Minority Report: Why I'm already dreaming of an iPhone

Despite his very best efforts, Seb Janacek fails to disguise his admiration for the simplicity and elegance of Apple's new iPhone user interface. Read about why he loves it - and where there's room for improvement.

As keynotes go it was a return to form for Steve Jobs in San Francisco this week. After a couple of damp squibs at recent events, some had begun to question whether 'The Steve' had lost the magic. Not so, it appears.

In terms of product announcements, the keynote was pretty thin on the ground, no new Macs and no preview of the 'top secret' bits of Leopard. What it did have was more information on the company's media centre device, now called Apple TV and launching soon.

And then there was something about some sort of new-fangled iPod-mobile phone thingy.

For once, the reality distortion field wasn't required. A chimp could have stood on stage and waved the iPhone about and the crowd would still be drooling over their glossy welcome packs and applauding wildly. And with good reason: the iPhone is the most exciting new product to come out of Apple for at least five years.

Described by Jobs as three 'revolutionary' products in one - widescreen iPod, mobile phone and internet browsing device - the long-awaited gadget is dominated by a large screen.

The iPhone is already receiving a fair bit of criticism. The storage capacity (4GB or 8GB) is too low. The battery life is paltry (five to 16 hours depending on usage). The battery isn't replaceable (inevitable shades of the long-running iPod battery row). Lack of 3G interoperability (it supports GSM and EDGE). And the hefty price tag ($499 to $599).

Meanwhile others have complained the exclusive Cingular-only deal Apple will run with will exclude those who want to switch mobile operators to get the phone but don't want to incur hefty early termination penalties on their existing contracts. A significant number are also voicing discontent at the choice of Cingular as the network partner.

Others have (correctly) pointed out that many of the features Jobs touted as being central to Apple's stated intention to reinvent the phone are already available elsewhere (I'll come back to this in a moment.)

All valid points - so is this the reality-distortion field working its magic after all?

Nope. In a 2006 column on the much-trumpeted and woefully inaccurate predictions of the 'death of the iPod', I said that one of the biggest challenges Apple faced in delivering a successful phone product to the market was interface design.

The company needed to develop a compelling, multi-function device marrying an iPod and a phone, I argued. It also needed to ensure the device remained unpolluted by the detritus of 'value-adding' features that mobile operators foist upon their users.

Macworld video

Watch Steve Jobs introducing the new iPhone at Macworld

♦ Jobs unveils iPhone - at last

♦ Apple shows off iPhone apps

It seems at first glance to have avoided the latter, with the iPhone appearing to be an Apple-only show with no obvious links to Cingular content or services or any compromises over the design. Whether this is truly the case remains to be seen when the iPhone launches in early summer. Apple plans to ship the iPhone this June in the US and rumour has it the device should be available in Europe by Christmas 2007.

Interface design has traditionally been one of the company's strengths. Jobs, Jonathan Ive and co certainly delivered with the iPhone interface. It's quite an achievement. Actually judged solely on its interface, the iPhone is pretty remarkable.

Eschewing either a keyboard or a stylus, it provides a context-related soft interface both driven and presented via the touchscreen.

Limited to one 'Home' button at the bottom of the phone's face and a couple of switches on the side to adjust volume and power, the whole interface is displayed graphically on-screen. In his keynote pre-ramble Jobs stated the problem with existing smart phones is the wasted 40 per cent of the handset face that's given over to Qwerty keypads and other buttons. By presenting each input interface when the user requests it, the iPhone does away with this.

Apple claims to have developed and patented a touchscreen technology called Multi-touch, which inputs commands via taps, sweeps and gestures from the user's fingers. The much-celebrated click-wheel is gone. To select a music track, the user runs a finger down the on-screen menu. A faster flick will move you further and quicker down the list of tracks and albums. The same thing applies to contacts and photos. The Multi-touch technology also lets you touch a phone number to ring a contact. It's pretty cool stuff.

The company has adapted the Mac operating system OS X to drive the phone. This allowed it to deliver "desktop-class" applications, according to Jobs. He added that having the interface delivered graphically gives the company the freedom to add features and applications as required without having to re-engineer the hardware.

Furthermore the opportunity exists for the company's developer community to get stuck into the device's code, albeit only with Apple's exclusive blessing.

As to the device's feature-set, some silicon.com readers have rightly pointed out there's an awful lot of fuss being made about a phone that offers what products from other companies already offer.

But even from the demo, it's clear Apple has put a huge amount of research into keeping the simple things simple: making a phone call, retrieving a text message, viewing a photo, emailing photos.

Modern mobile phone interfaces are a mess of features and menus. Even the once great Nokia seems to have lost its way recently. This has largely happened as a result of operators trying to shoehorn high-profile links to value-adding (often content-led) services into their devices in order to boost revenues. The result is a user interface quagmire. Apple has recognised this and focused on getting the basics right - sticking to its mantra of 'it just works'.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and final judgement should be reserved until the iPhone makes its way into the eager hands of independent reviewers. This might take some time - apparently the only three iPhones in existence were on show at the Macworld conference this week.

Jobs was naturally ebullient throughout the demonstration and tossed phrases like "revolutionary" and "magic" about with obvious glee. A more sobering comment came from Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, who talked to Jobs via a mobile from his seat in the auditorium. Asked for his thoughts on the finished article, Ive said: "It's not too shabby, is it?"

The 'gadget-hounds' and UI enthusiasts out there will no doubt concur.

Around 950 million mobile handsets were sold worldwide last year but the high-end smart phone market segment which the iPhone will compete in has yet to win over significant numbers of business users and consumers - yet Apple is aiming to capture one per cent of the market by the end of 2008.

It may or may not achieve that ambitious target but it's certainly come up with a peach of an interface.

I want one - though you may have already worked that out.