Simply Apple

I was one of the saddest guys in the world the day they released the first version of the iPhone. The only time I was sadder was the day they released the second version. See, I'm also one of the only guys in the world who's not allowed to have one. I work for TimeWarner, a company that long ago had the very good idea to launch Time magazine (which worked out pretty well) and later to diversify into movies, music, TV and more. For all that, the company can't quite see the wisdom of making its internal e-mail compatible with the coolest piece of electronics in the world. And at this point I think I deserve a little cool.

One of my most recent cell phone choices was a Motorola Razr linked to the T-Mobile network, and while plenty of people swear by both, I wasn't so lucky. Most of the time I was able to get a reasonably good connection, but only if I remembered to wear an aluminum foil hat, hold the phone way over my head and shout at it very, very loudly. It also helped if the person I was trying to talk to was standing next to me. I recently upgraded to a Verizon BlackBerry and things have definitely improved. If I was en route to Jupiter I suspect I'd still have at least three bars--maybe two if I happened to be passing through a solar storm. If I have any complaint at all, it's with the BlackBerry itself, a cunningly designed piece of equipment that is apparently built on the principle that the best way to pack a lot of functions into a keyboard is to equip it with a track ball slightly larger than the nucleus of a uranium atom and keys that are perfectly easy to operate--but only after you've had your fingers replaced with finely sharpened talons. This makes what designers call the "front end" of the BlackBerry a little...challenging.

And there's the dreamy iPhone. Scientists and other professionals across a whole range of disciplines are increasingly seeing the value in a quality known as simplexity--the elegant melding of the simple and complex into something that is utterly other. And there are few things that manage simplexity as well as the iPhone.

Most consumers insist that they prefer their electronics simple--without all the 100-page manuals and scores of nested menus that make learning to use a new piece of equipment so daunting--but most of us don't even quite know what simple is. We call PCs from the 1980s complex because they could be so hard to use, never mind the fact that they ran on software that was flat-out crude by today's standards. We call a Macintosh simple because it's easy and intuitive, never mind that in order to achieve that usability it's loaded with code almost numbing in its complexity.

One of the things that makes the iPhone and the iPod--and, to a lesser extent, Windows and other Apple imitators--so elegant, is that the people who design the software are increasingly being pressed to think about the people who really use it. That hasn't always been the case. Unlike, say, the auto industry, in which someone must imagine a car and another person draft it and yet another person engineer and assemble it, the computer industry has historically collapsed two or even three jobs into one, with the same person overseeing a piece of software all along the line. "Software is just patterns of thoughts inside the heads of designers translated to a chip," says Alan Cooper, author of the book The Inmates are Running the Asylum.

This has let the designers run riot, building things that may not appeal much to you and me, but impress other designers a lot. Says Donald A. Norman, professor of design at Northwestern University and author of 16 books on commercial technology: "There's always a peer group designers are trying to impress. Sometimes it's the rest of the industry, sometimes it's reviewers. But these aren't the people who will be using it."

But the people who will be using it have, at last, begun pushing back. Already, the folks at the MIT Media Lab are at work on a sort of uber-iPhone, a device covered on all of its sides by touch-sensitive screens (unlike the iPhone itself with only a single screen, on its face). Turn the MIT apparatus one way and an internal accelerometer knows it's being held like a camera and paints all of the faces of the screens with functional camera controls. Hold it other ways and it transforms itself into a phone or a PDA or a video recorder. "What you want is a device that can say 'Aha, I'm a camera right now,' or 'I'm a phone right now,'" says lab director Michael Bove. "It figures out for itself what it's supposed to be doing."

You don't have to think about what's going on inside a machine like that any more than you have to think about the complicated mix of neural, visual and muscular processes that allow you to pick up a pen and sign your name. Those programs are running in the background too; your eyes and hand are the front ends of the bodily system. A technological world full of deep complexity and simple front ends is achievable--perhaps inevitable after the example the iPhone has set. Increasingly, buyers will rush to products that come closest to that ideal--and punish the manufacturers who don't.

Jeffrey Kluger is the author of Simplexity.

Comments

[situationcritical]

But Apple hasn't released the 2nd version of the iPhone.

It goes on sale July 11th.

[TerrapinCB]

My RAZR v3 (original) has been running with T-Mobile for 3½ years with NO problems and great reception and I live on the beach on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Maybe user error is your problem.

[KillTheMessenger]

Why can't you have an iPhone? You meant to say they won't buy one for you and that your work email won't work with it? That does not mean you can't have one. You just have to buy it yourself and then use it for your private life. Big deal. My company didn't buy me that Lamborghini Gallardo I was asking for, either. They said it was not compatible with our parking lot. ;-)

[Sumocat]

Of the many criticisms of the iPhone, the one I see most often and find most ridiculous is that the only thing special about it is the great user interface. Sure, there are phones with more features, but what's the point of having 20 features when most people can't figure out half of them? The brilliance of the iPhone is that most people can use most, if not all, of its features.

[KillTheMessenger]

I need my phone for exactly one thing: to make phone calls. When I want internet, I use my laptop. And my digital camera has a 300mm lens... something an iPod also does not have. If you are birding, that's a must.

[CrazyDogLady]

I LOVE my iPhone! I use it more as an iPod, camera and for texting than a phone...

However, If you work in they typical corporate "death by power point" office setting the iPhone it's not as effective as the crackberry for work because it doesn't readily integrate with MSOffice -- which personally I see as a "feature" because on my own time I don't want to see anymore presentations!

Also- I would never expect (or want) my company to pick up the tab for my iPhone as we may not see eye-to-eye regarding the artistic integrity of my musical choices -- such as Public Enemy or Eric Cartman's soulful rendition of "Kyles' Mom is a B!tch" or approve of some of my text message content or the YouTube Video's I have watched or the pictures I have taken all on their dime.

Unless you have a business need for downloading music, a camera, texting, access to external email accounts without the ability to access MSOffice docs all on the company dollar...the iPhone really (in it's current iteration) is more of a personal electronic tool with a more user-friendly UI then current suite of corporate zombie tools...

[Sundialsvc4]

You're not alone, Jeffrey. And here's the rub... in addition to "you," your employer has to deal with and to support many thousands of "you's." And, they had to make that decision several years ago.

Fast-forward just a couple of years, and every single phone manufacturer will have matched Apple's ante, even as Apple strives (and probably succeeds...) to push the bar even higher. But customers are going to follow ... behind ... every single one of them. It is the way of things.

What Apple has done IS significant, "obviously." What they really did was to recognize that this thing you were holding in the palm of your hand is not a telephone; it is a computer. And what it must BE is... a computer.

Where they "leapfrogged" everyone else ... you call it "Simplexity" ... is by recognizing that, not only is this "a computer," but it's a computer that needs to run in the same way that every other (Apple...) computer you might encounter now runs. The iPhone runs OS/X. Not "a bastardized, dumbed-down version of" OS/X... it runs... OS/X. So it's a Macintosh of sorts, without a mouse, and I sure do wonder what might happen if I actually did plug a mouse or a keyboard into it.

Yep, as you say, "simplexity." Great title. I look forward to reading your book!

[proudloudlib]

" So it's a Macintosh of sorts, without a mouse, and I sure do wonder what might happen if I actually did plug a mouse or a keyboard into it."

Now you have me wondering, too. Wouldn't that be cool? I don't have one yet, but am planning to buy the new one as soon as it comes out.

[jbelkin]

WEll, your IT department might not you have one but the beauty of the iPhone is its simplicity. Finally a phone where 98% of ALL of its features is available with one or two taps. My previous phone requires me to access a menu, then two submenus to access SPEED DIALING ... how many screens to access NORMAL DIALING? You want to scroll, move your finger - no need to find an arrow key which may or may not work with an additional modifer key ... the Iphone has about 20 features on the front panel available with ONE TAP - how many other phones offer you that? RIM has a fine email setup so if your company wants to keep you tethered - it works fine but if you want a phone that is the first phone sensible designed for actual use + an ipod + a video player + internet + email and soon + software that's easy to load ... the RIM is a nice tractor - useful but not so much for most people (one reason why after 10 years in the biz, they have only 14 million customers WORLDWIDE), the iPhone is the BMW 535.

[joebaggadonuts]

Simplexity. A word worth repeating. Thanks.