Apple

Apple iPhone. Thank The UI Gods

Breath. Breath. Breath. Wipe that drool away. Let me start off by just giving you the specs for those in the dark. Quickly it is under Cingular and is quad-band. 5 hours talk/web/video and 16 hours music playback. Ships June.

Tech Specs for those who like numbers and other marketing garbage

More details and toughts after the jump…

Wide Screen iPod Capability

• Multi-Touchscreen UI
• Coverflow Feature
• Built-in Speaker
• 3.5″ Widescreen

Mobile Phone

SMS UI looks like iChat UI (think IM)

New “Visualized Voicemail”

“Flick” scrolling

Qwert Keyboard

Internet Communications

Google Maps

Safari Internet Browser (fully renders websites)

Email with iPhoto integration

Widgets

Other Niceties

• Force Feedback Panels
• 2 Mpx Camera
• Built-in Mic
• Automatically Rotating Display (think Canon PowerShot)
• Runs on OS X
• Thinnest SmartPhone Evar!
• Syncs everything (all media and information like bookmarks)!
• Works on PC too!

So What?

The designers at Apple and Steve Job’s vision to make the cellular phone experience easier and more exiciting for you as a consumer takes form today. A lot of the technology that has been implemented in the iPhone isn’t revolutionary, but the application in which they are used is significant. Before proceeding any further, I hope you have a chance to watch the various different quicktime demonstrations that step by step show each capability.

(Hopefully) After seeing some of the videos, you can see that this unit is offering a lot of control to the person interacting with it. Clean icons that are big and easily understood. Minimalistic design. Dynamic buttons that actually give you a touch feedback on the screen! This is significant because with all the different things you can do with the iPhone, the controls are optimized to make it easy for you to use. Think about how many different menu screens you have to click up, down, left and right to just set your alarm clock? It reminds me of an old Nintendo code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, a, b, a, b, select, start) back in the day. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I’m talking about.

Some features that I particularly enjoy: Multi-Touch Screen, Visual Voicemails and the SMS interface.

Multi-Touch Screen
Hands down awesome. Now I don’t believe that this sort of application can be used as effectively on say, your laptop or desktop, but this could be great for whiteboards and devices like the iPhone. Things like the Minority Report where our hero swipes images and videos back and forth isn’t as usable as you think. Your arms get tired very quickly, and I digress. A multi-touch screen that lets you flick to scroll and “pinch” images to resize photos is nothing new, but has been elegantly used within the iPhone. Applaus goes to Apple for using it appropriately, and not go overboard. The screen also affords gestures as mentioned before in the form of flicks and slides that is naturally understood more clearly. Why use a stylus and super thin, hard to touch scroll bars at the edge of the screen? Just “move” it like the picture was physically infront of you on a table!

Visual Voicemails
Don’t you hate it when you have to wait for the first two skipped messages to hear the third old message, or forced to delete even older messages before hearing the new ones? Or having to hit 7 twice to delete a message since waiting for it to finish just takes too long? A visual list that lets you pick and choose as you will and delete without even having to listen to it is a big step in convenience that the old system couldn’t offer.

SMS UI
It takes the form of iChat, or any other IM application. This is a personal favorite because I always find it difficult to see what my friends and I have talked about grouped together like a conversation. Instead, I’m forced to scroll through the different messages ordered by date going in and out of each text. SMS, or text messaging, is a huge communication method that is growing even more popular. News reports are talking about how text messaging is a new danger while driving, people getting phones with QWERTY keyboards and just the overall popularity has swarmed our culture. It really has become almost like instant messaging. So why not make it look like it?! Oh wait, they did!

Future Implications?

If OS X is running the iPhone, then in terms of network connectivity, then Bon Jour could allow ad hoc communication between other iPhones, or your Mac. Sound familiar? Zune, what? But the benefit this time is that like iTunes, you could possibly share content through a network connection without limitation (except downloading). No 3 day or 3 play rules. Just share! Be “social.” The possibilties are countless with OS X integration and the Apple ecosystem with the iLife suite.

There are some questions that come in mind about how the multi touch may interact with front end web technologies like Flash and JavaScript, but I’ll save that for later. You tell me, what are some concerns that we should still keep in mind?

Macworld 2007 Keynote
Hands-on Preview [Gizmodo]
Close up Pictures [TUAW]

© 2007 Fieldnotes.