This year, we’re told, is going to be the battle of the hardware — tablet, smart phone, netbook, notebook, all-in-one-pc, you name it. But, as I reinstalled Windows on my three-month-old computer for the second time in a month, I realized that this was the wrong way of looking at it. We’re just not ready to put up with stuff any more.
Pundits are arguing about whether it’s Apple’s game to win, or whether Google, with its revived Nexus phone and the cloud-only netbook, might steal the show. Or Microsoft, with their spanking new Windows phone? Maybe BlackBerry or Nokia will surprise us. Or is the race to the bottom, led by a plague of cheap Android phones?
I’m not a number cruncher, so I can’t tell you the figures. But I can tell you something more important: Shiny though these new devices are, it’s not about them. It’s about the experience users have with them.
I used to roll my eyes when Microsoft execs talked about the user experience. As if sitting in front of a computer was somehow akin to bungee jumping or crossing the Kalahari. The truth is, it’s not. Most of us spend time in front of a computer because we have to, or because we lack the wit to go do something more interesting.
Microsoft never managed it, because their user interfaces have always spawned experiences at other ends of the scale — such as “interface-bafflement”, “menu-disorientation” and eventually “redmond rage”.
But Apple have gotten close: There’s definitely a buzz one gets from the initial contact with an iPad or iPhone. Or, dare I say it, the clunky Kindle, with its somber grey finish and eye-soothing display.
Apple has definitely raised our expectations about what we should get from a computing device. Before it was utilitarian, practical, to be carried around in a black shoulder bag that was indistinguishable from one you’d carry your lunch in. Nobody stroked their Toshiba Satellite, or turned it in just to watch the screen glow. At least no one I know.
In a few years we’ve moved from utility to necessity to accessory. Along the way we’ve all become touch typists — how did that happen? Now we’ve all learned a new form of interface — the touch, pinch, and swish. How did that happen?
My theory is that we embrace new things, new ways of doing things, for two reasons: One, because it makes or saves us money, two because we think it’ll improve our chances of someone sleeping with us, or at least admiring us, or at least not thinking we’re hopelessly provincial.
Examples of this are things like Skype, which people figured out because they saved oodles of cash on phone calls. We buy fancy phones because we think people are more likely to sleep with us. And use Facebook because, well everyone else is.
But we also do these things because they’re easier. Skype was not the first internet telephone service to come along, but it was the easiest. Facebook wasn’t the first social network by far, but it was the easiest to set up and blissfully free of all the childish and headache-inducing customization of its rivals.
IPhones are, well, iPhones. People buy an iPhone for lots of reasons, but the main one is that they can pretty much figure out how to use it out of the box. And it feels good, right from when you cradle it in your palm to when you kill your first evil pig with an angry bird.
It’s a simple equation and it was one that Microsoft has never mastered.
Consider this: To launch a music file in Windows Seven I must go through at least five dialog boxes, each one more confusing than the last. To read email that isn’t in a browser I must download an extra piece of software that at least twice tries to trick me into downloading more software than I need. Even then, it has already installed a toolbar I don’t want. To view webpage I must first get past a welcome screen that has no cancel or “don’t show me this again” button — breaking, I suspect, Microsoft’s own user interface guidelines.
This is why I think Apple will always find a following — among the relatively high earners, people who care less about the dosh, and more about the experience — and why Microsoft will find itself competing with a different crowd: The Open Source Ubuntu folks, who offer a variation on the Microsoft model without all the pestering. And, more important, the Chrome OS model from Google.
The more we rely on our computing devices, the more we rely on an experience that makes that as pleasurable and seamless as possible. And fast. We expect things to happen quickly these days
With regards to the desktop and laptop computer. I foresee serious problems ahead for Microsoft if it doesn’t get its act together on this. The operating system is still a god-awful mess, compounded by Microsoft’s own dumb tricks to lure us further into its web.
It needs to go look at how people use their phones and use web services to see how things have changed.
If not I foresee a mass exodus — to Apple’s arms, if folk don’t mind paying the premium — or to Google’s Chrome OS of life in the cloud, or failing that to Ubuntu. It may not be a race to the bottom, but a flight to something less awful.
© 2011 Loose Wire Pte. Ltd.
This story cannot be reproduced without written permission from the writer. Jeremy Wagstaff is a commentator on technology.
You can reach him via email at jeremy@loosewire.org.
