writer. singer/songwriter. techie geek. princess of random.

iphone 3gs from Flickr - ntr23

When Apple announced the iPhone 3GS earlier this month, along with the ooh’s and ahh’s were some hefty fees for AT&T’s bevy of current iPhone 3G users if they wanted to upgrade.  While LA Times Tech Blog recently reported that ‘AT&T Relents on iPhone 3GS upgrade pricing‘, the situation itself reveals that the iPhone has changed expectations and is waiting for things to catch up.

Trolling through some online articles, I caught many comments left by those who felt that the “irate” iPhone user was being grouchy over nothing.  Legitimately, the iPhone user signed a contract and AT&T was providing the circumstances to get out of that contract and into a new one, i.e. a costly fee.  While the above is true, it’s a perspective bounded by the understandings of a traditional cellular phone plan.  The problem fundamentally becomes that the iPhone isn’t a traditional cellular phone.  Ironically, the iPhone is only marginally seen as just a phone.

Don’t get me wrong, the phone aspect is definitely more useful than my Tap Tap Revenge 2 Application, but the reality is that the opportunity to have a decent phone and make phone calls isn’t why a customer purchases an iPhone in the first place.  It’s that desire to have a mobile online device at one’s fingertips.  With the recent roll-out of the iPhone 3.0 software, I’m reminded that no one talks excitedly about how many minutes are in their plan or how much their data component is a month.  We’re happy that we can copy-and-paste (while having better calendar synching, more applications, and landscape typing)!

In all honestly, I’m not riding from the wave of a desirous early adopter.  I have an original Edge-network phone and am swayed not to get a 3GS because of the additional monthly cost (not swayed for now anyway…).  As an electronics-minded consumer, I understand the extra cost is to change to a different internet network with better options.  In the case of 3G to 3GS, from the iPhone user’s general perspective, the desire to purchase a 3GS is simply a matter of getting a better device – like paying for a new computer.  No one demands that the person who buys a new computer has to upgrade their internet connection type too.

In a world of twitter and facebook, where people can geocode their location to upload photos on the go and in the moment, there’s still a technical divide – of old ways of thinking that don’t fall in line with changing/shifting expectations.  And there always will be this divide, but at Round 3 for the iPhone, it’s a little sad to see – even if they answered to the bedlam…eventually.

-cct

iTunes 8 (from the apple.com website)

This post is off of a twitter exchange I had with greenlagirl (who runs that awesome greenlagirl website).  While it’s inefficient (among other things) that iTunes currently doesn’t have streaming of its online content, a little research told me that it might not be this way for long.  Engadget.com, off a CNET posting, noted in February 2009 that this might be the wave of the iTunes future.   It makes sense after all that iTunes would adopt streaming (evenutally), what with netflix streaming and hulu.com‘s popularity.  My friend Julius remarked that he had recently caught up on his tv shows (while in a sick stupor) and it had almost made him think to cancel his cable (before remembering that it didn’t carry some cable shows).

The main point of my exchange with greenlagirl is, “who really wants to download those files when you can stream them?”  Currently iTunes has movie rentals that you can download for 3.99.  How about charging me a dollar (or nothing!) for me to see the content through streaming?  It might also be a great business venture with hulu if there’s overlap of content (which there probably will be) and competition if there’s content hulu (and others) might not have available. 

 iTunes 8 was released September 2008 and iTunes 7 was released September 2006.  But if you’ve followed the history if iTunes 7 and iTunes 8, it doesn’t really take a new “version number” to have a whopping lot of changes.  Much of the different changes in the last couple of years reflects the introduction and life of the iPhone. 

This then makes me think beyond just iTunes. YouTube streaming is a mainstay feature on the iPhone (mainstay ’cause it gets its own button when you buy it – at least my first generation iPhone did) and you can watch your YouTube content on your iPhone.  Maybe the next thing isn’t just streaming on iTunes, maybe it’s on the iPhone as well.  If they don’t do it, someone else has probably done it and if not, probably will.

Lately I’ve been bothered by inefficient user interfaces (perhaps it’s just a theme lately given my “dysfunction function” post previously).  My job is web-based and I understand – to a degree – that some things are hard to change and takes some time to program.  But format and text are perhaps some of the easiest things we can offer to the user.

My first example in this series of posts will be business e-letters.  Letters that have important information, but don’t easily convey to the user exactly what s/he wants to know are inefficient and confusing.  An electronic billing statement is a great example for variability in bad and good design.

Bad Example

A bad e-letter is like having a bad website.  You make an impression and people can automatically know why your letter is an important letter. People don’t want to open an email and be bogged down by text and have to sift through what it is you’re trying to tell them.  See example:

Bad E-Business Letter Example

A long letter that tells a user s/he has a bill due and doesn’t use stylized text or take advantage of breaking down information for easier digestion that must be on there (security text, standard e-enrollment information, etc.) does the user a disservice.

Better Example

Better practice?  How about giving the most important information upfront and basic styling techniques (bold, anyone?) to highlight within that text?

Good E-Business Letter Example

What’s also important to note is that people receive tons of email every day, and we’d like to believe that just because we’re a familiar name or business that people will pay attention.  But the truth is to be familiar is only half the battle.  The other half is to be important and recognizable when it’s most imperative to the person sending the email and the person receiving the email.

Up next? Failed print-to-web collateral.