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Perhaps iPhone users accept the limitations because the stuff it does actually do works so well for them? This explanation, however, doesn't provide a good hea

Perhaps iPhone users accept the limitations because the stuff it does actually do works so well for them? This explanation, however, doesn't provide a good headline, so obviously isn't plausible.

rpdillon 17y ago
So because it makes a bad headline, it obviously is? It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. We've established that iPhones are locked to a carrier that has the worst customer service ratings in the industry, and that it can't do basic things other smartphones do, like multitask. Yet, it's the gadget to have and continues to fly off the shelves years after its release. I think that's pretty interesting, and simply saying "yeah, it's just really good at making those phone calls" doesn't cut it (considering a 30% drop call rate is considered OK, saying it's really good at making calls would be a stretch). Listen, I've recommended friends and family of mine get iPhones, and I'm typing this on a Mac. But the best thing you can do for companies you like is call them on their crap. And a lack of basic chat functionality on the iPhone is a sad state of affairs, and no one really seems to talk about it. Apple does some stuff wrong, but they tend to cover it up through marketing. My wife, who used to use an iPhone, just pointed out to me as I was typing this that iPhones are a status symbol, and many people buy them more because they are iPhones than out of any real analysis of the features. Once bought, people want to validate their own decisions, so they'll defend the inferior product. Such is the power of marketing.
- bensummers 17y ago
  I didn't suggest the opposite. Bad headlines do not equal truth. The iPhone appears to be driven by a vision of making certain things easy and safe, at the expense of everything else. Since these things are desirable, whether technical or marketing driven, users are willing to live with the decisions made by Apple. This is not defending any of the "crap", this is recognising that the choices made are very successful.
- berntb 17y ago
  >>It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. The arguably best UI around is a killer feature. That is something which generates love. Great usability makes the UI just "disappear", you don't think about it. Just look at which phone users really manage to use them for data traffic (and the carriers' trouble with that). This isn't unique to Apple. I buy pens (Pilot G-tec C4) which break really easily. That is not really smart, but their thin writing is a killer feature for me. I buy them a dozen at a time without even cursing. Disclaimer: I don't really care if I use Ubuntu or Mac. Edit: bensummers made it clearer and better.
- jsz0 17y ago
  The iPhone has feature parity or superiority with most other SmartPhones. It seems the goal posts keep moving on features. No one was going to buy the iPhone because: -No copy & paste -No MMS -No stereo Bluetooth -No third party apps -No video recording -No Flash Except they did. They bought it and liked it -- many of them bought another one (3G/GS). So it appears to me it's not really a feature-driven industry. It's a usability driven industry. Making a complex device easier to use is more important than offering every possible feature.
  - lsc 17y ago
    you have a good point; more features, all other things being equal, means more complexity.
- pohl 17y ago
  It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. From my perspective, the feature-driven nature of the industry is exactly what left the door wide open for someone to invade with fewer features and greater usability. The dogged pursuit of feature bullet points and checkmarks may help you sell to a particular demographic, but most people were never able to exploit those features. The most dramatic illustration of this is how Mobile Safari appeared in HTTP daemon logs out of proportion with the market share that the platform had relative to existing smartphones that already had mobile browsing. Edit: Actually, that's the 2nd most dramatic. The most dramatic illustration, to me, is how the device was so simple to use that the TV advertisements could demonstrate it by showing a pair of hands. Sure, the ads stretched the truth on the performance, but nevertheless they were essentially tutorial in nature. Meanwhile, other smartphones showed people dancing and smiling: anything but how their phones were used. A feature-driven industry is an industry ripe for invasion by someone who has internalized what Antoine de Saint-Exupery meant when he said "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
  - j_baker 17y ago
    I wish I could vote this up a hundred times. I get tired of people complaining about how much the iPhone can't do. I like the iPhone because it avoids feature bloat.
- j_baker 17y ago
  When did it become a race to implement the most features? I like the iPhone because it has just the right amount of functionality for what I want to do. Add anything more, and it wouldn't be as good.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  If you consider all the functionality you can get with apps as potential features, that's far more features than any other phone.
- swernli 17y ago
  To respond specifically to the issue of multitasking, I am still surprised that this is such a big deal. Maybe I have atypical phone usage patterns, but the only application I have every wished I could run in the background is Pandora. Anything else I find I only need to run when I'm looking at it, or already mutlitasks. I can listen to music (both from the library and from streaming sources online through Safari) in the background while doing other things. I can stay on speakerphone with someone while I run other apps. People get all in a huff pointing out that the iPhone can't run multiple apps at the same time, but the two things I want, phone and music, work in the background. If AT&T's advertising is to be believed, the Droid wouldn't let me be on the phone and use data at the same time, which to me is almost the be all and end all of multitasking, so instead of gaining something I'd be losing. For those of you curious, I listen to this radio station streaming, and consider it a great example of a way to embrace Safari for the iPhone: http://c895worldwide.com/web/streaming/iphone/iphone.html http://c895worldwide.com/web/streaming/iphone/iphone.html It lets me add a bookmark to my home screen with an icon it gets from the page itself, and when I start streaming music, it keeps going even when I leave Safari and do something else.

Perhaps iPhone users accept the limitations because the stuff it does actually do works so well for them? This explanation, however, doesn't provide a good headline, so obviously isn't plausible.

rpdillon 17y ago

So because it makes a bad headline, it obviously is? It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. We've established that iPhones are locked to a carrier that has the worst customer service ratings in the industry, and that it can't do basic things other smartphones do, like multitask. Yet, it's the gadget to have and continues to fly off the shelves years after its release. I think that's pretty interesting, and simply saying "yeah, it's just really good at making those phone calls" doesn't cut it (considering a 30% drop call rate is considered OK, saying it's really good at making calls would be a stretch). Listen, I've recommended friends and family of mine get iPhones, and I'm typing this on a Mac. But the best thing you can do for companies you like is call them on their crap. And a lack of basic chat functionality on the iPhone is a sad state of affairs, and no one really seems to talk about it. Apple does some stuff wrong, but they tend to cover it up through marketing. My wife, who used to use an iPhone, just pointed out to me as I was typing this that iPhones are a status symbol, and many people buy them more because they are iPhones than out of any real analysis of the features. Once bought, people want to validate their own decisions, so they'll defend the inferior product. Such is the power of marketing.

bensummers 17y ago
I didn't suggest the opposite. Bad headlines do not equal truth. The iPhone appears to be driven by a vision of making certain things easy and safe, at the expense of everything else. Since these things are desirable, whether technical or marketing driven, users are willing to live with the decisions made by Apple. This is not defending any of the "crap", this is recognising that the choices made are very successful.
berntb 17y ago
>>It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. The arguably best UI around is a killer feature. That is something which generates love. Great usability makes the UI just "disappear", you don't think about it. Just look at which phone users really manage to use them for data traffic (and the carriers' trouble with that). This isn't unique to Apple. I buy pens (Pilot G-tec C4) which break really easily. That is not really smart, but their thin writing is a killer feature for me. I buy them a dozen at a time without even cursing. Disclaimer: I don't really care if I use Ubuntu or Mac. Edit: bensummers made it clearer and better.
jsz0 17y ago
The iPhone has feature parity or superiority with most other SmartPhones. It seems the goal posts keep moving on features. No one was going to buy the iPhone because: -No copy & paste -No MMS -No stereo Bluetooth -No third party apps -No video recording -No Flash Except they did. They bought it and liked it -- many of them bought another one (3G/GS). So it appears to me it's not really a feature-driven industry. It's a usability driven industry. Making a complex device easier to use is more important than offering every possible feature.
- lsc 17y ago
  you have a good point; more features, all other things being equal, means more complexity.
pohl 17y ago
It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. From my perspective, the feature-driven nature of the industry is exactly what left the door wide open for someone to invade with fewer features and greater usability. The dogged pursuit of feature bullet points and checkmarks may help you sell to a particular demographic, but most people were never able to exploit those features. The most dramatic illustration of this is how Mobile Safari appeared in HTTP daemon logs out of proportion with the market share that the platform had relative to existing smartphones that already had mobile browsing. Edit: Actually, that's the 2nd most dramatic. The most dramatic illustration, to me, is how the device was so simple to use that the TV advertisements could demonstrate it by showing a pair of hands. Sure, the ads stretched the truth on the performance, but nevertheless they were essentially tutorial in nature. Meanwhile, other smartphones showed people dancing and smiling: anything but how their phones were used. A feature-driven industry is an industry ripe for invasion by someone who has internalized what Antoine de Saint-Exupery meant when he said "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- j_baker 17y ago
  I wish I could vote this up a hundred times. I get tired of people complaining about how much the iPhone can't do. I like the iPhone because it avoids feature bloat.
j_baker 17y ago
When did it become a race to implement the most features? I like the iPhone because it has just the right amount of functionality for what I want to do. Add anything more, and it wouldn't be as good.
jimbokun 17y ago
If you consider all the functionality you can get with apps as potential features, that's far more features than any other phone.
swernli 17y ago
To respond specifically to the issue of multitasking, I am still surprised that this is such a big deal. Maybe I have atypical phone usage patterns, but the only application I have every wished I could run in the background is Pandora. Anything else I find I only need to run when I'm looking at it, or already mutlitasks. I can listen to music (both from the library and from streaming sources online through Safari) in the background while doing other things. I can stay on speakerphone with someone while I run other apps. People get all in a huff pointing out that the iPhone can't run multiple apps at the same time, but the two things I want, phone and music, work in the background. If AT&T's advertising is to be believed, the Droid wouldn't let me be on the phone and use data at the same time, which to me is almost the be all and end all of multitasking, so instead of gaining something I'd be losing. For those of you curious, I listen to this radio station streaming, and consider it a great example of a way to embrace Safari for the iPhone: http://c895worldwide.com/web/streaming/iphone/iphone.html http://c895worldwide.com/web/streaming/iphone/iphone.html It lets me add a bookmark to my home screen with an icon it gets from the page itself, and when I start streaming music, it keeps going even when I leave Safari and do something else.