Apple VP of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive discusses the philosophy behind everything from the iPhone to the iMac for the documentary Objectified and, quite frankly, shows why he’s the best there is at what he does, and why what he does is oh, so nice.

Watch the video. Especially if you’re designing for Apple’s competition. Please.

[via Ryan Block]

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iPhone Designer Jony Ive “Objectified”

Sebastiaan de With — aside from gritting his teeth and almost blinding himself in one eye while reproducing the incomprehensibly pin-striped logo above — has bent his design-focus and Cocoia blog towards an analysis of Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 user interface:

Sometimes, I’m considering if other companies in the cellphone / personal media player market have caught up to Apple’s care to details and design sensibilities, but then things like these make the reality very obvious to me:

Apple’s still the leader of the pack by several tail lengths.

If you’re into the details of user interface and design, give it a read and let us know what you think about the look and feel of iPhone 3.0.

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iPhone 3.0 User Interface Details

If you didn’t know, Google and T-Mobile held a small event that introduced the world to Android and the first Android device, the T-Mobile G1. And though Android impressed many (TiPb included), a lot of people scratched their heads when it came to the T-Mobile G1. Sure it packed a lot of features, controls, layouts, etc in one device but looks-wise it just didn’t blow anybody away. Is this really the device that Google is going to use to introduce the world to Android?

So we decided to take a closer look at the hardware and see how it compares to the iPhone 3G!

Read on to see how the iPhone 3G compares to the T-Mobile G1 Here’s a disclaimer: We know that the iPhone is the iPhone is the iPhone while Android can pretty much be anything anybody wants it to be. Apple and Google employ different strategies, different ideals, and different means but the goal is the same—to take as much of the cell phone market as they possibly can. We’re not going to delve into the differences because honestly, it’s too many to list.

Google is a company that (almost) receives as much attention as Apple so when they release a cell phone platform, we’re going to pay attention. Though some may argue that Android is trying to replace Windows Mobile more so than go after the iPhone, like it or not, the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1 are two devices going after the same consumer market. So let’s see how they compare, hardware wise, yeah?

Design

Probably the biggest disappointment of all is the styling of the device. Though it looked considerably better than the leaked photos, the T-Mobile G1 still lacks a certain swagger to it. It seems like it’s so confused on what to be that it just comes off as plain. Not even to imagine the Jay Leno sized chin, in product shots the thing is ginormous. The device does seem to have an endearing quality to it, perhaps it’s the usage of very-approachable colors—you won’t find a glossy black or white here.

But overall, it’s sad that the design couldn’t be more revolutionary than evolutionary considering HTC doesn’t typically make bad looking devices (look at the Touch series). I think it can be said with fair certainty that the T-Mobile G1 will never win any design awards and will NEVER be mistaken as an iPhone.

Edge: iPhone, Comparing the styling of the iPhone to the T-Mobile G1 is really no contest and probably offends the heck out of Jonathan Ive.

Input Method

Plainness aside, the T-Mobile G1 is the perfect device to launch Android with. Why? Because it includes all the popular input methods: touch-screen, keyboard, and even a trackball. Developers are able to create versatile apps that will extend past the T-Mobile G1 because of all the input methods available.

But by including so many input methods, the T-Mobile G1 risks confusing the user experience. Would anyone ever actively use a trackball over a touchscreen? Is a keyboard that might not even be good (there have been complaints of it being too flat) worth the added thickness? And above all, having a touchscreen is fine and dandy with TiPb but where’s the multi-touch? Most other touchscreen devices are less sensitive and less responsive than the iPhone 3G and without multi-touch it can’t even be considered in the same league. Maybe the T-Mobile G1 will be better in that regard.

Edge: T-Mobile G1, I think people who can effectively use the iPhone’s keyboard won’t look twice at the added input methods of the T-Mobile G1 (I know I won’t). But it’d be careless to not admit that the T-Mobile G1 beats the iPhone in offering options. I mean, even Blackberry users can get in on the fun with the (out-dated) trackball.

Dimensions

Size and shape wise, the T-Mobile G1 does a great job in creating a easy-to-hold, good-in-hand feel. It’s a wee bit taller than the iPhone (4.6 inches vs 4.5) and noticeably thicker (.62 vs .48), but it does deserve credit for being narrower (2.16 vs2.4). The screen is a nick smaller at 3.17 inches vs the iPhone’s 3.5 inches but I can’t imagine people complaining about that difference. In all, dimensions wise the T-Mobile G1 is commendable, it’s pretty amazing how it can offer so many input methods in such a tight package.

But come on, really? To compete with the iPhone you have to package a more amazing product in stunning dimensions. The T-Mobile G1 doesn’t do that. Instead it loses here, loses there, and pretty much loses everywhere when compared to the pure dimensions. Some may still complain that the iPhone 3G still doesn’t “feel” like a phone but you’d be hard pressed to find a better package than the iPhone.

Edge: iPhone, Though the T-Mobile G1 surprised many with a solid build quality, it doesn’t approach the iPhone 3G (and original iPhone!) in terms of feeling great in the hand.

Storage, Headphone jack, Camera, Battery, Misc

Some people like expandable memory via MicroSD cards and sure it offers a lot of options for the future, but honestly, I would rather take the 8/16 GB out the box than the 1GB—its just easier that way. When bigger MicroSD cards become affordable we’ll probably be on 32GB iPhones and maybe even a G2.

Even worse than a recessed headphone jack is using a proprietary ExtUSB port. Seeing how much flack that the original iPhone got for not including a 3.5mm headphone jack it is simply jaw-dropping that the T-Mobile G1 would include something even worse. Yeah, we know HTC typically uses this style of port but come on, we’re really going to get excited to listen to our DRM-free music through this thing?

One thing the T-Mobile G1 has going for it is opting for a 3 megapixel camera that can auto-focus at close distance over the iPhone’s 2 megapixel fixed camera. Also, the T-Mobile G1 includes a removable battery while claiming to offer the same talk time (5 hours) as the iPhone 3G. A big plus for power users. Oh, and don’t forget that the T-Mobile G1 has a built-in compass that adds a ridiculous amount of slickness when using Google Maps Street View.

What they both have: Wi-Fi, 3G, EDGE, GPS, Accelerometer

What they both lack: stereo Bluetooth, video recording

Edge: Tie, In our book, Built In Storage + 3.5mm headphone jack = Better Camera + Removable Battery + Compass

Final Thoughts

Don’t worry, the king is still the king and the world can continue on spinning. The iPhone 3G still takes the cake in this hardware shoot out. Yeah, who would have thought we would do that huh?

Though a lot of the features are similar, the things that the iPhone are better at are simply best-in-class while the T-Mobile G1’s offering were simply par for the course. Put it this way, the iPhone is a knockout punch while the T-Mobile G1 is just a light jab. The iPhone was made to stun and revolutionize the industry while the T-Mobile G1’s main purpose is to get the market ready for the Android onslaught. They’re both successful at what they aim to do.

Even though we are the iPhone blog, we’re pretty excited at the potential of Android and were surprised about how solid the T-Mobile G1 was. Our baby-sister site AndroidCentral is covering all things Android and T-Mobile G1 so be sure to check them out!

What do you think? Do you think the T-Mobile G1 is a worthy contender of the iPhone? Let us know!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 3G vs T-Mobile G1: Hardware Shootout!

Got a video camera with a nightvision (infrared) setting? Grab your iPhone and take a look at the left-rear of the phone, as fskj85 of Austrialian Whirlpool did, and you’ll see the snazzy “Data Matrix Code” underneath the body of the device. Wazzat, you ask? It’s essentially a two-dimensional bar code (many Nokia phones are able to photograph these to get links to downloads, for example). Apparently the plastic in that section is transparent to infrared light, allowing you to see the matrix underneath. That’s some secret-agent-design right there, folks, somebody nominate Jonathan Ives as the next James Bond.

Engadget Mobile, where we first saw the story, posits that the matrix likely encodes the IMEI and the Serial for the iPhone. That information is also printed in human-readable form on the SIM-card tray, but since that tray could technically be removed / swapped into another iPhone, it makes sense that Apple would find a way to get that data onto the iPhone itself.

That, or Apple is secretly tracking us with every camera we pass by.

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Hidden “Matrix Code” on the iPhone

At the rate Apple’s Vice President of Design keeps winning awards for the iPhone, he’s going to need a bigger mantle! Last time it was the unprecedented (and continued!) domination of the uber-elite Black Pencil, now it’s the Mobile Data Association 2008 MDA Personal Achievement Award.

Said the judges of Ive’s iPhone design:

“It sets the bar very high for all present and future competitors and as such, is shaking the mobile phone industry. We look forward to seeing Ive’s design innovation continuing to challenge the mobile world.”

They’re right. For the last long while, when it comes to consumer electronic design, there’s been Apple’s Ive and pretty much nobody else.

Read

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iPhone Wins — Again! Ive Takes Home MDA Design Award

Pop quiz, hotshot: You’re the acclaimed director of Finding Nemo and a Bug’s Life. Your latest project, Wall-E, requires a state-of-the-art-of-design robot straight from the 26th century. What do you do?

If you answered, call your boss Steven P. Jobs, who also happens to run a little, perennially design-award winning, consumer electronics company called Apple, and see if he can hook you up with uber-designer Jonathan Ive, than you, like Andrew Stanton, are correct.

Ive, the genius behind Apple’s industrial design team, oft-(poorly)-imitated industry trend-setter, and innovator of the twin-injection plastics technology seen in the iPod and the aluminum and glass innovations in the iMac and iPhone, was uniquely positioned to glance just that far into the future, whether or not he could declassify said glance:

Stanton said that it was a “lovefest” with Ive, but that the notoriously tight-lipped design wizard offered few specific modifications. “Apple is so proprietary and so secretive that he couldn’t even really allude to where the future of technology was going,” says Stanton. “The most he could do is nod his head to the things we said we wanted to do.” (Through a spokesman, Ive declined to comment.)

Is Eve just a cute CG character for this summer’s Pixar blockbuster, or a glimmer of iPhone (iDroid?) designs to come? Only Ive knows for sure, and he ain’t sharing.

Read

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Mr. Ive Goes To Hollywood: iPhone Designer Designs for Wall-E

Sramana Mitra has an interesting post up comparing Apple to Palm. Actually, she’s been on a tear lately when it comes to Palm and how they’ve dropped the corporate management ball. She scored a comprehensive interview with former Palm Executive Eric Benhamou, which reads very nicely but is also a clear example of how the problems Palm has now are the direct result of their earlier problems. Basically they followed the exact opposite trajectory that Apple did in nearly the same time period (basically).

Anyway, back to the intersection of the two companies. Mitra writes:

Rubinstein and Jobs could not agree on the iPhone’s strategy wrt the Keyboard. This tells me that Rubinstein has a separate but perhaps also compelling vision on how the keyboard needs to be incorporated into smartphones. I can’t wait to see what that vision entails!

John Rubinstein (Palm) vs. Steve Jobs (iPhone) – Sramana Mitra on Strategy

It’s surely not the case (one assumes) that Rubenstein left Apple over the keyboard issue (though that would be hilarious); but it is interesting that the guy who ran the iPod division, the podfather himself, was pro-physical-keyboard for the iPhone. Now, of course, he’s hard at work over at Palm, they who basically specialize in keyboard + touchscreen smartphones.

One wonders what other ideas Rubenstein had that didn’t make the cut on the iPhone. If “Podfather” Rubenstein’s input was 86′d on the iPhone, then one assumes that it was all Ive and Jobs, just like everybody’s always said.

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Former Exec Rubenstein Wanted a Physical Keyboard on the iPhone

There’s a big article in the New York Times that includes an interview with Steve Jobs about the excellent shape that Apple’s in nowadays. Apple is 3rd in computer shipments overall. They might slip to 4th when Acer buys Gateway after Gateway buys Packard Bell, but Apple will still have more growth than the resulting top three. The Times did an interview with Jobs, and he of course has some choice things to say about everything — Leopard vs. Vista, Ultimate Editions, the iPhone’s multitouch interface, the delays of Leopard, and the Newton.

‘Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.’

I’ve written about what Ars Technica called the ‘New Frontier’ of the SDK, and I agreed with Ars that it was coming. Anyone that gripes about the availability of the development kit for making apps on the iPhone doesn’t give enough credit for what Apple has created with multitouch.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Jobs on the iPhone User Interface

figure 1: John Gruber

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has posted an excellent discussion on the various subtleties of the language used in Steve Jobs’ iPhone SDK letter. He talks of HTML widgets vs. the stripped-down Cocoa API, the security of the current iPhone, the hidden compliment-slash-dig on Nokia and their recent “open to anything” marketing slogan, signed apps, the iTunes App store, and with his usual attention to detail and insight. Well worth the read there, like any long Gruber post.

Gruber also points to a blog post for OSX developers that intend to write applications for the iPhone, which led to a comment-discussion by several mac developers, and where they intend to aim their development efforts — both in functionality of their applications, and price thereof. It looks like there’s plenty of hope for the $5 app, if they can be guaranteed to be paid. There’s still the lingering question of how available the SDK will be — and that’s excellently addressed by Frasier Spiers on a blog post at his site.

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Excellent Discussions on SDK

According to an article in ComputerWorld, the iPhone handily beat other smartphones (printable version) in almost all of the usability categories. The iphone competed against the HTC Touch (Windows Mobile) and the Nokia N95 (S60 Symbian) in usability tests performed by Texas-based Perceptive Sciences. Their test group was with ten people that had never used any of the three phones, so it’s unfortunately a fairly small sample size. The article title gives the net result away, but read on for the highlights from their test.

The averaged scores show the iPhone’s overall usability dominance:

• iPhone: 4.6 out of 5
• HTC Touch: 3.4 out of 5
• Nokia N95: 3.2 out of 5

The tests are certain to be fodder for various discussion sites, since there is a legion of interesting facts and money quotes from the test (as quoted by Tom Thornton and Tim Ballew, test administrators from Perceptive Sciences. Note that all emphases are added)

• The iPhone deftly won the speed test:

  “Testers were about twice as fast doing specific tasks on the iPhone, which is pretty remarkable.”

• Some members of the test group couldn’t use basic functions of the HTC Touch:

  “That’s pretty basic functionality, but we had people who couldn’t complete a call at all“

• The N95 won in functionality (and the iPhone lost in this section) but its wins came at the cost of usability. The key usability issue for the Nokia?

  “People had a hard time turning it on. Only 30% of our sample group could turn it on right away.”



• The iPhone wasn’t without its gripes, however. The largest one was that the functionality that the iPhone had was basic:

  “It has really basic functionality. For example, the camera functionality is pretty basic. We’re starting to see more third-party apps, but they’re Web-based, and some aren’t very good.”

• The usability test was based on true usability: how user-friendly the device is to use, and how easy it was to learn.

  “People can eventually learn to use any device. But that’s not true usability. We wanted to see how long it took to figure out how to use the phones. That’s the difference between learnability and usability.”

The basic functionality as a win for overall usability has been an Apple trademark for a long, long time. More features doesn’t make for a better device, that’s a cornerstone of good user interfaces.

[via]

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iPhone is Usability Champ