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iPhone OS 4 — raising the bar again

Posted by Lorenzo Wood April 8th, 2010

Steve Jobs today announced the next generation of iPhone software. In the quality of execution — not just the length of its feature list — it keeps its lead in user experience. Apple would like you to believe that it’s the only game in town. It isn’t, but it does raise the bar again in many areas — increasingly not just in mobile. Advertising, in particular, gets a shot in the arm.

Steve Jobs did his customary keynote to launch the next generation of iPhone software — iPhone OS 4.0 — as a developer preview ahead of its end-user launch in the summer on the iPhone/iPod Touch and in the autumn on the iPad. There is a complete video on Apple’s Web site and, naturally, lots of coverage and analysis elsewhere on the Web (Engadget’s is geekily thorough).

It’s nice to see changes that address LBi’s key criteria for mobile usability:

• Discoverability — the ability for users to discover that something is possible (as distinct from the also important ability to figure out how to do something once you know that you can);
• Interruptibility — the ability to handle interruptions and changes of context with minimum disruption and overhead for the user; and
• Demonstrability— the ability for users to show (off to) others what they can do, in particular with little or no risk of failure and consequent embarrassment.

Discoverability has improved with new ways to make apps available. Allowing enterprises to send apps directly to iPhones they manage and allowing end users to gift apps to others removes barriers to awareness and trial, particularly for those less familiar or confident with buying and installing apps. The Game Center feature that provides some standardised underpinnings for social features in games (many of which are already provided in existing games by the developers themselves) also helps by introducing pop-up invitations.

Demonstrability and interruptibility are both improved by “multitasking”. The lack of multitasking has been high on the list of criticisms of the iPhone by fans of other platforms. In my view, it is also a major reason for the iPhone’s success — it’s so much easier to use that the (mostly slight) trade-off is worth it. The iPad (at launch) kept this simple idea and it certainly doesn’t detract from the seductive properties of the product in practice. As we predicted, therefore, Apple’s “multitasking” is an extension of its careful approach to the problem, the first step towards which was the introduction of push notifications. What iPhone OS 4.0 really offers for the majority of apps is very fast task switching — reducing the time and perceived effort of switching between apps by avoiding the need to go to the home screen first, and by encouraging developers to preserve complete state when not in focus. To this, they add some more specific services on top of push notifications — backgrounding for music (and a happy 13 million Pandora users); backgrounding for VoIP (happy Skype; less happy operators); location notifications. These changes allow multitasking while retaining good battery management and good foreground performance. They also keep extra load on the user to a minimum, so it looks to me like Steve’s claim that Apple has “nailed it” is pretty fair.

Interruptibility is also improved by the most important feature, iAds — Apple’s own in-app advertising mechanism. Mobile advertising isn’t new; nor is Steve’s claim that (on the iPhone, at least) that “search isn’t where it’s at… apps [are]”. What is new is the quality of the experience, which is arguably the best advertising experience on any device, mobile or not. Consider:

• If I touch an ad, I’m instantly immersed in it but my current state is visibly preserved. The whole app I was in slides quickly off the screen and the ad takes it over. Alarming? Not when you’ve experienced it a couple of times, because it’s consistent and robust and you’ll quickly gain confidence that it’s not going to disrupt what you’re doing.
• Dismissing an ad is trivial and instant. All I do is touch the top left corner and it’s gone — no hunting for a close box. Again, builds confidence to try ads. (1)
• Ads are rich — with full-screen video — and interactive. Built in HTML5, ads can include plenty of basic functionality — the demo included a simple game and a feature that exploited the accelerometer. And if ads have “taster” functionality built in…
• Ads can leave rich functionality on the device for later. This is a brilliant way to address interruptibility. I may spend a little time engaging with an ad, but sooner or later I’ll want to get back to what I was doing. By exploiting the new mechanism for delivering apps directly, ads can allow me painlessly and without interruption to leave an app on my device — all ready for me to use later on.

If you haven’t got a spare hour to watch the whole keynote, jump forward 44 minutes and watch for about 10.

A rising tide floats all boats — and drowns everyone who doesn’t have a boat

When the iPhone was launched, we said that it raised the bar for mobile user experience. This has been borne out by its success and by the way it has driven the mobile market as a whole (2). The new iPhone OS, and particularly iAds, push the bar up higher. This time though, the iPad has revealed Apple’s ambition to displace the 1970s interfaces of today’s Macs and PCs, so benchmarks are being set for experience on all digital channels.

In his keynote, Steve painted a picture of Apple dominance. He casually chose a “pretty good proxy” for market share in the form of mobile Web usage — where the iPhone dominates. This is a testament to the quality of the experience rather than evidence of penetration in most brands’ customer bases. For all the size of the opportunity in the Apple universe — which has grown bigger and more quickly than most expected — Apple is not the only game in town. Everyone is running to catch up. Handset makers, PC makers and operators all have multitouch and “apps” and some sort of “app store”. Microsoft and Google are pushing their own visions hard (look out for Microsoft’s announcement this Monday). (3)

How these experiences will be delivered to end users and who will be responsible is not clear. That they will come is a certainty, and today the iPad and iPhone OS 4.0 are the most tangible prototypes of what that future will be.

Notes:

(1) It wasn’t clear whether this feature is part of the iAd platform or whether the mocked-up ads shown in the demo are simply done this way by convention. If it’s the latter, it will serve Apple well to enforce the convention.

(2) People with every kind of phone are increasingly using the language of “apps”. Apps have effectively become the dominant concept for describing functionality on a mobile device, not least because the the computer-centric “site” has been so unimpressive for those that have tried it. We have seen expectations of the (largely not iPhone-owning) public for their mobile phones rise, particularly since Apple began its “there’s an app for that” TV campaign. For most people today, the way available to them to explore those possibilities is the mobile Web, which is why we see traffic to Web sites we monitor from all kinds of mobile devices is on the rise and why we say that 2010 is the year that many people will get their first impressions of brands on the mobile Web. Apps as experiences are here to stay, regardless of the technology used to deliver them — users don’t care.

(3) There is even an Android-powered television.

Tags: advertising, apple, ipad, iPhone, iphoneos, mobile, touch

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Innovative salt app for Food Standards Agency

Posted by Mike October 21st, 2009

LBi has created an iPhone and iPod Touch application and mobile-optimised site called ‘FSA Salt’ to help shoppers calculate the salt content in everyday foods and make healthier food choices for their families. The salt calculator also comes with sound: when you shake the application you can hear salt being shaken and you are provided with useful tips to reduce salt in everyday foods. The app has been created for the FSA in support of their Salt Reduction Campaign after survey results revealed that 26 million adults in the UK consume too much salt in their diets.  This unique app can be used by shoppers and mothers easily when browsing the supermarket shelves.
 
The Salt Calculator is a ‘simple to use’ app that can be integrated into the lives of consumers with ease and acts as a handy nutrition tool when they are ‘on the go’. Users can simply look at the food label, select the appropriate level of salt per 100g and combined with choosing the weight of the serving from the scale provided, a traffic light system reveals instantly if it’s a healthy choice.  The app includes added features such as salt intake information for children of different ages and an inbuilt shake gesture that provides useful tips such as ‘Go for reduced-salt back bacon in your bacon sandwich’. ‘And try adding some slices of tomato instead of ketchup’.  The shake feature provides a built in sound effect of salt being shaken, which can be heard with each tip displayed.

Laura Jordon Bambach, Joint Creative Director LBi UK:  “Its always a pleasure to work on projects that are not only creatively pleasing but provide such a useful tool in promoting good health; and where we can use digital channels to create real benefit for consumers. We’re especially happy to be helping mums make the right decisions at point of sale, through our work with the FSA”.

Tags: app, iPhone, press release, UK

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iPhone OS 3.0: The lesson of not doing every basic thing first

Posted by Simon Gill July 5th, 2009

Last week Apple released the much anticipated update to it’s iPhone operating system. Finally bringing many of the features most phone providers would have thought completely necessary in a modern smart phone: MMS, Video capture, Cut, copy, paste, Memo recorder, Background IM applications.

The Apple website lauded these new features as exciting developments, yet they can be found on most current Nokia, Sony Ericson, Samsung, LG and HTC handsets.

It’s taken two years to get these features on the iPhone – with many saying 3.0 is what it should have had when it launched. Yet everywhere I look i see iPhones, it’s easily the favoured handset amongst my friends – with the previously unconvinced now benefiting from their purchase of the new iPhone 3G S.

So did this lack of key features make a difference in the beginning, did it limit the success – no. The iPhone was so far ahead of the competition in other areas that people felt happy to live without these must-have features. This approach to not including everything people expect underlines a key principle for the internet age

Prioritise your killer features to bring instant success and don’t be afraid to add the perceived must-have basics later.

Avoiding the mythical phase 2 or phase 3

How many times have you heard – “That’s a cool idea, but lets put into phase 2″ – it’s an admission, a lack of confidence or ambition – and a fast track to mediocrity.

It happens like this, new service developments, shops & services start with hygiene factors. The team worry about doing the basics well and spend most of the budget doing these. Invariably things don’t go to plan and the pot for all the innovative extras gets smaller and smaller. The site or service launches, and it immediately fails to get traction, the audience figures grow much slower than expected, feedback isn’t a positive as expected which further pressures their development budget. This leads to a review of the project, a postponement of phase 2 – and a belief the service idea doesn’t work or the core idea was failed.

The next time your team think about delaying an exciting and innovative idea to phase 2 – ask yourself this – which of our supposed must-have features can we delay instead?

Delivering on your ambition

If your ambition is to build a better X – and let’s face it just about every project starts that way – don’t start by copying the competition and talking about doing the hygiene first. If you’re not innovating or doing something noticeable, why should people change their existing behaviour. Playing catch up with your competition is hard. Start from a positive position and force them to try and catch you. And remember if hygiene is easy it will be easy to add later.

If you take a look back over the myriad of web 2.0-like developments we’ve seen over the last few years. The ones that succeed are the ones that get their new ideas out there quickly, claiming their space with a bright new idea and then adding new features as their audience grows and helps them understand what makes sense.

So be brave, implement the things that differentiate first, then add the basics over time. If you talk about doing a phase 2 – make sure you’re audience is so excited they want a phase 2 and you then deliver on it.

Tags: ambition, entrepreneurial, iPhone, web 2.0

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O2 cheating the promise

Posted by Simon Gill July 5th, 2009

So my slightly battered iPhone 3G can now be a tethered modem for my laptop. That’s something I actually find quite appealing for the occasions I’m out and about with no wireless access. What I don’t find appealing is the price of £15 per month. That’s an amount I’d rather not spend – especially given the few times I’d need it. ¹

There’s no doubt the iPhone has been a success for O2 – it’s the phone of choice amongst my peer group – a quite astonishing fact. With so many things I love about my iPhone I’m already lusting after a new 3GS for the better camera, faster processor and video capability. Having it supply on-the-go access for my laptop would be brilliant.

Looking at O2’s decision it seems weird that they would charge a customer the same as a mobile broadband user – especially when you already have the hardware. Moreover isn’t the iPhone supposed to come with unlimited data traffic? ²

So doesn’t this decision mean O2 are effectively charging users that tether for something they already own are entitled for? I can’t see how this thinking is living up to ‘We’re better, connected‘.

You’re back to the old tricks of charging me twice, how is this better?

Ok, so there are several arguments for charging (see footnote), but using this heavy handed monthly contract is going to drive users to crack their phones and use them anyway. For those wanting to crack it – a simple search on Google will tell you the details.

Come on O2 don’t be stupid. Let iPhone customers get a comparable access when they need it – how about you text when you need to activate for a day – then pay £1 for that day’s usage. This is capped to match the the monthly mobile broadband rate.

Fair and easy. And better, connected.

1. Using a tethered laptop would push up data use. Although 3G web speeds are a bit lame on the phone, research shows this perceived browsing speed is actually a function of the browser render speed and less about connection speed. Previous tethering speed tests show decent browsing speeds when using the phone.
2. Although the iPhone has unlimited data on it’s handset – this was a climbdown from the first releases. Originally marketed as unlimited the small print said provided a fairly measly data cap made it far from unlimited. Public pressure brought a clarification where unlimited started to mean unlimited. Any unlimited tariff is of course subject to a fair use policy. With it’s wi-fi support it’s easy to see how the iPhone actually uses less 3G than you might expect. Many of us have wi-fi at home, work, on the train and in urban areas, reducing the demand on O2’s 3G data network. Having a tethered phone changes our usage model and thus is likely to push up data usage.

Tags: iPhone, o2

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