Apple or Desserts
Few days ago, I was reading a book called “The Design of Everyday Things” inside a crowded train. The author’s of the book liked to used old telephone system as an example to talk about the bad design issues at that time. It really inspired me to think a lot about the current smart phone war between IOS and Android (Samsung’s phone).
Many of my friends and relatives started to switch from IPhone to Android last year. I was curious to find out the reason why they have abandoned IPhone for Android phone, then i started to asked around. Indeed the answer i got back was pretty simple just “3F”, Android got more “features, free apps and better hardware (faster)” than IPhone. I accepted them all, but i’m not convinced. They tend to ignored the usability aspect of the phone, which i think what make IPhone so successfully.
Let’s talk about why i’m not convinced about the 3 reasons:
Features
Yup, probably important if you have a lot of free times to play with your phone. For me, common features are good enough. For instance, message, call, camera, email, browser, music, calendar and wait.. wait.. wait.. It sound ridiculous to name them all, because those commonly use features already so much. Why you need to have more to make your life harder.
Free apps
I love free app, however most of the free app is sucks. If you find one good app, probably you haven’t reach the stage or date the app prompt you to upgrade to full version.
Faster
We have limited time to spend daily, just 24 hours. If you can perform tasks and get information faster with your phone, mean you can save more time for other things everyday. Let’s say you open an app in a Samsung phone 10 Millisecond faster than IPhone, and you are telling me that will save you half an hour everyday for other things. Then i’m convinced, however i feel upset that you have nothing good to do than spending time open 180000 times of application daily. I do not bother for that tiny faster, if my phone can perform in an acceptable (very subjective to different user and usage) pace.
At the end, i still stay with IPhone for one reason. It simplify my life. If you are not convinced. Just try to perform some common tasks as below by using Android phone and IPhone.
- Type a url in a brower address text box and move the pointer around to change some of the character in between.
- Highlight and select text from page, copy and past them somewhere.
- Last one, back to Home Screen.
One day one apple keeps the doctor away.
