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The iPhone User Experience: A First LookA collective gasp was heard around the world following the January, 2007, MacWorld Conference, when Steve Jobs pulled the wraps off the long-rumored iPhone. He proclaimed it a revolutionary product with a brand-new "multi-touch" interface as breakthrough and breathtaking as the mouse interface of the 1960s. Is iPhone as revolutionary as claimed? Is the multi-touch interface truly breakthrough as claimed? Yes and no. Let's take a look. Who's talking? Bruce Tognazzini was hired at Apple by Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin in 1978, where he remained for 14 years, founding the Apple Human Interface Group. He has been a harsh critic of many of Apple's later innovations, including the notorious round mouse ("farcical") and the Macintosh Dock (see: Top 10 Reasons the Apple Dock Sucks). He is almost as stingy with his compliments as his partner, Don Norman. That makes this particular column, largely positive, most unusual. A Brief History of Cell Phones The original cell phones made one single break with the interface of the wired phones that had come before: The user dialed, then pressed Send, instead of dialing "live" as had been done historically. That's it. Added later were such niceties as keyboards for message and email construction, borrowed whole, again, from the wired world. (Even the Send button was borrowed from earlier Radio-Telephone technology.) Occasionally, bits and pieces of interface innovation have found their way into subsequent cell phones, but no one has ever revisited Bell Lab's pushbutton phone design from the 1950s with its upside-down adding machine keyboard (with the exception of Smart Phones, based on the 1870s typewriter keyboard). iPhone is revolutionary, not a big surprise coming from Steve Jobs. He knows how to gather a tiny team of brilliant young minds and work them half to death until they innovate beyond any reasonable expectations. He has the common sense to know what will ultimately find favor. And he has the hardened-steel man parts to take a chance and roll with it. What's a pity is that so few others in this industry share those triple strengths. Multi-Touch Interface History While the iPhone as a whole may be revolutionary, the individual elements forming the interface are not so new. Bill Buxton was pushing multi-hand input back in the 1980s when the world was just waking up to the mouse, already 20 years old at the time. Several researchers were experimenting with gestural interfaces in 1990s, myself included. I was reminded of this only minutes after Steve's speech when my partner, Jakob Nielsen, called me to say, "Jobs just announced your pinch interface!" I hadn't thought about my particular use of the pinch gesture in years. It had been part of my Starfire Project at Sun Microsystems, a look at the future, but, when we turned the project into a film, the scene showing it was cut to keep the film within reasonable bounds. That kept it out of the 1993 film, but not out of my 1996 book, Tog on Software Design, where, on page 78, my two-fingered shrink-objects-via-pinching gesture, working exactly as Jobs described, indeed appears...(There was nothing magical about the "20 percent" in the above text. That was just how much, in this case, "Hiroshi" was going to need to shrink the object to get the effect he wanted. You could, of course, shrink and grow objects as much as you wanted, depending on how much you pinched or spread your fingers, just as with the iPhone.) I didn't try to patent the object-shrink-pinch process in 1992 when I hit upon it-Sun didn't get "patent madness" until more than a year after I had showed it around-so I can't claim that I was even the first to come up with it because we never researched prior art. Added Paragraph: Bill Buxton has assembled an excellent Multitouch Chronology. It reveals that Myron Krueger was using pinching as a gesture by 1982, although I haven't discovered what meaning he ascribed to it. (Myron Krueger is famous for coining the term, "artificial reality," back in 1973, a scant five years after Timothy Leary had popularized one means of achieving it.) Innovation of the Whole I could go down through the other "innovations" in iPhone and slowly knock them off. Yes, it's the first cell phone with a visual display of voicemail messages, so you can randomly move among voicemails, etc., etc. However, such lists have been displayed, in an identical fashion, on enterprise-level voicemail systems and, of course, such lists have been a standard feature in email for decades. The origins of these bits and pieces, however, is not what's important about the iPhone. What's important is that, for the first time, so many great ideas and processes have been assembled in one device, iterated until they squeak, and made accessible to normal human beings. That's the genius of Steve Jobs; that's the genius of Apple. It's also speaks to the limited vision of the cell phone industry. Exactly why have we never had random-access voicemail on cell phones? We're talking about hand-held devices with more computer power than the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon. We're talking about devices with screens of more than sufficient resolution. Could nobody think of displaying the messages? The Macintosh computer did not represent a technological breakthrough either. The mouse was already 20 years old. Pointing interfaces were 20 years old. The Mac was a direct, studied "rip-off" of Apple's expensive Lisa computer, developed concurrently, but shipped a little over a year earlier. That detracted nothing from the genius of the Mac, for what that team did was to take highly innovative technology and make it (relatively) inexpensive, attractive, and accessible. That's exactly what Apple has done again with iPhone. Multi-touch gestural interfaces have been hanging around in the laboratory, screaming for release, for as long as the mouse hung around. I've been pushing multi-touch gestural for over 20 years myself, beginning while I was still at Apple, incredulous that everyone has been ignoring it. Apple stopped ignoring it. Fulton didn't invent the steamboat. He just put in the hard work to make it practical. Apple didn't invent the concept of the multi-touch interface. They've just, by all evidence, built the first one that, like the Mac before it, is (relatively) inexpensive, attractive, and accessible. The iPhone User Experience At the time I first published this, I hadn't yet been able to get my hands on an iPhone-frustrating! (You can imagine Bill Gates's frustration. He probably had a cadre of engineers ready to take it apart, put it back together with a couple of screws missing, and paint it brown.) The following review was based on stuff on the web, including Apple's demo site, as well as testimonials from those who had actually touched the precious object. I got a chance to spend some time with the phone during the first 24 hours of its release. I found I had to change nothing about this review, although I did publish a follow-up with a few more suggestions for future improvement (The iPhone User Experience: A First Touch). What strikes me about the iPhone interface in general is that it gives ordinary people access to features that have been the private purview of the young and the geeky. For example, cell phones have long had contact lists, but they were typically difficult to build, maintain, and sync. My own Motorola phone on the Verizon network required a special cord that cost me an hour of research on the web to even discover, along with several software tricks to finally get it communicating with my Mac. I have never tried to load more than a tiny fraction of my contacts anyway, since scrolling is so laborious and resyncing is highly cumbersome. Young vs. OldThe best user interfaces are those that bring advanced features within the easy reach of inexperienced users. Such was the genius of the SRI-Xerox-Apple interface embodied in the Mac, and such is the genius of the iPhone interface. As with other smart phones, Apple starts with a full QWERTY key layout. (You may find it reasonable to spell my name, Tog, "86664," but old folks don't. They can't see the little letters beside the numbers to begin with, and they don't want to learn.) Then, Apple has made an effort to make normally abstract features, such as Call Waiting and Conferencing, not only attractive, but dead simple. I've read several reviews of the iPhone, primarily from England, talking about how the iPhone may be exciting to the young, but will fall on deaf older ears. They said the same thing about the Mac, yet one of the earliest, most rapidly-growing communities was people over 65. The same may well happen here because this is the most approachable full-featured phone I've ever seen. Apple will have to take some steps, however, to reduce the learning curve inherent in it's initial typing scheme to capture that market. (See the Touch Interface: Room for Improvement section of The iPhone User Experience: A First Touch.) The Hardware The industrial design is brilliant. Apple has created another piece of high-tech jewelry. Some fogies of advancing years have suggested the initial price point of $499 is too high. They fail to understand: The "cool" of owning this phone, particularly for the early adopters, is worth an easy $497, bringing the phone itself down to $2 even. For those who might doubt such a high value of cool, consider the self-winding Rolex, which sports 1/10th the accuracy of a Timex at 1000 times the price. With Rolex, the technology is grossly inferior, and still people will pay thousands to own it. With the iPhone, the technology is clearly superior. The form factor, at only a silly millimeter higher and wider than the Palm Treo, but half its thickness, is an excellent compromise of screen size and handset width. The glistening black color, surrounded by chrome, is pure sex. The screen itself is high-density, and the lack of a physical keyboard allowed the designers to make it bigger than other smart phone displays. The 320 x 480 size is equal to the practical limits of NTSC television. Yes, NTSC, not HDTV, but we're taking about a small, highly-portable device here and, unless you wore magnifying glasses and held it up three inches from your face, you would be hard-pressed to actually appreciate any additional resolution. Where does the hardware fall down? Its biggest drawback is its sealed-in battery. It can play video for six hours on a charge and, while that's sufficient for entertainment on domestic flights, it falls quite a bit short for international flights. "OK, so just change the battery!" Unfortunately, it requires a crowbar and a soldering iron to change the battery. That's a bad interface. Some folks, including Eugenia Loli-Queru, have taken me to task for the above, based on the probable availability of snap-on external batteries, airplane power cords, and the fact that most other devices are worse. These are all good points. Nonetheless, My favored video device, a PocketDish, is simplicity itself. When the first battery dies, I just slap in a spare battery pack, and I'm good to go. (Bonus: The same programs iTunes charge for are all free.) Still, for most people, most of the time, the iPhone's battery life is sufficient. o Talk time: Up to 8 hours o Standby time: Up to 250 hours o Internet use: Up to 6 hours o Video playback: Up to 7 hours o Audio playback: Up to 24 hoursApple, under Jobs, has a habit of putting out hot-looking, but fragile devices. He shipped a few million titanium PowerBook computers a few years back, forgetting to note that titanium has a rather ugly color, so they'd dipped it in some silver paint. After a matter of months, the paint "chipped, flaked, and bubbled" off people's machines. (In my case, it wore off selectively where my palms rested when using the keyboard.) The first iPod Nano required exquisite care to keep from scratching it. This knocked the user experience down several notches below ideal. The iPhone appears able to withstand everything up to a nuclear incident. PC World, no friend to Apple, carried out a torture test right after the iPhone's release, dropping it on concrete pavement and taking a car key and attempting to scratch the display by scraping it repeatedly across the surface. The iPhone took a licking and kept on ticking. Apple has learned from its mistakes. The Interface, Step-by-Step This discussion tracks the features as demo'd on Apple' site at http://www.apple.com/iphone/ I have taken them slightly out of order with Phone before iPod, then Internet-to make this discussion flow more smoothly. Besides, it's supposed to be a phone, so with Phone we shall begin. iPhone as a Phone This discussion tracks the features as demo'd on Apple' site at Calls iPhone is able to handle perhaps 10x the number of contacts of the average cell phone without undue burden on the user. The acceleration algorithm, coupled with the "friction" algorithm, appear to let the user "throw" the list with learned speed, then have it slow on its own as it nears the target, making it simple to hit the target on the first try. Very nice. Those of you young and technologically inclined may find this difficult to believe, but the average cell phone user cannot use many features you may find standard, such as call-waiting, call-forwarding, and conferencing. Apple has made these features completely accessible to all but those dangling their legs off the far end of the bell shaped curve. Voicemail Random-access voicemail I've already commented on. To reiterate my position: It's about time. iPhone SMSSMS is a wonderful feature if you're in Europe, where the cell phone companies don't gouge you for using it. Notwithstanding its financial handicapping in the US, Apple has made it clear and accessible, again vastly enlarging the number of people who would feel comfortable and confident using it. This impacts the young, too, since, for the first time, they will be able to text-message their parents, knowing they'll not only notice it, but be able to read it. The SMS interface should include an interpreter that can expand standard messaging abbreviations, converting terms such as GBTM into "Get back to me." This is required if people are to communicate across generations without undue burden. One option would be to have the system highlight such contractions, revealing the meaning when they are touched. This would facilitate learning. I haven't discovered such a feature as yet. Reader Kevin Larson responds: Even better, as one of those who lives in Europe and uses SMS quite a bit, would be the reverse to help keep SMS messages with in the 160 alphanumeric characters limit; thus converting "Get back to me." to GBTM when sending and by receiving doing what you have suggested. Tog responds: Excellent idea! This would require a fairly substantial synonym list for those unfamiliar with standard SMS abbreviations, so one could type, "respond to me..." and still have it contracted to GBTM. It is also a good argument for having the system hightlight, rather than auto-expand contractions, so that users will quickly learn the new jargon on their own. (The problem today is not that people have to learn, but that they have to learn so much all-at-once. It is the steepness of the learning curve that keeps the "old folks" at bay.) Photos The photo interface will certainly improve upon what has come before, but not by that much. Applications on the Palm are not as elegant, but can handle the same approximate number of images before getting cumbersome. Apple's interface, however, is smoother, sleeker, and certainly sexier. Having the orientation-sensor is a big win, as well: Shifting the orientation on a palmtop device picture-by-picture is intolerable. (I have two indexes of photos on my Palm: Those that are horizontal and those that are vertical.) Orientation-sensing is, again, not new: Canon, for example, has used it in its cameras for years so that the photos "know" whether they are intended to be viewed horizontally or vertically, based on the orientation of the camera at the time of shooting. Again, Apple has put it to a new and valuable use. The 2-megapixel camera, of course, is pretty much so they can say they have one, although it exceeds the resolution of many other smart phones. It needs to be 5-megapixel minimum and, in keeping with the rest of the interface, it would be nice if it "knew," by means of GPS or other location technology, where it is, so the resulting photos could be location-labeled. Facial recognition would be a plus. Reader Tim Aaronson's response: It's the quality of the lens rather than pixels that make the difference from what I have seen. My 3+ megapixel Canon Powershot is darn good. The Razr with about 1.3 megapixel is worthless. So, need to see what the iPhone actually does. My response to Tim: Points well-taken. The so called LED "flash" that many phones offer I also find worthless, outputting perhaps 1000th the peak light of a "real" flash and over way too long a duration.iPhone as iPodThis discussion tracks the features as demo'd on Apple' site at Music The contrast between the Phone interfaces collectively and iPod Music interface specifically on the machine is interesting. The Phone functions have been kept clean and straightforward, accessible to all, no matter how technologically backward. The apparent goal has been to fully support current users of special features, while embracing new legions of users put off by fancy stuff like Call Waiting. Not so the iPod music features. Here, Apple has turned up the "cool," even though accompanied with a far higher level of complexity than in the Phone functions. Here, for the first time, there are multiple and, to those of advanced years, like, say, 30, potentially confusing ways of accessing the same information. This again demonstrates the genius of the development team: They have built appropriate interfaces for each class of expected user. It's well known that old people don't listen to rock music 23.5 hours a day. Why make them your design center? Video The interface is clean, simple, and tracks that found in other areas such as voicemail and contact lists. Again, the orientation-sensor makes it easy to watch films as intended. What's more interesting here is one of the fundamental principles of interface at work: The best interface in the world will not help a project that is technologically deficient, sometimes referred to as "putting lipstick on the pig." Here, no lipstick is needed. The screen, as mentioned earlier, approximates the effective resolution of NTSC, comfortable enough to watch a standard TV show as well as movies other than special-effects fests, such as Star Wars, where nothing short of a six-foot HDTV will really do. iPhone as Internet device This discussion tracks the features as demo'd on Apple' site at Public Wi-Fi is a mess: As you move from place to place, everyone has their hand out, trying to squeeze several thousand dollars per year out of you for the precious use of their bandwidth. (Of course, it's priced by the hour, but do the multiplication to see how avaricious they really are.) Unlike the cell phone networks that quickly knitted together into a few nationwide carriers, Wi-Fi remains badly fragmented, making monthly or annual subscriptions impractical. Most of us with Wi-Fi enabled devices have learned just not to use email while en route or to fly Jet Blue, where they offer free airport access. iPhone is ambidextrous, able to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi or AT&T's Edge network. It's not enough. AT&T is a "cherry-picking" network, specifically aimed at the largest population clusters with big gaps in between. Edge is also spotty in Europe, leaving only Wi-Fi as a means to connect at high-speed in those areas not supporting it. In the short term, iPhone will be an Internet device that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, costing you a pretty penny for an intermittent connection unless you stay within the large population centers of the USA at all times. Fundamental unreliability is a big hit, and any excuses that claim "the others are just as bad" should fall on deaf ears: After all, this is the phone that Apple proclaims is revolutionary. It seems the revolution can only truly begin when the phone's features work virtually everywhere. (OK, OK, I'm biased. I am owned and operated by Verizon because they truly do have the network-I left AT&T because they didn't-yet I want an iPhone. So shoot me. Or, better yet, call me in 2009 when Apple's "exclusive contract" with AT&T comes to an end and tell me I can buy an iPhone now.) Safari Browser Apple has managed to make it practical to view standard web pages on a 3.5 inch screen. I've thought from the beginning that the drastic compromises being made to wedge reduced-content web pages into current handheld devices were an interaction dead end, and I couldn't be happier with the job Apple has done here. If Apple doesn't carry over this technology into some kind of slate computer, they are not nearly as bright as I think they are. Beyond the accelerative, frictional scroll, as used with the contacts list, the browser apparently has the "smarts" to enable the user to selectively pick a single article, not by carefully enlarging it to just fit, but by indicating it and having the browser temporarily strip away everything else. I have not yet explored to see if the production iPhone can work this trick on most pages, or whether the website must pay close attention to the letter of the HTML law in every regard to make it work. If the feature is forgiving, it is a home run.iPhone Mailemail echoes the voicemail interface. It is clean and simple. What is startling is the apparent hard separation of email, SMS, and voicemail. What I would want is a single list, defaulting to the newest and unread/unheard first. I don't care about the medium, and neither should iPhone. Of all the iPhone features, this is the one that seems to have completely missed the target. It would be like Blackberry having three lists: One for mail with more than 100 characters, one for mail with fewer than 100 characters, and one for mail sent from more than 3000 miles away. What sense would that make? What Apple has done, when you think about it, is just as random in terms of the user. I should be able to read a voicemail in my list, using speech-to-text, highlighting any word that isn't clear to hear the original. I should then be able to write an instant message, having it route via Instant Message or SMS, whichever is available and cheapest. Having then discovered the person is not responding, I should be able to convert the message into an email, recognizing, since I know the person has Yahoo mail, it will be pushed and get his attention. I should not have to visit three different places on my phone every few minutes to see what is happening. Maps Here again, the system apparently displays a lack of integration. The system should "know" where I am. So far, I have not heard or read anything that would make it appear it does. Mapping information should tie in with the scheduler, so that the system can figure out that I'm 1 block or 1000 miles from my next appointment and give me appropriate notice: "You have a half hour to your next appointment down the block" vs. "You have two days to get to New York City." Added paragraph: Reader Asher Gabara points out that Maps does nicely integrate map results with Calls: One can Find a Starbucks location, for example, then click on it to place a phone call instantly to that location. While a nice touch, it rather shrinks in comparison with other phones that can then give you turn-by-turn guidance to actually get there. I don't fault either the designers or the phone in this. The first model of any product cannot be expected to have every possible feature. I just point out that Maps, right now, is primarily of value to those lacking the "real deal"-a GPS. Widgets These apparently are the only "add-on" path for iPhone right now. I can only hope that changes. They are simple toys, and their graphics-heavy representations, though pretty, rob valuable screen space with poor return-on-acreage. Response from reader John Evans: Widget type applications could work very well on a mobile device. They are task specific and very easy to make. This makes them quite adept at a certain class of application and really lowers the bar for developing creative mobile applications which I think personally will fuel an explosion of much better mobile applications in the US and Europe. For example apps like a client for a web service or perhaps ordering a Pizza etc. However no real 3rd party apps is really disappointing both personally and professionally. Response from Tog: Apple must provide mechanism for adding third-party apps if the iPhone is to survive in the long run. Meanwhile, I still think that Widgets are too compartmentalized. I'd rather see a Services architecture, that would allow plug-in capabilities. For example, let me select "Nearby Take-Out Restaurants" from the map, select a pizza joint, and have a menu-order screen arise from within Map itself, rather than having to find the pizza place using Map, then finding and launching another object, a Widget, to place the order. In either case, third parties could be included; in the latter, the result would be more integrated. Toward the Future iPhone is missing something important-a keyboard. The touch keyboard appears quite practical for a device sized like this for doing short messaging and such, but I wouldn't want to write this whole column with it, particularly when the keyboard is obstructing half the screen. We can only hope that someone will be permitted quickly interface one to it, along with a suite of Microsoft Office-compatible applications. It's missing something else, too, a way, when traveling, to output a high-resolution digital signal to a standard conference-room projector. Yes, yes, I know: It's supposed to be a phone. However, it now does so much of what I drag around a laptop for when traveling, why can't it do the rest? One thing left out and I have to drag around both. Added paragraph: Reader Zach White points out that pin-outs in the iPhone connector may allow third parties to add such niceties as video out and a snap-on battery. No doubt the large community of iPod add-on manufacturers are salivating even more than potential iPhone owners at the prospect of the coming feast. They will, undoubtable address each and every possible shortcoming of the iPhone that Apple permits them to. The one possible "fly in the ointment" is the locked-down nature of the iPhone software: Apple and its partner, AT&T, must approve every software addition, and how willing they will be to support the add-on community waits to be seen. Battery packs won't need software support; other add-ons well might. There's lots to do tomorrow, not only in expanding the capabilities of iPhone, but in more tightly integrating the features already offered, such as the three forms of mail-voicemail, email, and SMS/instant messaging. They also need to get serious about integrating mapping with other features, ensuring location-awareness and making use of that information, etc. However, while this first iPhone may not be the be-all and end-all, neither was the original Mac. With its 128k of memory, 8 MHz processor, and primitive, inflexible interface, users would be hard-pressed to get any real work done today. Nonetheless, the original Mac was a magnificent start, and iPhone is likewise. The Mac languished for years because Steve Jobs left Apple and the management who remained were sorely lacking in anything approaching vision. One can only assume Jobs won't be leaving this time around. If he moves iPhone along as he would have moved Mac along during those "dark years," the iPhone we look upon with such wonder today will seem like a simple toy three, five years from now. Traditional cell phones are dull, limited, and at end-of-life. iPhone is glorious, and it is only the beginning. Check out the follow-on article I wrote after first getting my hands on an iPhone: The iPhone User Experience: A First Touch.Websites that SellPeople have been bugging me for years to do an advanced human-computer interaction course, so now I am. "Websites that Sell" combines my 30 years of interaction design experience with my 15 years of retail sales experience. In one day, I'll show you how to turn an ailing site into a site that not only stops driving customers away, but actively closes the deal. Limited availability. Act now! (Well, it is a course in selling.) Seriously, we were promised at the beginning of the web that, soon, "bricks and mortar" stores would be a thing of the past. Then, the bubble burst, popped by the poor web sales that actually resulted. We deserved what happened: Most websites out there even today are doing their very best to drive customers away. Fortunately, the original projections were not that far off the mark, and many sites that are simply limping along now could be doing a land-office business if they only knew how to sell. I do, and I can teach you. This is a course in "selling through design" not "marketing through designer," because marketing is not the same as sales. Sales is about keeping the customer informed and happy while successfully closing the deal. You will walk away knowing exactly how to do that. I sold consumer electronics "live and in person" for 15 years before the invention of the personal computer, moving millions of dollars worth of product, picking up awards along the way. I also taught sales theory and practice to other salespeople, and I've been passing on these secrets to my private clients for years. Now it's your turn. (My apologies. I think I was getting "salesy" again.) Most designers shrink from anything that might lead the web visitor to believe we are actually interested in their buying anything, believing that selling is unethical. A lot of selling is. I don't teach anything that will make you feel anything but good. I sold with an eye for future business, and anything even remotely underhanded is antithetical to future business. Instead, I will teach you how to take care of your customer from the time they walk into your "web store" until the time they leave, credit card back in their wallet, merchandise on its way, and a smile on their face, the kind of customer experience offered by stores like Nordstrom in the real world. This course is not a "rah, rah" session. Instead, I will teach you fundamental principles and psychological theory that can be applied directly to on-line sales, along with a lot of practical examples of what can go wrong and what to do about it. While I'm aiming the course primarily at interaction designers, managers and marketing people have found the course useful and immediately applicable. While the thrust is web sales, both retail and wholesale, it is, at heart, about motivating visitors and ensuring their success. Those working on sites from government to intranet, will find much of immediate, practical use.iPhone Video Converter + DVD to iPhone Suite (Mac, Windows)The versatile and simple-to-use video to iPhone converter software can batch convert all popular video files and DVD movie to iPhone (.mp4, .mp3). It is the fastest and all-in-one solution for putting videos/movies/DVDs on your iPhone, which has been released in June, 2007. Free download iPhone Video Converter Suite works flawlessly for AVI to iPhone, MPEG to iPhone, WMV to iPhone, DVD to iPhone conversion. It also supports transferring DivX, ASF, Rm, MOV, XviD, VOB, RMVB, FLV, MPG, etc to iPhone. Key Features * Copy DVD to iPhone (mp4, h.264, mpeg4), transfer video to iPhone. * Rip audio track from DVD, extract audio from video and save as MP3 supported by iPhone. * High speed for DVD ripping and iPhone movie converting: As usual, it takes less than 30 minutes to rip a 2-hour DVD. You can also convert video clips to iPhone quickly in a batch. * Excellent picture and sound quality. There is no audio/video sync problem. * One step is enough: directly convert DVD and video clips to iPhone. * Crop mode: support widescreen 16:9, 4:3, full screen and so on. * Parameters can be adjusted, including 'video size', 'video codec', 'frame rate', 'output quality', 'file size', 'audio codec', 'bit rate', 'output folder', etc. * Various converting mode: 1) convert the whole video files or the whole DVD movie to one big file; 2) rip any segment from DVD, extract video clips by setting the start point and the end point; 3) rip each chapter to one iPhone file. * Suitable for both beginners and veterans. iPhone Video Converter Downloaded lots of favourite movies online? created some interesting video clips by yourself? Just get them onto your iPhone using the wonderful movie decoder and video encoder. The program supports input source like AVI (Xvid, DivX), WMV, ASF, MPEG, RealMedia (RM, RMVB), MOV and more. DVD to iPhone Movie Converter Want to put DVD on your iPhone and watch movies on the travel? It is easy to do this with our software, which can convert your DVDs to small high-quality videos or only extract music from the concert/MTV DVDs.Top 5 Worst Things About The iPhoneAt the risk of sounding churlish—we love the iPhone, we truly do, and will sacrifice our children to get our hands on one—not all is perfect behind the pearly white gates of heaven. Here are the top five worst things about the phone, media player, computer and news frenzy: 1) Cingular. They're North America's largest cellular network, so it makes sense for Apple to deal with them. But it would have been far better if Apple had taken on the carriers' chokehold on handset provisioning wholesale, and simply sold unlocked phones. 2) 8GB Flash drive. For many, it will be more than enough, but the iPhone won't kill the iPod until drive sizes start matching the needs of MP3-era music libraries. My fear is that Apple will stick to its guns and stick with Flash media as it grows to 16GB and beyond, but a second-gen iPhone with magnetic storage is an obvious upgrade path. 3) Built-in battery. Apple's bothersome tradition of non-user-servicable batteries continues. There's no reason to do this, frankly, aside from the kind of implied "we're aesthetic obsessives" claim that Apple still gets away with. 4) No 3G. Fast internet is the horse, 3G is one hind leg. 5) With all those features, a QWERTY keyboard stashed within (somehow) would be the perfect way to turn this little beast into Apple's answer to the UMPC: a cheap, fully-featured computing device in addition to a phone and music player. Even a clamshell...iPhone firmwareThe internet is abuzz with talk of a new iPhone firmware 1.1.3, touting new features such as Voice Recording and Disk Mode, two features requested for since the initial annoucment of Steve Jobs’ and minimalistic design’s lovechild (the iPhone fool!). When it will arrive is a question of great debate but supposedly it will be in the very near future. Undoubtedly this will put Apple 1 up on the unlocking score board with some other ingenious way of blocking out the hacking geniuses of the iPhone world. Roll up, roll up, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls and welcome to iPhoneAE first official case giveaway, where you can win an iSkin Revo case for the grand sum of, well nothing. What do you have to do to win this case worth over $45, post in our forums of course. At the end of the month (January 1st) the user wih the most posts gets the case. This giveaway is open to everyone who is a resident of Aus (sorry peeps from abroad, but next time you might get lucky!), except me (aaawwwww!). So head over to the forums and post, post, post! Please Note: Spam and worthless posts will be deleted and could result in a post reset for the member involved. One of the main features of the iPhone is it’s stylus-less touchscreen, one company obviously didn’t recieve that memo and have come out with an iPhone stylus, to help you press those pesky little keyboard buttons that some have trouble with. If you really must have one they are available from tenonedesign.com for $25 USD (about $30 AUD I think). Oh, and if that isn’t ridiculous enough, it’s also called the ‘Pogo Stylus’! Our European friends over in Germany have now got the opportunity to get their hands on an officially unlocked iPhone handset after T-Mobile’s arch rivals Vodafone filed a court injunction, some legal mumbo jumbo later and, in the words of Steve Jobs, BOOM!, unlocked iPhones for all (or all that could afford the 999 euro price tag). This makes the Germans the first to get their hands on the unlocked iphone, with France following suit due to some French law dictating that all handsets must have the ability to be unlocked. I am off to read through a few Aussie law books to see if there is any ancient law saying iPhones must be sold in Australia! Randall Stepherson aka Mr. AT&T, has outed the 3G iPhone while talking to his uber rich pals at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara (he obviously took the name to heart thinking he was the fat jolly man with a red coat!) saying “You’ll have it next year” the device will (according to Mr AT&T anyway!), run on the AT&T network and El Jobso “will dictate what the price of the phone is”. Hopefully this means when the iPhone is released in Aus, it will be available in the 3G version, fingers crossed people! T3, the UK’s top gadget site, has reported that iPhone’s new firmware 1.1.2 will break the TIFF exploit used to jailbreak the iPhone 1.1.1. Apple can’t possibly think they will hold the hackers off for more than a couple of weeks at max (my moneys on 1 week, post your 2cents below though). Also if you’re reading this Apple Australia, when YOU release the iPhone, we wouldn’t mind getting our own review copy *crosses fingers even though we’ve got no hope!* So you’ve jumped the gun and started hacking the iPhone without researching it, well never fear, head over to our forums and post your question in the new Help section and we will do our very best to help you (I will be there aswell as some other iPhone experts). Also we are looking for some moderators to help keep our forums up to scratch, contact me if you would like to become a moderator (at least 20 posts are needed so we know your trustworthy!). Peace Out!iPhone Price CutsLike more than a few iPhone users, Paul Forrester couldn't believe his ears last Wednesday when Steve Jobs ended an Apple press event by announcing a $200 price cut to the iPhone. The price cut came a little more than two months after Forrester and other iPhone early adopters started plunking down as much as $599 for the newly released mobile device. "I'm a bit put off by it," said Forrester, a San Jose, Calif.-based technology executive and Mac user for more than 20 years. And Apple's subsequent decision to offer a $100 credit in the wake of angry feedback from early adopters did little to soften the sting for Forrester. "Giving me $100 credit in the Apple store is kind of a yawn for me," said Forrester, who expected iPhone prices to fall at some point though not by as much as they did last week. "I still have to go spend money in the store-it's not a true rebate. They aren't really giving me my money back." The entire episode, which began with Jobs' announcement Wednesday and culminated in Thursday's $100 credit, has been a revealing experience all around-for Apple, which learned the peril of introducing steep price cuts so soon after a high-profile product launch, and for early adopters, which learned that such cuts are standard practice in the mobile phone industry. "The price cut was not a surprise," independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan said. "This is the way the cell business works - it's the way it has always worked. I don't understand where all the complaining is coming from." Early iPhone buyers, who flooded message boards and Steve Jobs' inbox with complaints about the price cut, would disagree. For some, it was the prospect of paying $499 or $599 for the 4GB and 8GB models, only to find an 8GB iPhone selling for $399 so soon after the iPhone's June 29 launch. For others, like Bob Prescott, it wasn't about the money-rather, as he explained to Macworld, it was more about the feeling of being taken by Apple. Too much, too soon? Price cuts may happen in the world of cell phones, but a tech-industry analyst argued that the size and timing of the iPhone's price cut were what set many users off. "[Apple] definitely should have seen this coming," said Roger Kay, president of market-research firm Endpoint Technologies. "The first questions on everyone's lips were ones Apple should have asked before they announced the price cut. I think it was too much, too soon. Introducing a product at a premium price and then discounting it makes sense, but not after two months and not by one-third." Still, other analysts felt that any price cut announced at any time would have generated complaints from early adopters. "There are two groups of people," said Gene Munster, a senior analyst with investment-banking firm Piper Jaffray. "The first wave doesn't care because they knew what they were getting into. The second wave is pretty upset, but with Apple everyone has an axe to grind. Whether it's a battery or a screen, it's always something. "If they [consumers] don't like the fact the price dropped, they will hate it even more in a few months," said Kagan the telecom analyst. "If you look at every major phone in the market, you'll see the same thing." Take Motorola's popular Razr cell phone, Kagan added. That phone debuted with a $500 price tag. Within months, Motorola starting dropping the price and now it can be purchased from AT&T with a two-year contract for $49.99. The Razr is not a great comparison, Kay contends, since Motorola dropped the price in the face of fierce competition from rivals. "Apple did this without anyone in the market against them," he said. Still, price cuts are not unheard of for Apple offerings. The first 5GB iPod sold for $399; within a year, its price had fallen by $100 and a model with twice capacity was available for the same asking price. Kagan has another theory on why there was notable outrage among iPhone users. "People that have traditionally not spent the full price on a new phone rushed out to get it," he said. "They were caught up in the swell and hype, and they did it. Maybe they were not the kind that would have spent that kind of money on a new phone if it wasn't from Apple." However, Kay says that Apple should know its customers and their reactions: "The problem with the Mac faithful is that they have that type of personality-if you disappoint them, they can turn on you." Why cut it now? Besides a torrent of complaints from angry iPhone users over the $200 price cut, Apple also has faced speculation that the steep price reduction was in response to lower than expected iPhone sales. Not true, according to Apple. In announcing the cut, Jobs said Apple was trying to spur holiday sales and predicted that Apple would meet its stated goal of selling its 1 millionth iPhone by the end of September. Indeed, the company hit that milestone Monday. According to tracking performed by Piper Jaffray's Munster last week, Apple could approach 1.1 million iPhones before the quarter ends September 30. "Apple's take on this is that they have best phone in the market, so why let competitors get in there when they can stop them," Munster said. If sales are tracking higher than expect, why would Apple cut its prices so drastically? The holiday season is upon us and Apple intends to take full advantage of that. "Just as the holiday fourth quarter has been a massive season for the iPod, Apple is clearly positioning the iPhone to take advantage of that same opportunity," said Ross Rubin, director of analysis at market-research firm NPD. "It's a huge opportunity for them." It's all part of a cycle that all cell phone makers go through, Kagan explained-Introduce a product at a high price; drop the price; introduce a new product at the former high price; and then drop the price of the older models even more. Price cuts to continue For that reason, don't expect this to be the last time iPhone prices and features change dramatically. "This is a way of making the phones interesting and available to more customers," Kagan said. As for this current price cut, analysts don't expect the initial anger to last. "As long as Apple has the best products, people are going to keep coming back," Munster said. Indeed, the iPhone owners Macworld spoke with seemed ready to move on. Prescott says he's happy with Apple's $100 credit, but even happier that Apple listened to its customers. He plans to keep buying Apple products in the future. Forrester feels the same way. "The only reason I'm not buying another one right now is because I'm waiting for the next version," he said.Will Apple unlock the iPhone’s true potentialAfter years of stagnation, the mobile phone market has begun to go haywire, and next year the landscape figures to change even more dramatically. Already we’ve seen Verizon Wireless announce that it will open up its network to allow customers to use phones they’ve purchased elsewhere. The FCC auction in January of the old broadcast television spectrum for use by wireless networks will help promote even more interactivity between devices. Because of efforts led by Google, some chunks of that spectrum will be required to be open to all devices. And Google’s Android initiative will further stir the pot by providing a new, more adaptable platform for handset makers. The trend towards openness – wireless devices that will run on any network – will eventually completely dissolve the connection between cellphones and cellular service providers. Apple, of course, adopted a cellular business model predicated on locking the iPhone to a single carrier with long-term contracts. A year ago, the company could not have foreseen the cracks that are now appearing in that strategy not just for Apple, but also across the industry. Look at what’s happened as the iPhone has launched in Germany and France in recent weeks. In Germany Vodafone’s court challenge to Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile’s exclusivity deal quickly led to the availability of unlocked iPhones there. Just days after T-Mobile responded by offering unlocked iPhones for €999, €600 ($890) more than the price of one with a contract, competitor Debitel said it will offer unlocked iPhone owners a €600 rebate if they switch. A French law against locking mobile phones to a single carrier forced Orange, Apple’s French partner, to offer unlocked iPhones for €649, quite a bit less than what Germany’s T-Mobile is asking. (Point to ponder: if someone buys a €649 unlocked iPhone in France could they sign up with Debitel in Germany and get the €600 rebate?) As I have pointed out in a previous post, Apple needs to switch to something like a “preferred carrier” strategy under which iPhones locked to a contract would sell for less while unlocked iPhones with some features disabled would sell at a premium. Essentially, they need to roll with what’s already happening in Germany and France, though I can’t see many people willing to pay T-Mobile’s €600 premium. And let’s not forget that of the first 1.4 million iPhones sold in the United States, 250,000 were purchased to be unlocked -- illegally. Yesterday news Web sites were buzzing with a quote from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that we will see a 3G iPhone at some point next year. Here’s where Apple – if it plays its hand aggressively -- has a huge opportunity to expand the iPhone’s market footprint in a very short time. Imagine a 3G iPhone that retains its ability to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots as well as AT&T’s GSM-based network, which is the most commonly available mobile network technology in the world. A hybrid phone is not so crazy a thought. Research in Motion started selling a “world phone,” the Blackberry 8830, through Verizon back in April. It can use both GSM and CDMA networks (Verizon Wireless in the U.S. is a CDMA network.) Apple could sell such a “Universal” iPhone as a high-end option at a very steep price. But it also would have to surrender on the concept of locking the device to a single provider. Rather than continue to fight the inevitable, Apple should announce at January’s Macworld that a 3G unlocked iPhone is coming, along with the expected price premiums. AT&T will still get to sell a locked version along with a contract for a lesser sum. The question is whether the massive boost in sales Apple would get from an unlocked iPhone, Universal or otherwise, would outweigh the profit the company would forfeit from the lost shared monthly revenues with its partner carriers. Profits would have to come primarily from hardware sales, as they do with Macs and iPods. If high-end cellphones are indeed destined to become portable mini-computers, Apple is ideally positioned to thrive. The iPhone already does this better than its rivals; as with the Mac, Apple’s control of both the hardware and software gives it an ongoing advantage. If Apple can bend a little on the issue of locking the iPhone to one provider, the potential is mind-boggling. The three main impediments to higher iPhone sales have been 1) the price; 2) being locked to AT&T’s network for two years; and 3) the relatively slow speed of the GSM technology. Apple showed how changing just one of those factors could spur sales when they dropped the price $200. Think how many more people would buy an unlocked 3G-enabled iPhone. And how many would buy an unlocked Universal iPhone. The possibilities boggle the mind.Apple iPhone fans and French bargainGadget fans eagerly awaiting this evening's UK launch of the Apple iPhone could save their money and buy an unlocked handset in France instead, thanks to a loophole in French telecommunications law. The iPhone, which costs £269, goes on sale in Britain at 6.02pm tonight, and iPhone owners will have to sign up to an 18-month contract with O2, Apple's exclusive iPhone carrier in the UK. Apple has signed exclusive network deals with mobile phone operators in several countries, including AT&T in the US, T-Mobile in Germany, and Orange in France. But under French law, all mobile phones have to be offered unlocked, so that customers can use them on any network they wish. It means that in theory, British consumers could travel to France, buy an unlocked iPhone and then use it with their regular network in the UK, without having to sign up to an O2 tariff, which start from £35 per month. However, it's highly unlikely that Apple will make it that easy for customers to get hold of unlocked iPhones and it is thought that Apple and Orange are working closely together to find a solution before the iPhone goes on sale in French stores on November 29. Ben Woods, an analyst with CSS Insight, expects Apple to make it as difficult as possible for "iPhone tourists" to pick up an unlocked handset. "There are three things Apple could do to resolve this problem. The first is to make the price of an unlocked French device very high, at least two or three times the price of an Orange-locked handset, although that may not be allowed under French law because it could be seen as undermining the idea of customer choice and the reason phones have to be sold unlocked. But you can guarantee that if they make it very expensive, people will think twice. "The second is to ensure the devices only support the French language, so unless you are bilingual, you will find it impossible to use. "The third option depends on the nature of the legislation. It is not clear whether French law demands that phones are unlocked to work on any network in the world or just networks in France. If it's just French networks, then Apple could ensure that unlocked iPhones will only work in France." A number of customers couldn't wait until the iPhone's UK release and instead imported the handset from the US. It meant that in order to use the phone, they had to register with AT&T and pay expensive roaming rates when using the handset in the UK. To get around this problem, many users hacked their phones to unlock them and allow them to run on any network, but Apple has warned customers that such action invalidates the warranty, and that future iPhone software updates may conflict with hacks, leaving the device unusable. Apple and O2 are expecting bumper sales of the iPhone this Christmas. The device combines and iPod music player with a web browser and a phone, and was recently named Invention of the Year by Time.iPhone is impressiveOnce again, Apple CEO Steve Jobs wowed the crowds like no one else can. In his 9 am keynote at MacWorld in San Francisco this morning, Jobs announced the new iPhone cell phone. From the description in appears to be a game changing device, and the public markets seem to agree. As of the time of this writing, Apple stock is up over 7% for the day. Competitor Research in Motion (Blackberry) is down over 6%, wiping $2 billion dollars in market cap off the table. Palm, maker of the Treo, is also down, nearly 6%. The iPhone is an impressive, and expensive, device. It comes in 4 GB and 8 GB models and costs $499 and $599, respectively. It includes a 3.5 inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard, a 2 megapixel camera, is WIFI enabled and runs OSX. Cingular is the carrier. The desktop-like interface and user experience looks to be a killer. This might actually take the mobile email revolution another full step forward from what Blackberry has done. Standard web sites can be viewed via the Safari browser (and soon, I’m sure, Firefox). And there are a number of nice touches as well, including a motion sensor that rotates photos when you turn the phone, and voicemails displayed visually that you can click on and listen to. As we all expect from Apple, this is a seriously buttoned up device. The iPod functionality is almost a side benefit, and with the limited storage compared to the high end iPods, serious music aficionados will still want to carry their 80 GB iPods as well. Apple also made other announcements today, including the availability of Apple TV (formerly iTV), a $299 living room device that streams iTunes content to the television. And iTunes appears to be soldiering on, with 2 billion songs and 1.3 million movies sold. The biggest letdown is the fact that the iPhone won’t be available until June 2007 in the U.S. They have so much horsepower and untested software packed into this tiny device that the first version will almost certainly have problems - overheating, bugs, etc. That won’t stop millions from buying it as soon as it is available. And it won’t stop me, either.iPhone Download SpeedIn Australia the other day a Canadian company called Datawind staged a competition between its handheld device and the iPhone. The contest would see which device can download email the fastest and Datawind’s PocketSurfer2 won! A Canadian company called DataWind wants its PocketSurfer2 to be the Internet device of choice down in Australia. The device looks like a mini notebook computer and presents the real web, showing the whole web page not just a mobile version. It was actually doing this before iPhone was released. To bring attention to its Australian launch Datawind staged this download competition and beat iPhone. Of course, nobody ever said iPhone was a speed demon on its EDGE line but it is the most high profile portable device out there today. PocketSurfer2 connects using GPRS an older wireless technology based on GSM that’s capable of 170 Kbps. iPhone uses EDGE which is newer and faster, capable of peaks of over 300Kbps. So, how is it possible an EDGE device was beaten by a GPRS device? Do you really care? Datawind has a special sauce in its download acceleration technology. Datawind says it’ll take seven seconds to download most pages. In the contest with iPhone PocketSurfer2 downloaded an eBay page in seven seconds while it took the iPhone four minutes. Different approach to downloading The technology is a departure from most digital mobile devices. When the user requests a download the device connects to Datawind servers in Canada via GPRS. Then the server does the browsing for you, downloads the pages, compresses it and sends it back to your device. The result is faster browsing than most mobile devices despite the slow connection speeds. That’s fine for downloading web-pages and email, but you can’t stream video this way. Don’t go looking for the device in North America just yet. It’s only available in the UK, Germany and now Australia.iPhone ReviewThe Apple iPhone is a cross between an iPod and an advanced mobile phone and will be launched in the UK on November 9th 2007. While it is clearly the most anticipated mobile phone ever released it is also full of innovative features and looks sleeker and more stylish than most other phones as well. The casing is small at 115 x 61 x 11.6 mm and weighs just 135 grams and is available in sleek black or a pearly white colour. The main feature is the huge touch sensitive widescreen which acts as the main interface with the phone. At 3.5 inches and 320x480 pixels the iPhone has one of the biggest screens ever on a phone. Navigation is easy thanks to the touch screen and intuitive Mac OS X icon driven menu system Like the iPod Apple have made the iPhone available in 4GB and 8GB versions. Battery life is good so you can play music uninterrupted for 16 hours. Talk time is apparently 5 hours. As you might expect the iPhone has a photo address book with easy controls. Simply click on the persons picture to call them or send a text. Other nice functions are a favourite calls list automatically generated from the people you call most and a conference call feature. Emails and text messages are very easy thanks to the touch sensitive screen which converts into a full QWERTY keyboard with predictive text and auto correct for any typing errors. Supported email applications include POP3, Microsoft Exchange, AOL, Gmail and Apple Mac Mail. Unlike a lot of phones the iPhone supports photos and attachments in emails making it more like a PC than a cell phone. Our favourite feature is the visual voicemail application which shows new answer phone messages on the screen with options to listen, save or delete the message or call the person who left it. The date, time and duration of the message are also displayed on the screen. The music player works in much the same way as an iPod and allows the user to scroll through tracks and upload or download to a PC. Album covers can also be stored and used on the iPhone which has an innovative search facility so you can scroll through images like you would flick through a filing cabinet. Although the camera isn’t as good as some high end phones like the Sony Ericsson K800i it is capable of some very high quality images and offers editing software so you can touch up photos and videos without having to load the pictures onto a PC. Internet access is amazing thanks to the large screen and makes the iPhone the best internet phone we have ever tested. Google is built in and you can use Google Maps to get directions based on your location. The internet is fast due to the EDGE connection and Apple have also given the iPhone Wi Fi so you can sync with other devices with ease. Finally the coolest feature is the automatically changing screen that detects whether the phone is upright or in landscape mode and rotates accordingly.error with third-party iPhone apps, fixIf you’re using an iPhone running software/firmware 1.1.2 or iPod Touch and have installed several third-party applications, you may begin receiving an error message that states “Warning: You are running out of disk space. Please delete some photos or videos,” even though there is still significant storage space on the device. Here’s what’s actually happening: the iPhone (or iPod Touch) places a low, artificial size limit on its /Applications directory, which is reached after installing a number of third-party apps. In order to get around this problem, you need to store your Applications in the Media directory, where much more space is allocated. To do so, follow this process: Warning: If you don’t type these commands exactly, you may put your iPhone in a state where it repeatedly reboots, potentially forcing a restore or interaction via SSH (discussed at the end of these instructions): Make sure you have at least 500 MB of free space on your iPhone/iPod Touch (via the indicator on iTunes). Through Installer.app, download and install “Term-vt100,” located in the “System” category (if you don’t have enough space to install Term-vt100, delete some applications temporarily). Launch Term-vt100 from your SpringBoard (home screen). Type the following commands exactly on your iPhone’s keyboard, paying particular attention to spacing and capitalization, and press return after each: cd / cp -pr Applications /var/root mv Applications Applications.old ln -s private/var/root/Applications /Applications Your Applications should now be stored in the Media (/var/root) directory. You can check this by typing the commands: cd / ls -la Among the listed entries, you should see something like the following: rwxr-xr-x 1 root admin […] Applications -> private/var/root/Applications This shows that your /Applications directory is symlinked to /private/var/root/Applications Now restart your iPhone or iPod Touch. If everything works normally, launch Term-vt100 again and enter the following commands to delete your old Applications folder: cd / rm -rf Applications.old |