Defending the Apple User Experience
I have owned many computers in my life, and only one of them hasn’t been an Apple computer (a TI 99/4a). Even when I was 13 and buying my first Performa, I understood that an Apple computer was a boutique computing experience.
On too many occasions to count, I was reminded that I could get more computing power for considerable cheaper if I bought a DOS Box or some other Windows-based machine. To be honest, I never cared. I’ve always felt more comfortable using an Apple product in that they portrayed a mental model that naturally mapped to how I viewed the computation landscape. Yes, even with the Newton and regrettably with the Motorola Rokr.
The only downside to my Apple allegiance over the years has been the lack of available applications. I love videogames, but I never had access to a fraction of the library that was developed for more popular computing platforms. Until recently, it was a rare occasion that I would have access to the same productivity or creativity tools within the same release timeframe as Windows users.
Despite all this, I remained loyal to Apple when all factors except their superior user experience would have me abandon ship.
…and then July 10, 2008 happened. Suddenly developers were publicly complaining that they couldn’t get approved to be on an Apple platform fast enough. As a lifelong Apple user, it was nice to feel the 3rd party love. That being said, I did download a few apps that just didn’t feel like that Apple experience I had come to know and love and I deleted them fairly quickly.
Then Adobe Max 2009 happened, and it was announced that developers would be able to use the Flash IDE to create native iPhone applications. Soon after developers rejoiced in their anticipated ability to develop some breed of homogenous, monoid-esque applications once and then simultaneously deploy them for just about every mobile platform out there. All technical arguments aside, I firmly believe that this would have significantly affected the quality of my user experience because suddenly my Apple experience would have included shades Android, Blackberry, and WebOS experiences.
Poor, poor UX freaks of nature.
I’ll admit that I’m a snob. I firmly believe in the concept of platform exceptionalism and I’ve continually reaffirmed this belief over the years by giving AAPL large sums of money. This is why I frankly laugh when “developers” say that Apple stopped being Apple in banning apps created with the CS5 cross-compiler from being approved for the App Store.
All this culminates in the following basic question…
Who should Apple be more loyal and beholding to? Developers who have just decided to come to the party in the last 2 years or loyalists who have been willing to pay boutique prices for superior user experiences over the last 20 – 30 years?
Framed within that context, it must have been a no brainer for Apple.
posted by Dakota Brown on May 6th, 2010 at 9:40 pm Permanent link to this post
4 Responses to “Defending the Apple User Experience”
Exactly how I feel. There is nothing I hate more than working on a windows box and having to deal with a myriad of workflow and interface concepts. I appreciate what Apple has done and continues to do. I think it’s great that the other platforms are there, but until they figure out the whole user experience I can’t really take them seriously.
I think that APPLE should stop so people can just go to there friends and just talk to them in person.
I’m a recent convert to the mac. I love using a mac to work and I giggle to myself as my colleagues take 10 mins to start up their PCs only to have error after error throughout the day.
But how do you explain the user experience that is itunes?
I’d say that iTunes, in its current state, is less about that singular application’s user experience and more about the broader Apple consumer experience. It is going to take a little bit to get to my point, so bear with me…
iTunes started out as a mechanism for playing and managing digital music…and then it evolved into the mechanism by which to manage which music is transferred to your iDevice. Photos came next, then games, then videos, then apps, and now eBooks. As you mentioned this has resulted in rather cluttered UX that seems to be a bit un-Apple. I can theorize that this is intentionally un-fixed at this moment in time for 2 reasons… First, something else is coming. Second, and far more interesting, what exists serves Apple’s current consumer strategy.
So…
1) Something else is coming…
Steve Jobs recently said at D8 that Apple hasn’t figured out cloud computing to their standards…yet. He specifically cited wireless iDevice syncing as an example of this. One could assume that this is a hint at iTunes X (10.0) which is a milestone Jobs prefers to use for radical re-launches.
2) What exists serves Apple’s current consumer strategy
Ian Bogost recently wrote a post where he likened Apple’s recent pace of change to personal computing to the fashion industry’s seasonal reinvention of itself ( http://bogo.st/d8 ). Every season or two Steve Jobs does his thing on the catwalk, and his new line becomes the rage.
So while an iDevice is a durable piece of consumer electronics, it is intended to be socially disposable. Once a new one exists, the old one starts to go out of style. Apple has conditioned us to replace our devices in order to stay in style. The old ones… They become hand-me-downs or get thrown in the back of the closet like last year’s shoes. It is easy for us to cast these relics away because Apple has made it easy to do so.
Recently my running iPod died. I felt genuinely in inconvenienced between when that happened and when I was able to get to the Apple store to get a replacement (thank you warranty). As soon as I connected that new device to iTunes, it become a carbon copy of the old one. Nothing was missing and everything was exactly where it should be. That’s when it occurred to me that the physicality of an iDevice isn’t what makes it ours. After all, everyone is basically waking around with rough the same piece of consumer electronics. …but most iDevices are incredibly unique and personalized. As a direct result of the owner’s footprint, the experience of using 2 identical pieces of hardware can be radically different, but strangely familiar in the same stroke.
So why doesn’t Apple fix iTunes? Because, in the respect that it allows us to maintain a constant mobile identity as we fashionable jump from iDevice to iDevice, it ain’t broken.