KonzeptioNerd

The iPhone … ok, ok

The iPhone seems to be getting a slow start in Germany. At least according to most local media. Over in the US, 10.000 units sold on the first day come across as quite a success. And it appears that a lot of iPhone disillusionment is media made.
We all know that Americans are just indiscriminate fanbois and that whoever buys this latest fad in handheld telecommunication within the first couple of weeks will probably gobble up any piece of junk Steve sends down with sufficient marketing fanfare. Upwards of 1575 Euros in two years for a bit of nice design … An understandable attitude as long as one understands design as what German sales folders call dessin (as in “viele fr&oml;hliche Dessins, farbig sortiert”).

But Design Is How It Works - and that’s exactly what I was too badly prepared to tell the guys with the notepads and microphones on November 9 down at the Frankfurt Zeil T-Punkt. Design is how it works and life’s too short for clumsy gadgets.

Until late at night on Thursday, November 8, I wasn’t even sure I’d buy one on first launch. I liked the life of Vorfreude I’d been leading for over a year. The happy anticipation that everything will be alright very soon I’d felt every time my M******a semi-brick crashed and took the address book with it. If I bought one, I’d own an iPhone - but would it make me as happy as looking forward to owning it?

But I got my name on the reservation-list, so they SMSed me an invite to the grand reception, Friday morning, half an hour before regular opening. And after all the interviews and after promising to help out the guy from Horizont.net with my photos (download the HORIZONT.NET article on the iPhone launch in Franfurt, PDF, 300 KB, scrambled printer-style) and what with being the only woman among the 30-something early adopters that morning, I couldn’t very well leave without my very own little black box.

Any regrets, yet? Nah. Voice quality is excellent (but then I’m comparing to a contraption that is wont to freeze in mid-sentence). The iPhone may not be packed with the very latest in mobile technology, but it certainly comes with the very best thought-out in mobile usability.

It’s the little things like the magnifying glass you can call up by gently holding down with the forefinger in every typing environment. It allows you to position the cursor without the need for arrow-keys or point-shaped finger tips. Or the way Safari takes over online forms, letting you tab through them from the virtual keyboard, no need to go back and forth. Safari also takes over multi-select lists: Normally, additional clicks cause unselection plus new selection while key+click causes multiple selections. On the iPhone, there is no key+click, so additional clicks cause additional selections while re-clicking on a selection causes deselection. Neat.

But that’s an experiential thing everybody will probably have to try for themselves.

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