My 70-year-old mother can't activate a simple menu in Windows but she was flicking and poking, browsing and typing on my iPhone within minutes of picking it up. The 16 touch-sensitive widget icons
on the home-page surface offer mobile content like maps, photo sharing, and the Web in a sensible way that encourages mobile media use. The massive LCD morphs the interface to follow your intentions
and make most operations found on other phones more efficient. The lush screen displays everything from photos to video podcasts, Web pages to html e-mail in unprecedented scale and detail.
When Mom can make sense of a cell phone, then you know Apple has done a Babe Ruth: They pointed to the wall of mobile usability and planted a homer right where they aimed. For the first
time, it is fun rather than torture to use your phone as a content platform, and that bodes very well for an entire industry.
Apple only enhances its "just works" brand image here. The
$499-$599 iPhone dual-mode phones move seamlessly between the AT&T GSM/EDGE network and Wi-Fi hotspots. The Safari Web browser, integrated YouTube videos and superbly simple Google maps perform
tolerably well, but phone and data service via AT&T's industry-lagging network is not so much bad as uneven and unreliable.
The Yahoo-powered weather and stock widgets lack informational
detail but they pull must-have real-time data to the surface well. And while the 8gb high-end iPhone lacks the storage we really need, it sideloads images, tracks and video from iTunes as simply as an
iPod. Over-air media purchases from the iTunes store still are not available, however. The iPhone succeeds where the Zune, PSP and many smart phones fail; it pulls productivity and entertainment into
a consistent multifunction interface.
Beyond the crappy network that desperately awaits AT&T's slow 3G roll-out, the iPhone's Achilles heel ironically is content range and depth. By closing
the operating system off from third-party developers, the iPhone deck can't even download new ringtones or games, let alone partake in much of the growing off-deck mobile content and marketing
ecosystem. It doesn't support Java apps or Flash for now, and developers only get onto the iPhone via the kludgy route of Web-based widgets.
In an odd way, the iPhone charts a path for the
next generation of mobile, as it back-pedals in key areas. While other phone decks lower the garden walls, Apple raises theirs higher than anyone. Users gain more control over their content choices
elsewhere, but the iPhone's limitations emerge after a few days of being dazzled. Sure, you are cooler than thou, but you also get cut off from an entire ecosystem of applications and content options
other phones have enjoyed for years. To paraphrase the Great Communicator, Mr. Jobs-tear down this wall!
Marketers and content providers can end-run the restrictive Apple deck by
developing programs for the Web browser and even podcast downloads, of course. Given Apple's longstanding aversion to ad support in iTunes, it seems unlikely we will see that model penetrate even the
current content partners, Google and Yahoo. And if Apple is serving us a bit of a straightjacket with the iPhone experience, surely this coat is velvet-lined.
As my Mom will attest, the
interface is simply the best we have ever seen on any high-tech media device, let alone a phone. She is still trying to figure out DVD menus, but e-mailing a picture with my phone is obvious to her.
The iPhone, but especially all the devices it will influence, helps accelerate mobile content by demonstrating how the platform can become an accessible, friendly place.
These reservations
aside ... yup. It's the home run the industry needs to move the game forward.