I was one of those Apple fanboys that got his iPhone the first week they were out, so I've used mine for a while now. Recently, I met with Mike Rogoway who writes both for Mac Newsworld and the Oregonian and he asked me how I liked it. It's an easy answer: I like it.
But as a Marketer, the one thing that drives me nuts about the iPhone is the home screen. It's gorgeous. It works great. And, for the most part, I like how Apple decided to utilize the home screen icons to let me know there's something new. Whenever I have a new SMS, phone message or email, a little red dot with a number is overlaid on top of the icon.!http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/7008/iphonecritiquemh4.png!
But for the life of me, I can't understand how Jobs, the ultimate Marketer and Product Manager, let the iPhone out the door with the Calendar icon working the way it does. Along with the little red numerical dots, the Calendar icon is the only other icon that's actually updated with real information. It shows today's date, without the need to launch the Calendar.
Why would Apple introduce this concept, of near-time information displayed at a glance, without holding this one part back and then rolling the same intelligence across the entire interface and calling it "a new feature?" Now, every time I look at my iPhone's screen I end up staring at the weather, the stock market, the time, and the map while thinking, "why are you other icons so dumb, while your calendar friend so smart?"
Comments
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Dolan
Aug 6, 2007 at 8:34:38 AM
I agree it's an inconsistency, but keep in mind the calendering functionality of the iPhone is always running -- this is how it knows to remind you to pick up the dry cleaning -- so it's easy to show you the current date/time. However, something like the weather or map component call out to external services. It would be impractical as of now to be calling these services constantly, so the best it can do is show either a default value or the last available value. In the future with an always-on connection and more available CPU you may have truly "live" services across the iPhone, but not for a while yet.
Rick Turoczy
Aug 6, 2007 at 8:19:20 PM
Wait a second. I have to CLICK on the Weather icon? I KNEW it wasn't 73 and sunny in Portland every day. I just knew it.
Danese
Aug 6, 2007 at 8:34:08 PM
I'm actually glad they did it this way. Implies that they still aren't as calculating as some Marketeers would like them to be. The "Wow, That's Cool" things still make it in just because they could :-).
Curtis Gross
Sep 11, 2007 at 8:14:42 AM
"I'm actually glad they did it this way."
Hmm. Seems a little too forgiving. Why is everyone so forgiving with Apple & their mess-ups? Just like the "whoops you paid $200 more because you are our biggest fans."
The clock does not need access to external resources & the weather could have a setting to ping a service (if you are already paying for the unlimited internet). Problem solved.