One of my personal biggest inspirations, Edward Tufte, the king of information design and one of those old farts who apparently just can't grasp why they'd want to use RSS, has a review up on his website about the iPhone's interface. He also references some of his earlier work that reinforces his opinions.

The verdict is, he mostly likes it a lot, although he criticizes the weather and stock apps for mis-utilizing the high-res screen by showing too little information. I can dig it.

The main points seems to be:

1. eliminating "computer admin debris" from the interface, letting users directly manipulate the content, has allowed the tiny screen to contain the maximum amount of data possible.
   
2. Changing the paradigm from "temporal stacking," which becomes instantly tough to manage and navigate on a small screen (enter Exhibit A, Windows Mobile) to a sideways navigation on the same "surface" helps users keep track of "where they are."
   

My favorite takeaway, though, is something that is central to much of Tufte's work.

"Clutter and overload are not attributes of information; they are failures of design."

I love that quote. It's a principle Apple occasionally struggles with: they'll rip out functionality you might wish you had, in the name of simplicity. That being said, though, they do get it right much of the time, and the iPhone proves that.

MacWorld is usually a pretty fun and exciting time, when swanky new products are announced that I'll never buy. Usually it's two stupid announcements paired off with one really cool one, and then an iPod update.

But this MacWorld gave us a lot of fun stuff. At least one of those things, the overdue Google Map locator for iPhone, was free (unless you're an iPod touch user, in which case they'll extort you for $20) so I already got it. It's lovely. Now Google not only knows what I'm doing, they know where I'm doing it! Exciting.

The Time Capsule is cool, but the MacBook Air is of course the flagship announcement. Alex likens the mixed response to the release of the iPod, or at least to the original floppy-free iMac. But the floppy drive was way dead when I got my first bondi iMac. I very much doubt that real life will happen for a lot of people without an optical drive; Apple is taking a very Microsoft approach in which convergence happens fantastically and your life is totally easy as long as you drink ALL the Kool-Aid instead of picking and choosing the parts of the Apple Experience you want. I mean, why insert a CD/DVD when you can buy the album/movie on iTunes, right?

I'm sure there's plenty of speculation (there definitely is in my mind) that the recently-surfaced patent application for an iMac-like docking station that a thin laptop slides into has something to do with this. That would, of course, make things even more absolutely perfect. In fact, I could probably get behind that if the total package wasn't going to run somewhere in the neighborhood of eight zillion dollars.

And to wrap it all up, here's a video my friend sent me yesterday of David Lynch expounding on his iPhone opinions. I suppose I see his point, but here's a man who makes Movies with a capital M, whose films don't even belong on the television. I don't even like it when people are eating popcorn when I go see a Lynch movie. But the sad truth is, part of what makes David Lynch great is that he still carries around a lot of romantic notions about movies - and Stomp The Yard is not Blue Velvet. It's real sweet that the idea of someone watching a movie on a small-ass screen makes him sad, but the idea of someone watching the latest Uwe Boll movie at all kind of makes me sad, so to each his own.

Maybe not quite so obligatory: in fact, I haven't seen that many reviews of the "game changing" "killer app of phones" since it came out, when everyone was so hot to trot to get their 2 cents in. Having moved from almost 2 years of Windows Mobile (which can seem like an eternity), it sure was a "game changer" for me.



The Good:

The responsiveness of Windows Mobile is that of a stoned sloth; even the more high-powered PDAs have a goofy response time but "Smart" phones like the HTC I had are rarely fast enough to even do what you expect. According to Nielsen-Norman, a delay of more than 1/10th of a second causes the user to "lose the feeling of operating directly on the data." Of course, if you've even played with the iPhone at all, you know the feeling of "direct operation." Being that there are no hardware buttons except the home one, it has to be that way. Visual feedback is simple but more than adequate. This is very possibly the biggest selling point for me–as small as it seems, that type of experience adds up little by little.

Aside from response time, performance in general is just a lot better. I used to spend my time really afraid I'd need to dial 911 or some similarly important number only to have my HTC crap itself and crash, then have to wait for the long reboot process. Safari crashes on the iPhone occasionally, but other than that I've seen few problems with lag or lockup.

As for apps:

• Contact and Calendar Syncing is infinitely better than with the WinMo and Missing Sync (good product though, still recommend it), but the iCal for iPhone needs more than one calendar. I understand simplicity, but every once in a while Apple takes that principle too far. Dual reminders for events? Great. Lack of a to-do list? Kind of sucks.
• Google Maps is not a whole lot better than the WinMo version, but it's just about the most useful Windows Mobile app in existence. So it's great.
  
• Notes are ok, not beyond ok though. WinMo has a great Word editor that is far more useful.
  
• YouTube is fun, and if you have just a tiny amount of patience you can even use it on EDGE.
• Visual Voicemail. Nuff said.
  
• iPod. I've never had one before, I always said I'd never get one because they're ridiculously overpriced (and don't sound nearly as good as Creative's players). But the interface for this one is great, and the video is just stunning. I converted all my vids to 15fps and crap compression for WinMo and obviously that isn't so pretty.

The Not So Good:

We've all heard it, but the lack of third-party apps is a stinker. It's also the killer feature that's keeping a lot of people from buying one. Then again, maybe the locked nature is the killer feature that's got the rest of the people buying them (it's stupid easy to use, which if I'm not mistaken is the point).

I really enjoy installing applications on my "smart" phones. Even the Sidekick allowed for applications through a store interface (most sold for $5) and I have near-zero percent doubt in my mind that the iTunes store will eventually sell Apple-made / Apple-approved applications. One of them will be Tetris, if there's any justice. Hopefully some of what is showing up in the AppTap repositories (Navizon? wow.) will make its way to that future store.

I don't buy a lot of music from the iTunes store (and probably will buy less now that Amazon is rocking DRM-less mp3s), so the Wi-Fi store appeals less to me than my SummerBoard customizations and the Pushr Flickr uploader. Thus... no 1.1.1 for me yet. It all makes me feel less on the cutting edge rather than more, and that sucks.

The Debate:

I don't, however, agree with the nonsense about Apple hating their customers, etc. etc. I understood what I was doing, and that I may have to kill all my fun stuff before I can upgrade or Apple will kill it for me. Apple have always operated this way. Remember the generic Macs, and how long those lasted? They like to have control of the hardware and the software, and the result is the iPhone, so obviously that's not a bad plan. The provider, AT&T, is of course a part of it. I just about peed my pants the first time I used the visual voicemail. Their device has a synergy that Windows Mobile devices can't hope for because hardware manufacturers are working around a crappy OS, rather than with the designers of the OS.

I've always tried to buy the Apple "package" in full, because when you do you maximize your ability to enjoy and benefit from their products. Microsoft is the same way, but they're not a hardware manufacturer so you can never truly go all the way with them. Not that you'd want to "go all the way" with either of the Steves. At any rate, I think we overall benefit from Apple's controlling ways, and if you don't feel like you do, don't buy it. Or hack it and take the risks, which are the same as those risks entailed in hacking anything.