iPhone Guided Tour

Oh my ... the iPhone looks to be super-complicated. But dang, the things the iPhone can do makes it a game changer. Game changers may not dominate, but they do influence.

This 20-minute iPhone guided tour shows us the future, today.

Comments

[Frank roche]

Gosh, I'm surprised that you say the iPhone looks complicated. It's pushbutton technology, and you can jump from one interface to the next in a flash. I know the video was long, but I thought just the opposite: This things works like a phone really should.

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Frank ... because the iPhone can do so much, it looks complicated to me. Complicated in that it will take time for people to learn how to use all its features. The demo made it look easy but it requires new behaviors from us users.

For example, just to turn the thing off and on requires one to hold down two buttons and then move a red bar across the screen to activate the phone.

[Paul]

When game changers are disruptive, dominance usually follows. Since the re-emergence of Steve Jobs at Apple, the company has executed virtually everything they've done flawlessly, so there's no reason to believe that they won't also execute well with iPhone.

The mechanics of the iPhone look less complicated to me than punching those tiny keys on a Blackberry, and lots of people have learned to do that almost as fast as I can type on a real keyboard -- moreover, the interface is more seamless and natural than anything we've seen on any computing device before. My guess is that the first time people saw GUI interfaces they were a bit confused because that was a paradigm shift too, but do you really want to go back to character-oriented screens and a DOS prompt now?

The biggest potential pitfall and sales drag will come from the relationship with AT&T. That is a nightmare, and although I'm predicting insanely great success for the iPhone, I won't be getting one myself because I won't deal with that company. Hopefully, either Steve will see the light and add more carriers (within 2 years, or patience will wear thin and other vendor will have an opening to drive a steamroller through), or Wi-Max service will start springing up in cities everywhere and the phone service will be through VOIP, completely bypassing AT&T.

see my complete iPhone take here:
http://thewaythingsare.typepad.com/antimarketer/2007/06/what-is-steve-j.html

[eh]

Compared to the nuts and bolts of the HW and SW that's inside it, the 'complication' of the iPhone's user interface that you need to master in order to fully utilize all of that capability is nothing.