Apple’s recent interface development path is beginning to differentiate the Apple brand for consumers in ways that transcend the “feature” set and move into the physical way that consumers interact with the product.  The iPhone and iPod Touch finally incorporate innovative touch-based interface ideas that Bruce Tognazzini has been talking about on AskTog.com for nearly 7 years.  With the coming release of the Leopard operating system (OS X 10.5), a host of other brilliant operating system features are coming up.

It’s in the discussion of Leopard that Jobs makes a number of interesting remarks about interface :

“But Mr. Jobs said he was struck by the success of the multitouch interface that is at the heart of the iPhone version of the OS X. This allows a user to touch the screen at more than one point to zoom in on a portion of a photo, for example.

“People don’t understand that we’ve invented a new class of interface,” he said.

He contrasted it with stylus interfaces, like the approach Microsoft took with its tablet computer. That interface is not so different from what most computers have been using since the mid-1980s.

In contrast, Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.”

Jobs’ desire to “de-verb” interface clarifies the idea that for years we’ve been using the mouse or the stylus to interact with software commands through language, rather than actually doing the action in question.  If your next Mac’s entire screen is a touch screen (and is accompanied by a corresponding set of physical movements versus “commands”), Apple will have removed a subtle but extant barrier between you and their product.

But why is this relevant to the brand?  We’ve long lauded Apple’s product design as a differentiator and clear identity marker for the Apple brand.  Without its design, Apple would be competing on roughly the same field as Sony, Compaq, Dell, and a host of other hardware platforms that have all the aesthetic elegance of a Las Vegas brothel. 

As much as an expanded multitouch interface is about usability, it is also about bringing consumers closer to the Apple brand.  Moving from “click object > click verb” interface to multitouch interface integrates product design with end-user physicality in an entirely new way.  It is both a differentiator Apple and a facilitator of the product-consumer connection.

Though the mouse may not disappear yet, it’s worth noting that Apple’s investing significant interest in a new sort of physicality.  “Think different” may be set for “touch different” in the next few years.

**to read more articles by this author, click on the name under the headline**

Comments (3)

Name

Title

Comment

Add Comment