Technology changes over time. Developers inspired to innovate drive the
change. The iPhone 6 is rumored to be announced this Tuesday with all sorts of
new goodies. This iPhone is rumored to
have an even larger screen along with other cosmetic differences. The iPhone has changed a lot since its
creation in 2007. I think the most noticeable difference is the look of iOS.
The original iOS looked like real things inside a phone. By this I mean the calendar app looked like a
physical day calendar that you would find on your desk. In the newest version
of iOS they have done away with these designs.
The calendar app is now designed around only the function of a calendar,
unrestricted by physical design. So why did they wait until now to change the
design? There wasn’t anything stopping them from doing the functional design of
the calendar app in the original iOS. The Apple developers still made a
calendar that looked like real calendar. So why did they do this?
Another example of the design change is the lock
screen. The original lock screen had a
sliding mechanism that looked like a real world physical lock, similar to the
lock on a bathroom stall. Now the lock screen is completely empty and just
flashes the text “slide to unlock” with an arrow indicating the direction to
swipe. Once again the new design is
purely functional and the old is similar to a real world object. This change in
design is seen with the entirety of the operating system.
Now think back to 2007, when the first iPhone was released.
The world was a different place, not everyone had a smartphone, and not many
people had experienced touch screen controls.
Apple’s original design philosophy of physical design was used to guide
new users into the use of the iPhone.
The iPhone has a small handheld device with a bunch of real, physical
tools people use. As a new user it would be very easy to understand how to use
the iPhone, because they have already used everything on it. So why would they
change it again if it is easy to understand?
After many years of people using iPhones they began to learn
design philosophies of the applications and come to expect the same design
philosophies in new apps. An example of
this is the back button in the top left of corner of an application. This way, users could know how to perform
basic functions in apps that they are completely unfamiliar with. This understanding allowed Apple to drop the
physical design. Looking back at the lock screen example, the functionality is exactly
the same but it doesn’t need a physical looking lock for new users to
understand how to operate the screen.
What if Apple had gone with the new design back in
2007. I think the iPhone would have had
a rocky start. People wouldn’t have
understood it; technology would have progressed too fast. There is a speed limit on progress and the
limit is us, the people who would benefit from the progress. An example of the
speed limit being broken is the Xbox One. Microsoft wanted to adopt an always
online policy allowing users to share their digital library of games. Consumers didn’t like this and Microsoft backtracked,
but I believe the next generation of game consoles will all always be online.
I really don’t like the idea of progress speed limit. The
closed-minded population sets it and the forward-looking are forced to look a
little less forward. There are probably
many more examples of this, even before the digital age, but I am hungry, so
maybe I’ll come back to this.
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