The New Conversation

People are excited about Apple's iPhone. Expectations were super high when Steve Jobs made his presentation at Macworld. A phone, a tablet computer, a new graphic for MacOS were some of the rumors.
Apple seem to have pulled it off again. The company stock soared, the blogosphere went bezerk and even the pros were delighted by the new toy. A toy with lots of functionality.

The phone has a multitouch screen interface, email/gmail, browsing, searching, maps, video, iPod, a dog ear ui, built-in gps, a high resolution widescreen, it sends sms, it connects with three different WiFi flavours, has Bluetooth and a sensor telling the phone that the user would like a widescreen view and all that functionality with decent battery time. Steve Jobs presented a small miracle. The iPhone has everything.

But something is missing, something important drowned in this flood of f(x).

"Apple reinvents the phone"

I'm not sure what Apple mean by that quote but looking at Steve Jobs's presentation and the information on Apple's web site about iPhone I think they have made a phone with a lot of extra functionality and some astonishing interface details. They are, however, details. As far as I can tell, and others with me, this is not a reinvention of the phone.

Using a phone means having conversations and connecting with people. That's what Apple should focus on if they want to reinvent the phone.

A redesigned iPhone

This is the default screenview on your iPhone. It features the person you call most frequently. His name is Jimmy.

If you tap Jimmy's face you get to see his profile with contact details and possibly some other stuff. If you press the image a little longer iPhone calls Jimmy up.

These are Jimmy's details. They include his del.icio.us and Flickr names. Depending on what relationship you and Jimmy have you get to view different information.

Even though you call him at least three times a day Jimmy thinks you are an ordinary friend so you don't get to see the URL and login details to his personal porn archive, that's reserved for his girlfriend and beer buddies.

Jimmy is currently listening to some bland pop crap and if you are interested you can click the name of the song or band and iPhone will take you to the appropriate iPod view.

The song and artist names are underlined to show you that they're clickable but all data is clickable, not just the music. If you click the iPod word you reach the iPod starting screen. If you click an email address you get a form for writing a message to that address and so on.

The idea here is to help you access the right tool at the right time in a comfortable and pleasant fashion.

Listen to Jimmy

If Jimmy is close enough for his iPhone to connect with yours you can listen to each others music, just like iTunes.

If not you can still get his songs with one quick visit to the iPhone Store. Click the purchase button to download a copy.

All your contacts

Apple should expand their definition of a contact. All people could be in there, from those in your address book, people subscribing to the same mailing list as you, people who have used the same delicious or flickr tags, people in your physical vicinity and more.

Here's a view of your close friends and your office.

It works the same way as the default screenview. If you tap Jimmy's face you get to see his profile. If you press the face a little longer iPhone calls Jimmy up.

This interface looks and feels better than a standard text list. It's a more appropriate interface (245 kbyte pdf file) for your close friends.

The interface for your mailing list buddies is probably better in the list view fashion that Apple designed with dogear ui and all.

That's people. How about connecting?

Connecting with people can be more than just calling or emailing and we touched that subject when Jimmy shared some of his sorry ass preferences.

You can use iPhone to share all kinds of information; photos, bookmarks, messages, videos, music, position etcetera.

Who are you?

Your conversations and the stuff you share rest on the fact that you are you. iPhone knows that you are you and also who you are and therein lies Apple's key to an interesting future.

But iPhone doesn't know the real you, it just knows your profile, the data you've entered and created and maybe shared with other people. Your bookmarks give a hint of your interests but they're not you.

Well, this might not be the real you but it can be a very useful you.

• Your iPhone can automatically identify you to any online services you use. Less logins and less passwords.

and as Wired hints in this piece

• Since iPhone is equipped with Bluetooth and WiFi you can extend authorization to a computer nearby. Your desktop browser can login to different web sites automatically through the magic of wireless connectivity. Less logins and less passwords.

Automatic authentication becomes a job for iPhone and not just to access your email and online bookstore but also to your stationary apps. Photoshop, for example, could store and fetch your settings on a server.

Some possible connections. Note that data goes both to and from iPhone.

The Long View

The Long View for Apple and iPhone is to help people use their profile data in ways that create comfort and service.

Combining the iPod, iTunes and iTunes Store is one of the cleverest things I have seen Apple do. It makes the music experience so pleasant it freaks me out. There are many reasons why the combination works so well but I'd like to highlight one aspect, the user interface, that also is relevant to the future of the iPhone.

iPod, iTunes, iTunes Store, three tools, one interface

Here's a homemade composite of the iPod user interface

here's iTunes

and iTunes Store.

Similar wouldn't you say? Having similar user interfaces is one reason people like Apple's music trio, it makes the music experience more comfortable than with the
alternatives.

Here's an example of this idea in a different setting

Browsing photos

iPhone

iPhoto

and Flickr

Now these interfaces doesn't work the same way, they only look the same (almost), so I'm not trying to be correct. The point is that Apple could build combinations of hardware, software and services that use the same interface and thereby make the users experience better. In this instance they could make an Apple-Flickr interface from Flickr's API that harmonizes with iPhone and iPhoto.

Another example,

Browsing bookmarks

iPhone

Safari

del.icio.us

These examples illustrate the idea that Apple could make the ride smooth for users whether the company owns the data and tools or not. There are plenty of ways to streamline the user experience and the power that comes from this vastly exceeds the cost of dealing with third parties.

Why people pay money for music

The examples I mentioned can be compared to selling songs at the iTunes Store. People buy songs from Apple not because they can't find the music elsewhere, all music really is available online for free. People buy from Apple because it lets them ignore the hassles of peer to peer downloading. With Apple you know

• you are going to get the entire song
• it will have a certain quality
• you'll get it immediately

Apple charges for that comfort.

And they can do the same with profile data. Integrate iPhone with Apple's desktop software and web services in ways that help people utilize their personal data.

If Apple's integration is smoother than their competitors, and they're in a very good position to create smooth integration, then customers will continue to buy Apple equipment. The trick is not to own the data but to make apps and services that use the data to make people's lives comfortable and efficient.

The strategy gives the company flexibility to be creative and many ways to integrate their hardware with new software and services. In short, knowing your customer should be a very lucrative position.

Ironically Microsoft was aspiring for this grail a couple of years ago but, in what would be a cardinal twist of fate, they didn't have the right platform to leverage.

You rang?

We come back to where we started

Using a phone means having conversations and connecting with people

but we will also start having conversations with a new set of contacts.

The comfort and efficiency that Apple, or some other player, bring us will be the result of conversations with people and online services connected in sophisticated ways and presented in something that might resemble Nicholas Negroponte's legendary digital butler.

We might not want it to behave like an old school butler but we'll talk to it because it will bring just as much comfort as its predecessor.

At that point I'll be prepared to admit that Apple has reinvented the phone.