photo credit: Gonzalo Baeza Hernández

Many times now, people have written about the appeal of the iPhone. They’ve written about what makes it a good “consumer” phone but a poor “business” phone (a notion that I disagree with). They’ve compared it to other smartphones like the Palm Pre, Windows Phone, and Android phones. And yet, a certain amount of the mystique remains. Why are people attracted to this device? Is it purely a matter of advertising? Is it about the fact that it has a simple interface?

After a series of events in the last year, I’ve got some observations to share about what seem to draw people to the device and keep them there.    And it all begins at home…

I moved about 1000 miles from home a few years back in search of work.   As such, I only get to see my family and my mother a few times each year.   Last year, on one of my trips back home, I was sitting at the restaurant using my iPhone 3G and my mother, who is not terribly mechanical/technical, said “What are you doing there?”  That lead to an interesting conversation where I spent about an hour showing here the various things that I was doing on my iPhone and things that I could do on it.

We spent more time that evening – I had her try things for herself.  Pinch-zooming in the browser amazed her.  The fact that the device worked he way she expected it too amazed her.  It wasn’t about simplicity, it was about intuitiveness.   I’ve had the argument with people before – trying to define what “intuitive” really means.   Those arguments can get to be pretty esoteric, but the bottom line is this – intuitive is anything that does what you expect.  A device with an intuitive interface operates in a way that when you push something or touch something, the result you get is the result you were hoping for or expecting when you decided to touch or press that thing.  The iPhone is intuitive in a way that none of its competitors are.

Now it’s important to note that I’d had many different Windows Mobile phones (Windows Phone) in the past and my family has never reacted this way to those devices.  So after a little discussion my mother and I made the decision to go out and get her an iPhone 3G.   And, paraphrasing a comment I made regarding anther Gear Diary story, I watched someone who was not technically adept embrace the technology and blossom as a result.

For her, the immediate result was that we wanted to try all the programs and games I had.   She was anxious to try texting me.   Her previous cell phone could do that, but she had no interest then – but now – it was like she had discovered fire!   Within the first week, I received a phone call from my brother chastising me for teaching my mother how to text and begging me to get her to stop.  She was finding texting too easy and she was driving him to distraction with all her text messages!

In the meantime, my roommate who was also non-technical, was on a Motorola RAZR (his 3rd – he broke the other two).   I had briefly tried him on a Palm Treo 750 I had because he wanted better texting, but that proved to be a LOT of grief due to the quirks of the device and the Windows Mobile operating system.  He got sick of hearing me tell him to reset the device to clear his problems.   I also had a first generation iPhone and when I purchased the iPhone 3G, I put him on my original iPhone.   It was like a light was switched on.  He too, took off with texting (he went from about 100 per month to something like 3000 in the first month on the iPhone).  It’s fortunate I had unlimited texting on my family plan or I would be in a LOT of trouble!  He also went overboard playing the games and, in his case, he fell in love with the iPod features and the photo albums.  He loved being able to easily show people his vacation pictures and pictures of his birds – and, although I initially transferred the pictures to his device for him, he learned to work the photo program and the camera without any input from me!  Again – the device worked as he expected so the learning curve was minimal.   The thing he appreciated the most was the ease and reliability with which we paired a bluetooth headset to the iPhone.   This was a BIG problem with the Windows Mobile device – it kept losing the bluetooth link and then it was difficult to get it to reestablish – no such problem on the iPhone.

Along the way I remember smaller incidents, like the time I showed friends of mine, native Chinese speakers, the built-in support for Traditional and Simplified Chinese language character sets – even allowing for smart recognition of characters drawn on the screen – much as Graffiti on the Palm used to work.   This ease of character entry into the phone really surprised and impressed them and they seemed surprised that it wasn’t harder to do (and some of them bought their own iPhones)!

Today, with basic MS Exchange support, decent MS Office document support, VPN support, and excellent browser, this device is fast becoming the device of choice for business as well, despite it’s limitations.  Why?  I think it’s for the same reason as I’ve presented here – the iPhone is a surprisingly intuitive and accessible device.  What use is a powerful device if you can’t figure out how to use it?   What good are tons of features if you need a PhD to learn how to access them?

All of this got me to thinking and I decided to try a small personal experiment.  I received a relatively recent Windows Mobile device with an adequate processor and memory and I set out to use it instead of my iPhone.  I figured that there have been a number of major improvements in the platform and some of my co-workers are still big fans.   So off I went trying to establish the same functions I was performing with my iPhone on the Windows Mobile device.

The experiment was not as successful as I hoped.  Of course, as has been discussed by others before, the costs of apps, in general, was much higher for the WM platform than for the iPhone and was almost prohibitive.  But, more importantly, I was disappointed at the “hidden” costs.   For example, some of you know that I have been studying foreign languages as kind of a hobby.  On the iPhone, I have built-in keyboards and display characters for dozens of languages – I simply turn them on.  On my Windows phone, however, I have to pay for things like Chinese character sets from a third party!  Amazing!  I also found the device had battery reporting problems and most of the applications continue to have a clumsy feel to them.   The regular pauses and lags of this device were really unacceptable.  So, unfortunately, Windows Mobile hasn’t come as far as I’d hoped.  I’m hoping, though, to try something like a Touch HD2, even though some of these problems will still be present.  My hope is that the interface improvements and the increased horsepower/memory of this device will make the platform more functional.

In the end, I found myself back on my iPhone.  Not long ago, my mother called me and asked me about the new iPhone 3Gs.   She asked me if I was planning to get one and she wanted to know if we needed the improvements in the new phone.   I said, yes, they are nice, but we weren’t quite eligible yet for discount pricing.  I told her I would be eligible at the end of October and, if I had the money, I would upgrade.   She would be eligible a few months after that.  After that we talked about some of the games she was playing on her phone (she’s a big fan of Alchemize) and what features are in the iPhone 3Gs that aren’t in the iPhone 3G.  This is a conversation we couldn’t have had a year ago and I still found myself in a state of wonder that we were having it at all!  The change in the way she has embraced the technology is absolutely wonderful!

Then, last week, I went back home for a short visit and my mother asked me to take her out to run a few errands.  She wants to go to her local Apple store (not unusual for her these days).  So we get there and the next thing I know she has, without warning, purchased ME a new 3Gs.  Huh.  What do you know?  I guess it does all begins at home…

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