June, 2009
The first viewpoint I want to take with analyzing the state of mobile software is from the perspective of the end user. By end user, I mean anyone who is physically using a mobile device and the associated software. The end user is generally holding the mobile device in his/her hands, reading text and looking at images on the screen and providing input via stylus, fingers, voice, gestures, etc. All end users come in with a set of previous experience, pre-conceived notions and expectations for a mobile device. End users range from my grandmother who turns on her laptop once a month, to my wife who happily updates her Facebook status from her iPhone. There’s President Obama who talked his way into having a Blackberry in the oval office and then there are mobile inspection workers who have just made a switch from paper to ultra mobile PCs. If you travel on an airplane you will see half the flight pull some sort of mobile device out of bags or pockets as the plane taxis to the gate. Many people are fanatical about their devices and software, waiting hours in line for the next version and wearing them like status symbols. Others are intimidated by the complexity and ever changing user experience. Others still just use them because they have to as part of their jobs with no more emotional attachment than they would have for a pen and paper.
Taking my key market players in alphabetical order, Apple is obviously a strong candidate in the area of end user experience. As we all know, Apple controls every aspect of the mobile device from doing their own SOC (System on Chip) design to creating the hardware to writing the software and thinking out every last step in what it takes for a mobile user to accomplish certain tasks. I must admit at this point that I’m the very happy owner of a 1st generation iPhone. The pinnacle of Apple’s control over the end user experience was well demonstrated when I first got my iPhone out of the box. I pulled off the screen cover and the phone automatically turned on (removing the packaging was wired to the power switch), instructing me to plug it into my computer. Plugging in the cable automatically launched iTunes, brought up my account and prompted me to either enter in an existing cell phone number to transfer or select a new plan from AT&T. Within 5 minutes, I had entered a few pieces of information and watched as my old phone deactivated and my new phone activated itself and announced that it was ready to go. From a mobile software perspective the iPhone interface is elegant and seamless, with clean graphics, fluid animations, brainless connectivity and a general feel-good about functionally and features. The mobile web browsing experience is unmatched by any other vendor. The OS leads you to feel organized and in control of your information. Connecting to Exchange for email, contacts and calendars is trivial. 3rd party applications exist to do any number of useful and useless activities. There is basic linking between applications allowing you to select phone numbers in text to call people and navigate to the web, watch a YouTube video or view a map by clicking a URL. There are many other things that Apple has done right with this platform including their marketing of the device and the massive press hype that surrounds it. They have created a fanatical tribe of people who love the mystery of the next coolest device and have real emotional attachment to their products.
As impressive as the iPhone is as a product, there is much it lacks in the overall market space. For one, the end user is living in an environment entirely defined by Apple. This isn’t a huge problem with Apple playing the role of the underdog that everyone is cheering for, but as they grow bigger there starts to be a stifling of competition and innovation. You either do things Apple’s way or you don’t do them at all. You see pieces of this already with the App Store not allowing submissions of software that competes with Apple – which means you can’t get the Opera browser on an iPhone or another application to play your music library. You can’t run the iPhone OS on another device and you can’t run OS X on another PC. The dichotomy of Apple providing this seamless experience for the end user is that it has to take away many of the choices. Part of the reason other platforms don’t have as seamless of an experience is because giving people choices means that you are giving them power to choose all sorts of odd combinations that may or may not work well together. It’s like if instead of grocery stores where you have to choose between many different food products and decide how you are going to mix them together to make a meal that all you got to eat every night was gourmet pizza and red wine. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? What if you ate that at every meal for a year? In the end, I’d give up some seamlessness to be able to fully make my own choices. You see this response in how adamant the jail break community has been in allowing some level of openness on the iPhone platform.
The other place that Apple falls short in the overall mobility arena is in targeting anything other than the general consumer. Now this is a specific choice they’ve made and a focus they’ve pursued. I can’t blame them since I’ve already talked about how my company has made a similar choice and focus, but in the larger scheme of things this has a negative effect. Have you ever purchased anything from an Apple Store? Did you notice that the handheld device that they check you out and swipe your credit card with is running Windows Mobile? Apple’s foray into mobility is targeted and limited. They aren’t building devices for mobile point of sale terminals or line busting applications. They won’t have a ruggedized version of the iPhone or one with an RFID reader (although there are rumors). The guy inspecting a home you are under contract to buy isn’t using Apple products because he has different needs than the target iPhone user.
Other end user shortfalls of the iPhone product include its lack of hardware keyboard and total reliance on the touch screen. The touch screen is fantastic and works so well for many situations, but it requires dedicated attention and doesn’t function appropriately in a number of situations. Every tried to call someone on an iPhone while you are driving? It’s not the safest thing, I don’t recommend it. Don’t even bother texting while behind the wheel. What about using your phone with gloves on? Or when your fingers are wet? What if you were a mobile field worker doing vehicle inspections and had grease all over your hands? What about a CTO juggling papers and a laptop between meetings trying to jot off a quick text to his partner? I would argue that the iPhone usability story breaks down in all these areas as they fall outside of the design parameters Apple setup for their device.
Finally, the iPhone is ultimately tethered to a single PC and iTunes. Some applications interact with the cloud and various web services, but by in large you have to plug in a USB cable to synchronize your phone to your computer. Loose or break your computer and you are back to square one. This is understandable, since Apple comes from a background of building iPods, but mobility is all about synchronization and distribution of data, resources, and content. The mobile user expects to have access to those same objects from a variety of interfaces and their mobile device is just one of them.
