13
Why does it seem like we're always having to trade features for ease of use? It's like a product has to be gimped in order to have polish and be user-friendly.
I guess it's merely a power user's wet dream to have the best of both worlds.