Our good friend on the list, Kontra, recently wrote an article on his blog called "Who can beat iPhone 2.0," http://counternotions.com/2008/03/10/iphone2-competitors/ and he does a fairly good job of pointing out all the things working in Apple's favor, including: 1. Design 2. Stores 3. Pricing 4. Webkit 5 Depth 6. SDK 7. Enterprise 8. Ecosystem and Curatorship;
but precious little words are spent with what I consider, being an iPhone owner, the significant drawbacks which I have briefly mentioned before on the list - the biggest, most egregious, most heinous one being the lock-in with one of the worst networks known to man. Coverage is spotty - even in metropolitan areas like Boston and now DC, and internet access is so painfully slow that I did some rough benchmarks on sites I regularly visit. Using the Edge network - sites like IxDA.org, NYTimes, Wired, Slashdot take -- on average - 15-20 seconds and sometimes as much as 60 seconds to load - and that is when it loads anything. Dave M asked me in a response something like "What about WiFi?" and the answer is - accept in the occasion coffee shop with free wifi, and in my house - I never get Wifi. Not consistently. So not consistently that it's as reliable as the Edge network itself - namely completely unreliable. I would honestly admit that I curse on a regular basis - at least a few times per week and think about switching and never going back to iPhone/AT&T. For me it's a deal killer only assuaged by the afterglow of pride and coolness I feel from people thinking my phone rocks. But when they ask me if I am happy, I admit that I am pissed - most of the time. We must admit that part of the user experience for an internet enabled phone is the network - the connection and the download time. It's not just the beautiful design, or the ease of use for things like SMS and email. It'd a beautiful Ferrari until you realize that it's really a Fiero with a Fiero engine under the hood. Someone comes out with a decent, well designed phone (Google?), that actually is not locked into a terrible network - with high speed 3G network - and it's game over for the iPhone - but at least we'll all have beautiful bricks. -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 || [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
