User Centered

...oh well. It's finally hear, the iPhone. General consensus- This looks like the best thing since sliced bread with some possible reservations on the virtual keyboard.


Thoughts:

• They also are teaming up with Yahoo! Go- Opera + Yahoo! + Apple = good. Is Yahoo! going to get some street cred again? I was skeptical when Opera decided to go with oneSearch, but Apple likes it too. I can't wait to flex it and see if it's better than Google.
  
• They have "the first full fledged browser" on a mobile"most advanced web browser ever on a portable device"... them's fighting words. Althought they do sync with desktop bookmarks. A welcome addition to the mobile browsing community.
  
• Widgets on mobile- beaten to the punch Opera? I was DYING to see that in Mobile/Mini first!
  

About the UI: a compilation of first impressions and thoughts (in no particular order, and just things to consider- Apple may have very well addressed all of these for all I know...)

1) Texting SMS, URLs, Browsing etc without tactile feedback is difficult. It nicely allows you to have a context aware qwerty keyboard, but at the cost of being able to feel the keys. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I'd be interested in what percentage of smartphone users don't look at the keys (I'm still learning on my BB). I imagine the same would apply for dailing, but I'm sure there are capable voice dailing and speed dialing features available- and for what it's worth, I'm not sure I could dial my BB without looking at the UI either since the numbers are so close together.

2) Auto adjusting (landscape/portrait) -it will also be interesting to see how this plays in real life. It would be nice if the user could initiate it. I rotate my phone around quite a bit (putting in pocket etc..) it might seem odd to watch the orientation flip (if that's how it works) randomly as I'm handing the phone over to someone.

3) Great focus on activity centered design. They took a good look at in call features and made them easily accessible. I thought my Blackberry did a good job at this (review coming soon!).

4) Touchscreen- My girlfriend is a longtime Treo user- she felt like touchscreen mobiles were going to go away in favor of the Pearls trackball, the Q and BlackJack et all... she was very excited to see the touchscreen come back in a big way.

5) Finger Gestures- Can these be done one handed? Are they just shortcuts to functions that could be addressed otherwise? I'm a big fan of gesture based input and I can't wait to find out more on how Apple implemented this.

6) Deactivation when it gets near your face- nice touch! now if they could only figure out a way to keep it from getting "greasy-face" all over it, we'd be all set! (seriously, what percentage of users do you see that wipe the phone on a shirt or palm to clean it off?)

7) Convergence- I think this might solve a lot of convergent issues. it's *tiny* for what you're getting. Adding the music player UI in there shouldn't be too difficult since Apple's already pioneered the simple UI. At first glance it appears the biggest sacrifice for this convergence is a tactile keyboard. If you're not big into typing on the go, this might be the perfect device.