alexmanchester.com

Media release: Mobile intranets deliver huge benefits

Mobile devices become ubiquitous in the consumer space, with “there’s an app for that” reshaping how people get access to information on the move. Up to now, however, the situation within organisations has lagged far behind. In many cases, staff can’t even access corporate information from home, let alone on mobile devices.

Thankfully this is now changing, and innovative organizations are now mobilising their intranets and corporate systems. This has a real impact for staff on the go, transforming intranets into essential tools which makes their working day easier. Two very different organizations show the way. In the UK Parliament, MPs are hardly ever at their desks.

Now they can receive essential real-time updates of what’s happening in the chambers and committees directly to their phone, all wrapped up in a beautifully designed interface perfect for the mobile environment.

At Queensland University of Technology (QUT), staff and students are provided with a mobile interface (pictured right) to access key information, wherever they are on the campus. This includes exam results, photocopy credits, campus bus times, and breaking news.

This is one of the key themes to emerge from the 2011 intranet Innovations Award, the annual global competition run by Step Two Designs. Now into its fifth year, the awards attracted over 50 entries showcasing some of most innovative intranets from all over the world.

James Robertson, managing director and founder of Step Two Designs, said “Three of our winners this year were superbly executed mobile intranet projects. By absolutely focusing on the user and cherry picking only the applications and content that are essential when out and about, the intranet teams have delivered huge benefits with relatively little cost.”

Robertson continued “I expect there will be more mobile entries in next year’s awards. With widely available connectivity and increasingly sophisticated devices, it is possible that mobile intranets will start to have more impact than their traditional desktop counterparts, particularly where the user population is out in the field or in the frontline.”

Beyond mobile access, innovative intranets do much more.

The overall Platinum award winner for 2011 is Framestore, a UK-based animation studio who produce visual effects for movies, television and commercials. Previously a Gold award winner in 2010, their ingenious project management application helps their artists access task information relating to visual effects produced for movies such as the Harry Potter series. The continuing efforts of the intranet team to gradually integrate key applications one by one into the intranet, has resulted in time saved, reduced licensing costs and a great user experience for staff.

Award winners in 2011Step Two Designs congratulates all this year’s winning organisations:

• Framestore (UK)
• QUT (Australia)
• UK Parliament (UK)
• CRS Australia (Australia)
• Lundbeck (Denmark)
• Malmö Stad (Sweden)
• Alcatel-Lucent (France)
• Arup (UK)
• ScottsMiracle-Gro (USA)
• Lafarge (France)

Further commended entries include:

• RPC (UK)
• RSPCA Victoria (Australia)
• CSIRO (Australia)
• Vancity (Canada)

Fourteen full case studies, offering detailed insights, lessons learned and nearly 200 intranet screen shots, are included in the Intranet Innovations 2011 report, available from Step Two Designs: www.steptwo.com.au/products/iia2011

About the Intranet Innovation Awards

The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets. The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community.

Uniquely, these awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole. Gold Awards are given in four different categories, each focusing on a specific aspect of intranets. A platinum award winner is then chosen to recognise the most extraordinary entry for the year.

These awards are about improving all intranets, by increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the intranet community.

About Step Two Designs

The Intranet Innovation Awards are run by Step Two Designs, a recognised global thought-leader in intranet strategy and design. The awards are judged by an international panel of intranet experts, from Australia, Denmark, France and the UK. For further information, contact: Alex Manchester - (alex@steptwo.com.au)

The iPhone '5' will launch in...

It will soon be over. The nightmare, the horror, the frustration, the overall EPIC FAIL that is the Vodafone Australia network (#Vodafail) will soon be banished from my life.

Banished, that is, just as soon as Apple can be bothered to launch the next iPhone. As soon as they do, I will be signing up for a fresh new handset – on Telstra. Ahhhh, my word, it will be a relief to have a phone that actually works. Maybe I'll even be able to use 10% of my call and data cap? Wonders...

But, just when will that iPhone launch be? The usual June/July launch window has wizzed past, and all we got was a gimmick-laden, half-baked new OS with faux leather inserts. August is half-gone, and still no official iPhone launch date. Sad face.

And, what will this new fandangled iPhone be called? The iPhone 4S? The iPhone '5'?

These are tough, life-critical questions.

Last week, rumours emerged of an 'Apple Media Event' on September 7th. These rumours were quickly dismissed. 

Now there's other rumours of O2 in the UK, prepping its stores for new iPhone collateral for a mid-September timeframe. 

And, just this past Monday, I was chatting to a telco rep who suggested 'the phone will be in our inventory system in... October'. Hmmmmm.

But, perhaps the biggest potential giveaway of all comes from Apple's CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, on Apple's recent quarterly results conference call. These results were for the third quarter, ending June 25th 2011. Oppenheimer's reason for an unusually low revenue forecast for the next 'September quarter' (July, August, September), was as follows: 

Question: Katy Huberty - Morgan Stanley

The 12% revenue downtick, Peter, in September is much more conservative than your typical September guidance and what you end up reporting in September, which is usually a 20% plus increase for the last 4 years. Can you help us understand why you expect this next quarter to trend softer than seasonal and maybe how you handicap the impact from some of the new software services and products that you expect to launch in the quarter?

Answer: Peter Oppenheimer

Sure. Let me start with the units and I'll give you some thoughts on revenue. For the education-buying season, September has historically been more weighted to higher education and we would expect this to be the same this year. We have the best line-up of Macs ever and we'd expect to see a year-over-year increase in sales. We also expect a year-over-year increase in iPhone sales. And for iPad, we're continuing to expand our quarterly production capacity and point of sale and we'd expect a significant year-over-year increase in sales. For iPod, we would expect to see a sequential year-over-year decline. As we announced at WWDC, we have a lot going on in the fall with the introduction of iOS 5 and iCloud. We also have a future product transition that we're not going to talk about today and these things will impact our September quarter. We remain very confident in our business, our new product pipeline and our momentum.

It's an obvious conclusion to draw, but this seems to me to be an announcement hiding in plain sight. Apple will announce the new iPhone in September. The have indeed had a media event EVERY Septmber for the last few six years (2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005...). OK, it might not be on September 7th...

This September announcement will have an immediate impact on iPhone 4 sales. Every newspaper in the world, pretty much, will report this unveiling. That's the 'transition' responsible for Apple's low guidance for September. And it's noted as 'unusual' by the analyst because the iPhone has traditionally been launched in June/July, making the September quarter typically rather large. This year that won't happen, but Apple's unbelievable sales progress will still mean an epic year-on-year unit sales rise. The iPhone 4 is still selling well, don't forget.

During this coming September, Apple and its suppliers will not be selling the new model iPhone like normal, but instead be working hard to get the inventory into stores across the world, while DESPERATE, TRAUMATISED, would-be customers on Vodafone, like me, will be queuing up to put our names down on lists so we can queue up again at a later date to get our new iJesus-Phone. Glorious.

The new phone will then go on sale in October. Worldwide. Boom. 

Who wants to bet me a beer on this? I've been terrible before at predicting the success of certain products, but pretty confident about the launch timeframes. As also said before, there's a definite pattern to the Apple launch stars aligning, and this seems to fit the pattern. 

I'd also bet on invitiations going out within the next fortnight, but that is less certain.

C'mon. Beer?

[iPhone 5 mockup credit: MacRumors]

 

 

Dear mobile competitors, Apple is laughing at you

While some competitors trump daily activations and execs at another, formerly market-leading Finnish firm compare their competitors' strategies to tactical incontinence, Apple's executive team are probably looking down at them from a great height, laughing, and laughing hard.

Because sure, while Android is 'gaining marketshare' and Nokia 'sells the most phones out of anyone', Apple, coming from 0 percent three years ago, now enjoys 39 percent of the profit in the mobile phone industry. 39 percent.

You can sell all the phones you want, and be as complacent as you like, but the fact of that matter is, it all comes down to dollars you're putting in the bank. 

Via MacRumors:

Fortune reports on a new research note from Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley which compares Apple's performance in the mobile phone industry to that of some of the other major players for the first half of 2010.

According to the report, Apple sold 17 million iPhones during the first half of the year, a minuscule fraction of the 400 million handsets sold by top manufacturers Nokia, Samsung, and LG combined. But when looking at industry profits, Apple snagged 39% of the pie while the other three companies combined to take only 32%.

To reiterate, with less than 3 percent of annual sales, Apple takes more profit than its key competitors combined. That's before you add in associated revenue from the iTunes store, including movies, TV, music and more than a few app sales that competitors aren't even on the page with. Then you can throw in accessory sales too. What do you think the margins are like on a $50 plastic hard case for an iPhone?

The big winner out of the Android scenario is Google, who have a platform for drawing all the combined handset users towards their OS - and their advertising - while turning the handset makers into pawns, which makes Nokia's criticism warranted (even if it was rather crass).

But Android itself has increasing problems. It's fragmenting worse than a cheap pair of wellies at Glastonbury, the Android Market Place is getting a bad rep, and carrier partners like Verizon are doing their best to claw back their advantage over Android handset makers by releasing their own app stores, further screwing up the Android concept in the process.

Brilliant.

You have to hand it to Apple, they now pretty much dominate the phone business in the only metric that matters. Money made. 

--------------------------

Sources

MacRumors: Apple's share of mobile phone industry reportedly rises to 39%

ZDNet: Nokia: Using Android like 'peeing in your pants for warmth in winter'

Techcrunch: Verizon: Our Apps Aren’t About Taking Over The Phone — It’s About “Choice”. Puke.

State of the art user interfaces are now front page news. Be thrilled. And worried. [interfaces]

It says a lot about the increasing awareness of interface design when the headline of a major news site says 'NUI Technology' (NUI = natural user interfaces).

That was the leading story earlier today on smh.com.au (pictured), which links to a feature article on Microsoft innovation (and, incidentally, how it's not dead).

Further down the homepage are stories relating to augmented reality (AR), Microsoft Surface and Playstation Move. All technologies noted not for their computing technology as such, but for the user interfaces that drive that technology.

User interfaces are now mainstream news. OK, so is the story of a pro athlete and his fiancee splitting up, but let's not worry too much about that. The point here is that cutting edge user interfaces are of so much interest they're garnering top-level publicity. In turn, this means usage, awareness, and expectations of and for such interfaces is soaring. For anyone involved in intranet/applicationand broader web design, this may be thrilling and terrifying in equal measures.

With all of us now using such sophisticated interfaces day in, day out - from iPhones to Windows 7 benchtop touch screen PCs, to the Nintendo Wii (I recently became addicted to Wii Tennis and am pretty excited about Microsoft's Project Natal) and at a push even the iMeh - the light it shines on business software and system interface design - from CRM to intranet - will increasingly show them to be what they almost universally are: awful. And I do mean AWFUL.

This isn't to to say businesses across the world immediately need to redesign their intranet to suit a four-foot touch-screen table (although that would be very cool, admittedly), but I've seen too many sites of late where one has to consider how far behind they are from simply being 'average', let alone 'great'. 'State of the art' doesn't come into it enough, and with the broader pace of development being what it is, this is becoming more than just a point of consideration, the lack of quality in business system design is going to cause increasingly serious problems.

We deserve the iPad disappointment

It's true, there's no way it could have lived up to the hype, but yesterday when Steve Jobs and his crew finished demoing the new Apple iPad, I was left seriously disappointed. Not mad like this guy, but just seriously, seriously disappointed.

For all the reasons the world and his dog have posted, the iPad misses the mark. Just quickly, they are:

• The name: Awful.

• No multitasking: What? On a device with a near 10-inch screen I have to go 'home' and close apps all the time? I can't use streaming apps, or have Twitter pop up when I'm surfing the net. On a 10-inch screen. Really? Wow.

• The big, wide, clumsy black bezel round the edge that screams 'cheap digital photo frame' or, worse, 'Fisher Price Toy' almost as badly as the one on the white polycarbonate MacBook does. Those iSlate concepts were so much sleeker. In the same way the 2G iPhone is far, far sleeker than the 3G/S, it seems to show Apple's once sleek design for such products is going backwards, big time.

• The fact that, really, it doesn't do anything we haven't seen before. Except... OK I'll give Phil Schiller this one, 'a really fun new way to play with a spreadsheet'. Whoop whoop.

• And viewing that last point from a slightly different direction, the fact that it's missing something really innovative. It is. There's just nothing genuinely innovative here.

• Too much 'i': iPad, iBooks. Really? Why not just 'the BookStore on iTunes' (just like 'the App Store' - on iTunes).They even ripped off the iBooks app design from an Apple Award winning developer - after they'd poached all his staff. Real classy.

• The rhetoric and acommpanying cheezy video: 'It's revolutionary'. 'It's magical'. No. No it's damn well not. It's a giant iPod Touch. Literally. It's a bigger screened version of a product you already sell. That's not revolutionary and I don't appreciate you trying to ram such rubbish into my ears. I won't agree with you, no matter how much you say it.

• 'It's so amazing - it's the internet in the palm of your hand!' Yep, we've heard that before, it's exactly what they said about the iPhone. 

• It's disappointing compared to things we've already seen from… Microsoft, believe it or not: Look at this Surface app from Shane Morris. That makes you go 'wow'. it makes anyone you show it to go 'wow' as well. What about Microsoft's Courier concept, leaked (previewed?) by someone late last year. Far more intriguing and seemingly innovative than the iPad.

• The iPad also looks just like HP's slate device (pictured right) that Steve Ballmer showed for a few seconds at CES in early January. Big bezel, eBook capabilities and all. Thankfully the iPad didn't have the damn cover of 'Twilight' on it, but I digress.

Again, while it couldn't possibly live up to the hype, I was hoping, really hoping, for something that lived up to some of the potential that's out there for these tablet things. Something that did something special (just like they're trying to tell us it does), just like the iPhone really did when it was launched. Like the tablet and touch interfaces on this video, perhaps (the first video, not the parody).

But the iPhone launch was three years ago and I think Apple is a different company now. In hindsight, there was no way, no way in the world, that that 'wow' product was going to happen yesterday.

In fact, I'm beginning to think all of the endless Apple hype (that I myself have contributed to - and I do still think their other products are better than most), and the billions of dollars they're making, has told them one thing: They can now, more than ever, cripple their products, hold back on features that are common and relatively simple (yes, multitasking), lock down access to an unheard of degree, claim they're 'magical and revolutionary' when they're not, not even give us decent aesthetics, and still charge a fortune for them. And we'll buy them, in the millions.

The iPad is the result of us accepting what we should not have accepted, and the mountains of hype heaped on Apple. We deserve it. We've thrown so much money and praise at them it's gone to their collective, heads, and they're getting giddy with the idea of creaming more money from the likes of a million plus iPads and several million iBooks.

Truth be told I don't need an iPad (who does?), but sadly I don't actually want one, either. As first-gen products go I think they may have really jumped the shark with this one. There's nothing it can do that the phone I'm already paying $80 a month for cannot. A phone that is, by the way, really pretty amazing, although it's not as pretty as the one before it, still can't multitask properly, the 'Bluetooth A2DP' doesn't actually work with the majority of headphones that are bluetooth A2DP, that I charge pretty much consistently when I'm at a desk, that scratches unless it's sealed front and back in a nice protective blanket… You get the idea.

Conceivably, if the overall 'underwhelmed' sentiment on the web is anything to go by, Apple will not sell as many of these as it hopes and, hopefully, we'll see a much better second-gen product. But the first impression is gone and I bet the ugly betty bezel will stay for a while to remind us of that fact.

Let's not forget though, that the iPad will be put to innovative use by the army of third party developers who have already done some great work with the iPhone/iPod touch, despite the straightjacket constraints of the iPhone SDK.

iPad is not a bad product, it's just not great product. Not yet. Not even close. For me, and after weeks, months, years of anticipation around an Apple tablet (an Apple TABLET!), it needed to be seriously great. It needed to make me go 'wow', big time, but the best we got is an unconvincing 'bless my whiskers'.

Damn it.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2010

Happy new year to all readers of this blog and beyond, I hope you had a chance for some fun, rest and relaxation over the Christmas/holiday period and New year too. I spent a fantastic couple of weeks in Queensland, the bulk of which was up at the idyllic beach resort of Noosa, where the weather was stunning for much of the time. The two weeks off gave me a lot of time to rest, recuperate, reflect on the highs and lows of the year that was (I think I came out just about even), and think about the year ahead and its first few months.

In terms of work:

Step Two: I'm aiming to putting my foot on the accelerator with my work. 2009, was a huge year for me in terms of intranet projects, the 2009 intranet innovation awards and a whole lot more. I worked with and spoke to a lot of great people, learnt a huge amount, and was constantly reminded that there's infinitely more to learn. As a consultancy, we're looking forward to many projects and products in the pipeline, one of which I'll talk about later today, and further developments in the field of...

Intranets: In various posts, my Step Two colleagues and I capped off 2009 with some tentative eyes looking forward. Where are intranets heading? Will they still be called intranets? What will future intranets do? I'm looking forward to lots more discussion and further development on these questions and more, with anyone who's interested. Drop me a line on email (contacts), Skype or Twitter or any other of the links on the first-right column.

There's also set to be a continuation and growth of the intranet strategy, redesign and CMS work we focus on, with several very interesting projects lined up for the start of the year and one client's brand new intranet launch that I'm really looking forward to seeing go live this March.

In terms of other things:

Goodbye 'news': as much as I love being 'topical' (as one of the things my friends call me), I've decided to trial the quitting all 'news' aside from work-related fields, tech journals/blogs, premiership soccer, basketball and a few other interests.

Why? Well, it depresses me, to be 100% honest - both in terms of content and quality, and I don't feel like I'm any better off for reading all the trash that comes out of the majority of mainstream media. Time may prove different and, of course, I'm sure I'll still read links and research that come my way, that come through via channels such as Twitter, and will no doubt pick up on any crisis that occurs. But, as of today, BBC news, the Financial Times, Sydney Morning Herald etc. have been stripped from my RSS reader and browser bookmarks. They're miserable, distracting, often full of second-hand information, and really not worth the effort or time any more, and it's pretty nice to say 'adios'.

Anticipating the Apple Tablet: The evidence is overwhelming, in late January we will see a new, big, tablet-style device from Apple and it might well be called iSlate (although iHope not – it's about as awkward as 'MacBook' was upon launch).

Will it be as big a hit as their little tablet they released in 2007? I hope so, and by that I mean I hope it's as wonderful and beautiful to use as the iPhone is. I still remember when I got my unlocked, 2G iPhone delivered from America at vast expense. Taking the lid off the box and seeing this super-sleek, black and silver device was just the beginning of a relationship that now means any other phone really struggles to even get consideration, let alone become a viable purchase.

More on interfaces: With the iSlate and what could potentially smash the bar for more computer-oriented, touch-based user-interfaces, I'm going to continue learning as much as I can about user interface and experience design. As written last year (see lower half of this post), and put nicely in a further Shane Morris presentation in late December '09, this is 'the age of user experience'. It's growing into the most exciting area of technology development and something that's of real interest and relevance to me both in terms of work and play.

So, that's enough just to kick off 2010, but undoubtedly there's plenty more to come. I'm hoping it will be a great year. How about you?

iPhone suitable for legal folks who need document management access

Apple has posted a case study today of DLA Philips Fox, a large Australian law firm that's using iPhones right across the business. Not only is it used for email, calendar and mobile web (and as a phone, of course), it's also being used for document management, with a custom-designed application.

The other interesting aspect gleaned from the video - 'after the 5 minute training session with a new employee, off they go and you never hear them again.' So very little training is needed.

Intranets and internal systems on mobile devices is something of a special interest for me, but aside from the odd example, there's really very little progress with it in the grand scheme. While this example is clearly very favourable to Apple (being a case study published by them), it's good to see custom business apps like this being designed.

The iJoypad - the iPhone peripheral that needs to happen [interfaces]

Games are one area of the iPhone App store that surprises me, even though they're actually the biggest category of apps available.

They're a surprise because I think the phone's touch screen is simply rubbish for playing all but the most simply controlled of games - iShoot, iDig It, Noughts and Crosses, Flight Control, Harbour Master etc. In contrast, I've bought and played a couple of racing games, flying games, Wolfenstein Classic... even the Terminator Salvation platform game, and have felt that those games have really suffered from the poor options available with the iPhone's on-screen displays.

Modern consoles - from PSP to XBOX 360, have a d-pad, an analogue d-pad (or two), shoulder buttons, double shoulder buttons, and four further action buttons. At least. The iPhone struggles with even a quarter of that, yet sophisticated (in the complex sense) games need sophisticated controls, and the iPhone can't deliver.

This is why something like the iJoypad needs to happen. Check the video below for the pad in use with the Sony PSX/PS1 emulator and Wipeout XL. Awesome. But at the moment that game on an iPhone would require all sorts of terrible controls and tilting or shaking that don't work.

A snap-on peripheral would open the floodgates for gaming on the iPhone, and would simultaneously destroy, or rather completely and utterly decimate, the Sony PSP. (The iPhone's processing power already completely trashes the PSP, it just needs a decent graphics chip, which is highly probable in a future version.)

If Apple is serious about gaming on the iPhone, then please, please, please design and release something like this.

[engadget]

Perhaps the iPhone Security and Password lock isn't worth it, but then again...

A while back I wrote about iPhone security, and why you should always passcode lock your iPhone. I still do it, even if it's a bit of a pain sometimes.

But this latest report about the iPhone's security is pretty worrying. Free software and even a YouTube video explaining how to bypass all of the iPhone's security, including its much lauded data encryption (a new feature which you have to enable in iTunes). It's on the front page of lots of news sites, including SMH. From "iPhone encryption proven to be useless":

‘‘I don’t think any of us [developers] have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before, which is why it’s hard to describe why it’s such a big threat to security,’’ said Zdziarski, an iPhone app developer, who also specialises in iPhone forensics.

Not good. Hopefully Apple will address this problem soon. The iPhone's push into the enterprise will take a hammering if there's a significant data theft somewhere because of slack enrcyption systems.

Despite the problems, I'm hoping, optimistically perhaps, that this guy is right (also fro SMH):

Alan Hashem, director of Sydney-based IT consultancy Insight IT, has provided iPhones to about 12 of the company’s 15 staff, four of whom have the new iPhone 3G S model. They use the devices to access clients’ computers remotely and fix technical support issues.

Hashem said he was concerned about the iPhone’s security vulnerabilities but did not think there was a high chance that someone with the skills to perform Zdziarski’s hack would steal his employees' iPhones.

He said the handset’s features and third-party applications made it worth the risk.

‘‘We’re at a lot more risk with computers and desktops,’’ he said.

It's a shame we have to weigh up the risks. Nothing is 100% secure, sure, and most will not have the skills to hack the device, so I'll still keep the password on. But I wish we could feel a bit more confident in it.

How a UI can make or break a new service or product [Interfaces]

One of the inspirations for me reading and writing a lot more about user interfaces (UI) was the increasing appreciation of how far intranet design has come.

As we spend hours upon hours looking at computer screens at work, we're sub-consciously weaving in and out of an interface that overlays complex system architectures, working from point to point as we complete tasks. Although actual Web sites and services are driving innovation in this field, the sophistication of intranet sites has also come on leaps and bounds.

When you look at other modern UIs, be it your computer's main operating system, your phone, even my TV has a Playstation 3 style "Home" interface with hundreds of options, we're navigating complex systems that have been designed so well that we can actually use them.

In many devices the UI is so advanced that it allows us to navigate and interact easily, either by buttons, touch, gesture, movement, voice - even brain pulses at the very far end of the spectrum.

As Alexander van Elsas writes in a great post, the UI on a product or service often means make or break for it. Van Elsas talks about another interface inspiration of mine - the iPhone.

The iPhone operating system was written from the ground up to be a touch operated interface. There is no keyboard, there's only three actual buttons (home, power, volume). It has to work, and it does. Very well, with an exeption. Van Elsas nicely describes its pros and cons:

The iPhone UI is definitely revolutionary. It is one of the best UI’s I have seen in any handheld computer. The touch screen and the simplicity and consistency of the design are incredible. But to give you an idea how incredibly complex UI design really is, I believe the UI of the iPhone also makes it one of the worst mobile phones I have ever used. Actually, I should have probably said MOBILE device.

The reason for my bold statement is that that very same interface everyone loves doesn’t function well when you are mobile!

Try making a phone call while you are walking around, literally. The touch screen provides no tactile feedback, the buttons displayed are way too small for selecting contacts, letters or numbers, and the amount of actions needed to select a contact and actually make the call are too much.

In my opinion,  the design is optimized for an immobile user (meaning standing still). The touch screen forces the user to use his eyes as the main sense.

The UI sucks you and your attention into the device, and shuts off a number of other senses. All that is left is a tunnel vision. Try it, you’ll know what I mean. Walk, start trying to type an SMS, listen to your surrounding, try not to hit anything etc. It’s Impossible.

I have to agree here, to a point anyway. Discounting the iPhone 3GS's wonky voice control system (very hit and miss whenever I've tried it), it's impossible to operate the iPhone without looking at it. (As an aside, what's alarming is that being able to text while driving increasingly seems to be some sort of acid test for mobile device reviewers. Really, its not a good idea with any phone!)

I have managed to master two thumb texting on the iPhone (while looking at it), and can do it while walking around without bumping into too many people. Great. It is a minor thing in comparison to the overall leap that Apple made with the iPhone UI. Small annoyances that sit atop a mostly magnificent piece of software and UI design. It's a leap that many manufacturers are trying to copy, with limited success.

But aside from the lack of a physcial keyboard, Van Elsas does highlight another reason why the iPhone is not great for wandering around and using; the fact that it's a "handheld computer".

I don't know too many computers that you can operate without looking at them somehow. It's true, the iPhone is great, but flawed in that respect. Still, it's a flaw I can happily live with for the moment.

What's a bad example, where the interface really does ruin a device? Well there's one competitor that springs to mind immediately - the Nokia N97. While there's a host of flaws that reviewers haven't liked, the Symbian OS and interface, shoe-horned into the N97 and patched up to work with a touch-based interface, is probably the most common 'dislike' that's coming under fire.