Re: FYI: DON'T BUY AN iPHONE

Micronet,

The problem with the access time statistic is it is directly related
to the quality of the wireless connection in that moment and place.
I have someone in my department that ran out and bought one, against
my recommendation. The web seems to load just fine here in our office.

I agree it is better to wait awhile, to let them drop the price, tune
things up, and add features and memory. Give it a year, and it
probably will be a kick ass device. It is very pretty, and is the
first phone I've seen I feel I'd really consider getting email or
internet access on - I've had Treo's, Palms, and other phones, and
have just ended up annoyed by the resolution, awkwardness, speed,
tiny interface, and lesser screen quality in the past.

Stephen Grettenberg

On Jul 10, 2007, at 12:51 PM, Sarah Jones wrote:

> Below are some interesting comments from Jakob Nielsen's email on 9
> July 2007. Nielsen is an internationally known useability
> professional. See his Web site at http://www.useit.com/.
>
> Sarah
>
>> DON'T BUY AN iPHONE
>>
>> Buried toward the end of the New York Times review of Apple's new
>> mobile
>> phone are the following damning statistics. Time to download
>> homepages of
>> some websites:
>>
>> * NY Times: 55 seconds
>> * Amazon: 100 seconds
>> * Yahoo: two minutes (!)
>>
>> The iPhone reviewer also experienced several dropped phone calls.
>>
>> (Readers outside the United States: you may remember the concept of
>> "dropped calls" from the mobile services you used in the late 1980s.
>> Sadly, they are still a fact of life on the lower-quality networks
>> in the
>> U.S. And the iPhone's network is reportedly the lowest-quality of
>> them
>> all.)
>>
>> Advice for consumers:
>>
>> Don't buy an iPhone - or any Internet phone - that doesn't run on
>> a much
>> better network. It doesn't matter how good the on-screen user
>> interface
>> is. What's important is the *total* user experience which is
>> ruined by
>> minute-plus response times and dropped calls. The best mobile
>> browser is
>> useless when pages arrive at a snail's pace.
>>
>> Advice for businesses:
>>
>> It's still not time to launch a mobile Internet strategy in the
>> U.S. Wait
>> until we catch up with Europe and Asia in mobile connectivity.
>>
>> (Disclosure: we did work with one client on making their service
>> mobile,
>> but that was a special case where mobile access made immense
>> sense. Thus
>> it was correct for this company to pioneer a mobile design and to
>> do the
>> extra work to make sure it was as usable as possible within the
>> current
>> technology limitations.)
>>
>> Eventually, it will be time to add mobile components to websites and
>> intranets, even in the United States. By then, you'll need a separate
>> design for mobile devices.
>>
>> The iPhone has 20% of the pixels on a small computer monitor. Yes,
>> this is
>> twice the pixel count of the previous generation of smartphones,
>> but still
>> too little to support the interface-rich design style that dominates
>> current websites.
>>
>> When I analyzed leading companies' homepages, I found that only
>> 20% of the
>> screen real estate was allocated to content of interest to users:
>>
>> > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030210.html
>>
>> Interestingly, 20% is exactly the amount that will fit on an
>> iPhone. So a
>> different design that stripped away all the overhead would deliver
>> the
>> same info for mobile as for the desktop.
>>
>> The impact of the network on the iPhone's total user experience is
>> a good
>> example of a general lesson: usability is a chain that's no
>> stronger than
>> its weakest link. Take e-commerce: navigation, search, product
>> photos,
>> product descriptions, the shopping cart, checkout, and site
>> credibility
>> all need great design. If any one of these fails, then no sale.
>>
>> My colleague Tog likes the iPhone, but he is commenting on its on-
>> screen
>> UI, which I like as well, so we are not really in disagreement. See:
>>
>> > http://www.asktog.com/columns/072iPhoneFirstTouch.html
>>
>> Remember:
>>
>> user experience = UI + everything else touching the user
>
>
>
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Received on Tue Jul 10 2007 - 16:10:23 PDT