Posted by Andrew Edwards on January 12th, 2011 at 5:03 pm

Putting my Mac bigotry on hold, I purchase the best Smartphone offered by my carrier, which at the time was the Android by Google. If I had waited a couple of days and heard the Verizon/iPhone announcement, this blog post would not have been necessary. But I was in dire need of a Smartphone, and moved perhaps too quickly.

My Android was delivered to me with a brief "training session" that explained exactly nothing of any use. This was my first hint that the Android was getting off on the wrong foot with this unabashed admirer of all things Jobs hath wrought.

Of course it always takes time to learn a new interface. So I set out to make a call to one of the contacts that got imported from my little dumb clamshell phone that had just a dialpad (eg. it was in fact a "telephone"). The exercise, which involved pressing several cryptic buttons and several cryptic, small icons, proved me not smart enough to use this particular Smartphone without help.

So I got out the instruction book and was instructed to find out more on line, which I could do with the Smartphone I did not know how to use. So I went to the Smartphone and got on line, where a deeply hidden user note within Verizon's help dungeon told me a number of steps to take that would make dialing easier; except that it involved configuring unlocatable screens and deleting undeletable "helper" tools that seemed, in their overeagerness to help, to have made a hash of my user experience.

For two days my family found me next to intolerable as I struggled to make calls and send texts with the Android. My model could only output numerals to text by making you HOLD DOWN an additional key in order to type the numerals.The (virtual) dialpad itself was rather small and it was cluttered with unneeded information about whom you had last spoken on the phone with--but with no apparent way to simply call them back.

Also I found the herky-jerky behavior of the icons as they moved from "area" to "area" rather disconcerting, and it was even more confusing when the OS permitted the same icon to be present in both an "applications tray" and another screen that had nothing to do with the applications tray. It also seemed that, if I wanted to delete unwanted applications, like the pre-loaded and much unwanted Blockbuster Video app and other apps that ran in the background forcing me into the slow lane of the information superhighway, I had to delete them by going to an appropriately (--not!) named module called "Marketplace".

However, in Marketplace, I found mainly a rather disconcerting array of hacker-created "apps" that seemed in no way trustworthy; and found also that certain pre-loaded applications (Blockbuster) could not actually be deleted at all.

Finally I noticed that a number of apps would simply not function unless I gave them permission to read my personal information including Facebook accounts, contact lists etc (which smacked of Google's omnivorous approach to all data all the time); this I would not grant, and these applications therefore did not want to play ball with me. I did not throw the Android, but I eyed it now with something like loathing.

In fear for my family's well-being, I returned the Android and got an iPhone at the nearby AT&T outlet. I inquired about the infamous "dropped call" syndrome and was informed that "OS 4.2 fixes that" and I decided to take the chance.

I will give half the credit of success to my familiarity with Apple interface paradigms, having been using a Mac since 1984's 128K RAM model. But the other half is because Apple knows how to design an interface that goes beyond intuitive: its just bloody makes sense, is all. There's nothing crafty or confusing about it. You need a dial pad? It's large, simple, and easy to get to. Delete? Hold down on what you want to delete until the icon begins shaking in fear. Press the little "x" that appears next to the icon. Poof. You don't have to "go" anywhere or "configure" anything to make this happen.

Setting up email was so easy, I did it while listening to someone tell me a rather dull story about their exercise habits. When there was a broken certificate at one of my corporate accounts, the iPhone asked me if I should just continue anyway and I said yes, and it continued happily configuring for me. Moments later I was seeing emails from disparate accounts, as had been my hope.

As for Apps: Yes, please. I downloaded some familiar free ones and a couple of paid businessy ones and typical of the iPhone interface, I was never at a loss as to what exactly was going on at any particular time during download or install (in fact, the process was nearly invisible to me).

A couple of other impressive items were the two-sided camera and the steel case itself, which seemed both comfortable in the hand and sturdy enough to survive a fall. When I got home, everyone wanted to play with it--unlike the Android, which they looked at but did not pine for. And while coverage at AT&T is not as robust as Verizon, I have not had any dropped calls. And of course it hooks into my iTunes account and is an iPod with a phone in it...

...I'm done now with my serenade.

What can be the useful marketing message here? Don't buy an Android? No. Some folks obviously prefer them, though I can't imagine why (except for the lack of Verizon coverage for the iPhone, which now will change).

The message is: User Experience is Paramount.

There is a reason why Microsoft robbed Apple when it built the Windows OS. There is a reason why Android essentially copied the iPhone paradigm. And there is a reason why both attempts come off with little aplomb.

The technical reason is that neither Windows nor Android are really graphical interfaces at all, but rather graphics pasted onto a technophile's laboratory of spaghetti code (and since when has Google, an ad-serving company, been an interface mogul?). The iPhone was conceived and built from the ground up with only user experience in mind.

As marketers, we want to hew more towards Apple in its devotion to user experience, and away from Google and its "put it out there and see what comes barking" paradigm. We want our digital offering to be seamless, welcoming, informative, beyond easy, and powerfully effective.

Two cases in point: Apple's billboard ad for iPad has no words in it except iPad, but you don't need any. Apple's billboard ad for Beatles on iTunes has no words in it except "Now on iTunes" and you don't need any. In both cases they decided to dispense with cleverness and go for direct visual communication.

The direct communication paradigm (visual or no) can only be fulfilled by listening to the customer; by watching what customers do, and what they seem to prefer; and then giving it to them without qualm and without holding back for back-office reasons.

We marketers will want to remember, like Apple, that the only thing that matters is the user experience, because it will be a paramount factor for success. And that we want to remember, like Google, that if we allow technologists to build for technologists, we are not building experiences for non-technical people (in other words, "the rest of us").

Or, you could just say I must be a Mac bigot.