Farewell iPod halo effect - hullo, iPhone Bliss effect. How an Apple phone will bring home to millions the essential difference between Apple and 'the rest'.

Home > Of things Mac > Farewell iPod halo effect - hullo, iPhone Bliss effect. How an Apple phone will bring home to millions the essential difference between Apple and 'the rest'.

Farewell iPod halo effect - hullo, iPhone Bliss effect. How an Apple phone will bring home to millions the essential difference between Apple and 'the rest'.

Date Created: 16 Dec, 2006, 05:09 PM

You can't run, hide or be distracted enough by techtalk about Vista or the lame Zune to miss all the blogchatter about the imminent release of the Apple iPhone.

Unlikely to be called that, since www.iphone.com already exists as a VoIP service (see upper left, and at least they like Macs to judge from the TiBook used on its webpage, below right), it seems it's a foregone conclusion we'll see an Apple phone soon.

It's almost as if by sheer force of will and pixel density, Apple is being compelled to produce an iPodPhone device lest it render the masses (and shareholders) huge disappointment in a few weeks time at MacWorld San Francisco.

If it isn't released then, and the software/hardware that is released on the day of the Jobs' Keynote isn't sufficiently compelling, Apple's share price will be punished out of despondence and anger. And without Apple mentioning a word about an iPhone device before or during the Jobs' Keynote.

Funny old business, isn't it? Of course if the share price takes a dive as the investment market (which I think still doesn't understand Apple) reels in horror at its own hubris, that will be a brilliant time to pick up cheaper shares because those of us who've watched Apple all these years know that shifts in share price does not affect Steve Jobs' intensity of interest in product innovation and useability.

If Jobs has said 2007 will be a remarkable year for Apple innovation, who am I to disbelieve? The company has the runs on the board, and it seems even the phone companies are looking for Apple to join the fray and shake up the business.

What is the big hope for an Apple-designed phone? Read as many analysts' writings as you wish but it comes down to a single common factor: simplicity.

Or more accurately, how easy it is for the consumer to just dial and receive calls, and then have the technology get the heck out the way. For those users who want more from their phone, then those details should be hidden from view, but accessible with just one or two clicks or thumb movements. Then all is laid bare, yet still simple to use. Out of the way when not needed or understood, easily available and powerful when the need arises.

Hmm, sounds alot like OS X, doesn't it?

That's the hallmark of Apple's designs that those of us who look beyond CPU power and initial price look for: ease of use, then get out of my way while I'm being creative or collaborative or whatever it is I wish to do with the product.

If Apple releases such a device soon (and for me it's still an if, but a qualified one because I'm hanging on to my old but reliable SonyEricsson T-610 in the hope....), it will take over from the iPod halo effect as the next in line to bring to the masses the quintessence of Apple's being: the Less is More philosophy.

My guess is for some techpundits an Apple iPhone will be so simple and apparently lacking in features, yet still claiming a price premium, that it will cop huge derision, and "I don't get it" comments, just as the first iPod did five years ago.

But maybe, just maybe, in the world of the cell phone, it won't happen this way.

When the iPod was released in 2001, there were just a handful of hard-drive based mp3 players on the market, when the portable CD and Walkman devices ruled. Those white earbuds took some time to become so ubiquitous.

Not so the cellphone. No longer a luxury item, but a must-have gizmo whose development has proceeded way ahead of people's needs, to include so many add-ons and features ("because we can") that this now essential device is the bane of frustration for many users due to featuritis.

An Apple phone will cut through this nonsense, and the new halo effect (if that term is to continue to be abused since it refers to the false attribution of qualities) will not be about design and emotional connection to a product as it is for the iPod, but it will bring to the masses Apple's Less is More design mantra more powerfully than the iPod ever could.

Using an Apple-designed phone several times a day, in different places with different people for different purposes, will drive home how Apple gets the user's basic needs ("it just works") more than any other Apple device I can think of ... (and here's hoping Jobs will prove me wrong come Macworld).

And drives home, even with the improvements Microsoft's Vista may bring to the user (over Xp), that Apple knows people, while the other mob might know PCs (but not people, by extension).

Maybe Apple has sold in excess of 60 million iPods world-wide, and a proportion of those consumers who are Windows-owners have gone on to at least sample if not buy other Apple products.

But with an Apple phone, we won't be talking halo effect. More like the Bliss effect when essential technology just works.

Essential technology that works like the end user expects must surely be the holy grail, leading to Bliss.

So out with the old halo effect, and in with the new Bliss effect.