iPhone and then iCrash?

The recent announcement of Apple's iPhone has caused a massive amount of buzz on the net. After watching the keynote last week all I could say was "I want one" with one of those jaw dropping expressions that I'm sure the majority of the global geekisphere was performing. It is very clear that the phone will be revolutionary and I can only imagine what the CEO's of Blackberry and Palm stated after watching Steve's keynote. I believe it would go like this:

Well there goes that... what the [insert old-English curse word here] do we have that can compete? How long is it going to take us to get something similar out there?

Luckily it doesn't look like Apple will be targeting enterprise users with this initial glimpse at the iPhone (so Blackberry and Palm may be able to hang onto that market for a little while longer), but it sure will blow away the competition in the personal pda phone arena. The combination of Mac OS X + Movies + iTunes + Camera + WiFi + Bluetooth + GSM + Multitouch screen will definitely put Apple substantially above the competition on a number of levels. This phone will also be a web designer's dream, since it will run Safari, and with any luck it will spark a revolution of devices that utilize modern browsers (I'd love to see Firefox run on an iPhone competitor). Wouldn't it be great if you never had to design a separate CSS stylesheet for cell phones?

There are a lot of positives about the iPhone, but I think there's been so much buzz about how awesome it is that there has been very little coverage of some of the potential down-sides (and Apple's potential solutions). The first thing I thought of while watching the keynote was: What if you are driving? I know that driving and talking on your cell is bad news, but it happens—I'm sure the majority of us are guilty at some point or other. The multi-touch screen is a revolutionary technology, but it's going to be terrible while driving if it is the only way to place a call. The key to driving while placing a call on your cell phone is to spend an absolute minimum of time looking at the phone.
The following is the process I'm envisioning for making a call on the iPhone (based on what I can see on their website). Feel free to correct me here since I wasn't at Mac World to see the phone myself. I'll pretend the word "click" means "to press with one's finger".

1. Click phone
2. Click favorites (or recent calls)
3. Scroll to the name of the person I want to call
4. Click the name of the person

In the scenario where I don't have the person's number if either my favorites, or in my recent calls:

1. Click phone
2. Click contacts
3. Use my fingers to scroll to the person's name I want to call
4. Click the person's name
5. Select either their work number, or home phone

Now while this seems to be a 3 or 5 step process, the problem is that there is no way to shortcut it. It also requires me to look at the screen in order to complete the process. There's no button I can hold down to immediately dial a friend. For example, right now I have my girlfriend's phone number set to dial any time I hold down the "q" key on my Palm Treo 600. So I don't have to even look at my phone and since the "q" key is on the top left of the keypad, it's relatively easy to locate without looking and press. I have other keys mapped for my other friends too. All of this results in being able to place calls, without even having to look at the phone. The process for placing a call on my Treo is like this:

1. Click phone button
2. Click the up key to get to favorites
3. Use either up or down keys to dial a number on my contacts
4. Hit the middle button to dial

While this seems like the same process as the iPhone I have largely memorized the position of the people on my favorites list. This means I just have to press down 3 times, and over 1 time to call my sister, for example. It's amazing what muscle memory can do. In the scenario where I have to call someone who is not on my favorites list:

1. click phone button
2. click down button to get contacts list
3. press a letter of the name of the person I wish to call, perhaps I may click 2 or 3 more letters to get to the right person. Or I can hold down the "down" button and scroll all the way to the bottom.
4. As it lists both numbers on the screen, I just choose the number I want, and hit the middle button to dial.

Now while again this isn't too dissimilar to the iPhone in terms of length of process, it does allow you to shortcut scrolling by typing in a letter, which again can be done largely without having to look too long at the screen.

So then I started to think a little more deeply about the issue. Apple is an ingenious company and this phone will run OS X. So surely they must have thought of a way to create shortcuts. Then it hit me after reading a blog entry by Jeff Croft where he talked about iPhone running OS X Leopard 10.5 (to be released in spring/summer 2007). Would it be possible for Apple to use some of the accessibility features in such a way that it would be possible for you to speak to your phone and have it dial numbers. Though my Treo doesn't have this feature I have seen other phones with the ability to dial phone numbers based on voice recognition. Although I didn't see it explicitly stated in the Leopard feature set (or advertised in the current iPhone feature set), I'm wondering if it might be one of the "surprises" that Steve Jobs has mentioned in a keynote where he presented Leopard in 2006. Is this a possible alternative? Could they tie voice recognition in Leopard with the iPhone?

I hope that this is an option or the iPhone could certainly be a car cruncher. Hence the expression "iPhone and then iCrash." When OS X was first released it was so sexy I couldn't take my eyes off my computer screen. I can only imagine what might happen if I get an iPhone, the scrolling feature looks far too addictive—like the clickwheel on the iPod.

Another opportunity that I'm not sure has been fully realized is the potential for the iPhone to become an integral part of the interior of your car. I can easily see third party manufacturers producing a slew of add-ons that would make the iPhone the perfect driving companion. Give the iPhone a tilting arm with a power adapter that projects from your car's dashboard, and all of a sudden you've got a movie playing device that can be viewed by anyone at any angle in the car. It's also got built-in Google Maps functionality, which is the perfect driving companion for when you get lost, and the ever so handy iTunes interface. The problem with the iTunes interface is that yet again it is going to require you to look and touch the screen. The current iPod has a next track, previous track, and a play/pause button. Right now I can hit the next track button without looking at the screen because I can feel the button depress, and then I'll hear it skip forwards. Without that kind of sensory feedback I think I might look at the screen in order to see it did in fact skip forwards, rather than waiting to hear the track. This of course might not be as much of a driving distraction as I'm thinking, but I do think it will require you to look at the screen more than the current iPod.

This phone truly is an amazing driving companion, but I think because it requires more of your visual attention than other phone models it also has the potential to be more dangerous. Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?

This entry was posted by Stuart Bowness on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.