In 2007, right before the first iPhone launched, Steve Jobs was asked the obvious question: The design of the iPhone was based on discarding every physical interface element consumers were used to except for a touchscreen. Would consumers be willing to give up the then-dominant physical keypads with tactile feedback for a more clumsy experience with a touch screen keyboard?
His answer was brusque: “They’ll learn.”
As much as you as a consumer hate the touch screen... consumers as a whole are the ones who chose to go this direction.
So, the choice is between a phone with a good keyboard but half the screen size (horrible for the web, maps, photos), or a phone with a subpar but still functional keyboard with a full screen. The UX is clearly overall much much better on the second one.
Also some people (looks in mirror) had noticed that you could press buttons in apps with your thumbs even on the resistive Palm touch screens and were hoping they enlarge the scroll bars so you can at least view data without taking out the stylus.
Yes, there was the Treo, but mobile internet was still crap and expensive. If i recall correctly, they even added a keyboard back because their customers thought they needed better Blackberrys?
The mouse and keyboard still haven't been replaced by a touch screen.
That is very much in line with what I'm saying. Where you don't have a space problem, having a keyboard and a mouse and a big screen is ideal.
But just as no one is seriously considering putting a mouse on a phone, I don't see why they'd consider a keyboard as mandatory either.
Finns have an age-old saying about the same thing. Loosely translated... At first it hurts. Then you get used to it. And then you start to like it.
It's sad that Apple has no meaningful competition. Not because they're the best, but because they suck the least.
[1] I make a living on Linux but where's that consistent experience desktop? I think I won't live to see it.
It wasn't a perfect device, far from it. The details of the form factor were still off: the device was too thick, and the keyboard was part of a heavy "base". It slid out too little for the keyboard to be properly useful. The screen was the wrong size, with an awkward aspect ratio. But nonetheless, N900 had the right idea. With three or four hardware revisions it could have become something magnificent.
Instead what we have right now is like the Zork opening from an alternate universe - "you are in a maze of twisted options, all equally shitty."
Btw, the consistent desktop experience exists right now. It's called "i3" or "sway", depending on your display tech.
To launch a program you either hit a hotkey combo of your choice or use <win>-d to bring up a top-of-screen text menu bar with full text search to find (and launch) your desired software.
Stating the obvious: I've never been a fan of desktop environments. I found them confusing even back in the GEOS (C-64) and windows 2.x days.
In other words: Apple's thinking process about what to build when and how to shape it are not prescience at all - they are science. They very carefully look at as much context as possible, including - but not limited to - what users (say they) want. Jobs was great at making those processes look visionary and magical which was (very) good for internal and external marketing.
It's not science either. Science requires data and the data overwhelming showed that consumers preferred physical keyboards.
Puahing the iPhone requires one to actually go against the science and against the consumer data. It's unlikely any internal marketing or design team led the way here as their approach would likely be science based. Jobs most likely led the way by intuiting how consumers would change based off of his own experience with the prototypes.
Certainly not super human, but a bit more smarter than your average consumer research scientist to be able to make an analysis that not only goes above science, but against it.
People worship science as the one and only infallible method to answer questions. That's not true. Science needs data and many questions just don't have data available to build an answer. For this kind of thing you need to use induction.
There has been prior work into multi-touch interfaces and all sorts of things related to ubiquitous computing long before the iPhone. Jobs/Apple was aware of this and built on it at the right time - just like they were aware and built on the work at Xerox PARC before.
Cherry picking data is great, isn't it?
There's no cherry picking data here because Im not using the data to support some point about Steve Jobs being some sort of god like prophet. I didn't even make a point. I just said that it made me think about this.
My thoughts on consumer data is that some data is valid some isn't. It's like asking a woman for dating advice. Sometimes she gets it but a lot of the time it's better to ask for advice from a man who fucked a lot of women.
Just to spell it out. Consumers are women. Steve jobs is the man who fucked a lot of women.