Dunno -- there's a point
I would've said the same a year ago, but having recently bought a refurbished 3rd-gen iPod Touch, I have to admit there is something very substantial to be said for Mr. Jobs' design philosophy, which seems in my (admittedly somewhat limited, at least so far) experience to have as a central axiom the intent to get the hell out of the user's way and let him do what he's there to do. I've never run across anything before which was as easy, or as comfortable, to use -- the only gripe I have is that the bloody thing's almost too small for my big square peasant hands, but of course, it being designed primarily for people who don't actually have to work for a living, that's to be expected.
Last week I had to spend a couple of hours futzing around with a client's HTC Android with Ice Cream Sandwich -- and what the hell kind of name is that for an OS, I ask you! -- and the difference was astounding! The Android seemed constantly driven to show off, with all sorts of iconified gibberish along the top bar, a keyboard apparently designed for Stephen Hawking if Stephen Hawking were a concert pianist, and the whole interface just absolutely cluttered with "look at me, I'm doing something!" nonsense. Also, in two hours of trying to get the Exchange ActiveSync client working, it ran down half its battery. Not even kidding -- it was around 60% when I started, and when I gave it back to the fellow, it was complaining that it was about to die, and all I was trying to do was get it to pick up mail!
Meanwhile, my humble little iPod, half a decade old, does an absolutely fabulous job of exactly what I'm talking about -- specifically, getting out of my way, so that I can do with it what I want to do with it. If I keep the wireless radio on, I have to charge it once a day or so; if I leave it switched off, it'll last a good three or four days between plug-ins, and that's given an hour or two of reading a day. (Tomes, by the way, is awesome, especially for those of us with multi-gigabyte collections of Plucker-formatted books which we weren't at all looking forward to re-converting -- and the iPod comes with Palatino already installed!) And, as sort of the cherry on top, this five-year-old iPod's Exchange ActiveSync client actually works, unlike Google's latest and greatest, which can't even manage to connect and authenticate. Granted, that's Google's latest and greatest as interpreted by HTC, or possibly by T-Mobile -- not really sure who's at fault there, but the point stands nonetheless.
(Now watch as all the Linux geeks come out from under their rocks to tell me the only thing wrong with Android is that I'm too stupid to use it correctly...)
What Apple's doing now strikes me as a natural extension of the UI design philosophy which makes my iPod such a joy to use -- but I think they're over-extending themselves, trying to reduce interface complexity beyond the minimum required to produce an interface which the user can understand well enough to be confident he can make it do what he wants it to do. Those concerned might be well advised to stick with older instances of Apple hardware until the company has had time to shake itself out properly, and show whether or not it's going to do as well under Cook as it did under Mr. Jobs. For myself, I doubt it severely; I don't see any way they can possibly replace him, and without that clear vision, I think they're going to get just as lost as they did in the dark days under Sculley -- but, with no one to rescue them, I don't think they will ever find their way out of the wilderness again.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
