“With the impending release of the iPhone, Apple is digging its heels into the forefront of a movement not simply to change the face of the cell phone market, but rather to continue radicalizing the digital consumer electronics industry as we know it,” Saabira Chaudhuri writes for FastCompany.
“While smart phones that allow consumers to listen to music, surf the Net and make phone calls already exist, Apple’s new venture aims to take the concept of user friendliness to levels that no other phone has achieved, by coupling a revolutionary multi-touch user interface with the convenience of consolidation,” Chaudhuri writes. “But is the iPhone going to be able to achieve the same success levels as the iPod?”
Chaudhuri writes, “The buzz preceding the upcoming iPhone rings similar to the hype that the iPod has whipped up around its slender frame since 2001, and in keeping with tradition, the hype is largely focused on the phone’s radical user interface. The iPhone boasts a patented ‘multi-touch’ keyboard technology that allows users to interact directly with the device using their fingers instead of conventional buttons.”
“The wide display area serves as both keyboard and control panel, and is one large luminous screen that changes according to the functions desired. If you’re checking your voicemail for instance, your message appears as a visual icon. Poke the message you want to listen to and you’ve got it,” Chaudhuri writes.
Chaudhuri writes, “The iPod set an impossibly high bar, one that the iPhone will not match or even come close to. But the new device could still be very successful, particularly in the long term. By combining a phone, a music player and an Internet device all in one, while coupling them with the most user friendly interface it could conceive of, Apple aims to embody one of the most fundamental ideals that underlies modern day consumerism: convenience.”
“For an increasing number of consumers, less has never been more than it is today: the smaller the better, the sleeker the better, the simpler the better, and the more consolidated the better. The iPhone is likely to emerge as a forerunner in this movement towards simplifying the digital media industry,” Chaudhuri writes.
Full article here.
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