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The iPhone Inconsistency

robin.jewsbury | 08 March, 2008 17:51

I've just spent most of the day watching all the iPhone videos at Apple developer site.  All very interesting and informative.  Some of the new Safari features such as CCS transformations, CSS animations and the local data SQL support from Javascript (sort of Google Gears like) look really good.  When are we going to get these features in S60 Safari browser?  Please tell me it's soon!!!

But that was not the point of this post.  I watched one particular video called "User Interface Design for iPhone Applications".  This is an excellent video and lists great advice for developers of any mobile application for any platform.  Basically it says when you take a desktop application and port it to the iPhone you should only take a subset of the functionality and create a simplied user interface AND the UI design should be consistent with the iPhone UI design.  All excellent advice which I would say works for any mobile application design on any platform.  However, the more I watched these things the more I thought of the iPhone advert for the Internet shown on US and UK TV.  See the AT&T version here.  This advert has always bothered me.  Basically it shows the iPhone looking at the PC web version of the New York Times (in the US version) and the Guardian in the UK version.  The claim is that the PC Internet is now works unaltered on the mobile phone.  Any yet this is totally inconsistent with the advice Apple are giving application developers who are telling them to change adapt the content and functionality for the iPhone.

Has Steve Jobs noticed the inconsistency between his marketing message to the consumers and the technical advice to developers?  Web applications are still applications after all and also should be adapted to the phone.  And indeed, this has happened.  Facebook wrote a very good web application for the iPhone.  So why Mr Jobs are you telling consumers and developers totally different stories?  Well, infortunately the consumer is being told an incomplete story yet again which will rebound on the the poor software industry yet again.  So please My Jobs (you love consistency in your user interface), please be consistent in your messages.

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Comments

not inconsistent

TwmD | 09/03/2008, 15:29

To me, it was a re-iteration of an Apple philosphy stated by Alan Kay.
"Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible."

Web pages designed for large screens will always work better on large screens. No one can argue that content especially taiored to the device is better.
The iPhone does a good job at rendering arbitrary content and i think the advert is a dig at the disasterous launching of WAP as "internet in your pocket" in the early 2000s.

Re: The iPhone Inconsistency

ltomuta | 09/03/2008, 16:06

ltomuta

I also believe that mobile applications, regardless of the runtime used, should be designed with the targeted device in mind. A phone can be "smarter" or it can be "dumber" than a PC. But it will never be a PC.

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