Aehso’s Output

Motorola executive gets it.

At CES 2005 Motorola’s president of the personal devices business gave a very interesting speech. This guy (or his speech writers) gets it alright - people want their new phone to have all the new features but they won’t use them. 99.5% of the day where is (a normal person’s) phone? Somewhere within reach, but discretely inactive. .4% of the time, you’re using it for a voice call or messaging. The other .1% of the time is the stuff the phone networks keep trying to ram down our throats - picture messaging, games, cameras. Useless crap. What’s most important in most consumers mind? Style first, usability second, useless crap a distant third. (Unfortunately for Nokia, they occasionally go a bit too far with the styling.

Maybe that’s why I like Apple’s stuff so much - simple interfaces to very capable and reliable ‘things’ that perform a specific function. I can’t wait for the Motorola “iPhone” but I really hope the Apple UI designers teach the Motorola phone engineers how to write a minimal interface first. My guess is the first stab will be a disaster to use but the second generation might be worth a look.

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