A common refrain is that computers are too complicated for ordinary people to use. Yet mostly when I see people sat with a notebook on their lap I don’t see frustration. The confusion tends to come when something doesn’t work as expected. Naturally bad design plays a big part in this but the biggest stumbling block comes when a dialog box like this pops up:

What is an average user to do when confronted with this? Everything after the first line is utter gobbledygook. Even to a software developer much of this is unintelligible — you’d need the source code to get much a clue about what’s going on and most vendors do not share.

So, if almost no-one has a chance of understanding this, why are users asked to make a choice? It’s bad enough that the application crashed but why force the user to make a decision about something they don’t understand?

Worse, let’s remember that this is actually an improvement over what has come before. Remember the “Unrecoverable Application Error” in early versions of Windows?

I was therefore fascinated when I realised what my iPhone was doing. Initially I thought that the software was just very reliable, which was pretty naïve of me.

When an iPhone application crashes you just get returned to the home screen. No nasty error message with impenetrable text and confusing options; often you’re not even aware that anything bad has happened. Behind the scenes the crash is recorded and is reported back to Apple next to you sync with your computer.

It would be easy to conclude that “no error message” is the way to go, however the iPhone has a couple of other qualities that makes it work. Firstly the applications seem to save their state regularly, which means that even if there is a crash you rarely lose anything of significance. Contrast this with most PC application which tend to crash only when you have an hour of unsaved work. Secondly, while not automatic, relaunching the crashed application is almost instant.

The result of these three elements together is that users are not punished for finding defects in the software. Isn’t that the way it should be?

There’s this feeling in the Mac community that you should avoid the first iteration of any new Apple product. Yet back at the beginning of this decade I went out and foolishly put £350 down on a first generation iPod. Sure, it looks clunky now. It’s bigger and lower capacity than the current revisions, has a monochrome screen and the scroll-wheel actually rotates. But for a version one product it was remarkably well rounded.

The same is kind of true of the first generation iPhone. Most complaints have been about missing features like GPS or 3G data. This side of the Atlantic there have been complains about the lack of MMS (which is pretty lame for such an expensive phone). But, for me, the only significant missing feature is a to-do list. Yes, I know I can use the Notes application, but will that sync with iCal? (No in case you didn’t know.)

In fact, Where I Think iPhone Went Wrong is probably not something that will make any list of bullet points on a Jobs Keynote. It’s pretty much a single use-case: one handed operation.

One of the things that really bugged me about Windows Mobile¹ is that almost everything required the use of the stylus. Not only was the stylus small and easy to lose, it requires both hands to operate the phone. Not great when you’re trying to make a call while carrying a latte or juggling several items at the supermarket and calling your significant other for advice on which to purchase.

The iPhone is way better than Windows Mobile in this regard, but there are two areas where it doesn’t work quite so well:

• Multi-touch. Clearly this is a key feature for Apple, and rightly so. The pinch gesture is unique as far as I know, intuitive and works well. But you need two hands! One to hold the phone, the second to swipe the screen. Let’s say you open a graphical email message. The sizing is all wrong of course and you need to zoom in. In addition to the pinch you can also double-tap. Except that’s quite tricky to do with your thumb and half the time you end up accidentally tapping a link and switching over to Safari. What I’d like to see is something like the Photos application. If you’re holding the machine vertically and a landscape image appears you simply rotate the handset. The same trick works with wide web-pages, but not mail messages. Pain.
• Orientation awareness. This is kind of related. Why does Safari know which way you’re holding your phone but mail does not? Worse, except by experience, how can you know which applications support switching orientation and which do not? (You can’t.)

These probably sound like very small points but when everything else works so well they stand out. I don’t think this is really a fundamental problem. It’s just fit-and-finish, that final 10% of software development that takes 90% of the time.

I am hoping that Apple gets around to fixing it soon — I need this much more than the much-hyped and almost due “enterprise” functionality — but if not then the title of this post allows me two follow up posts entitled “Some More of iPhone’s Greatest Mistakes” and “Who is this iPhone Person Anyway?”² I am looking forward to not having to write them.

1. The version with the stylus is, I think, these days known as Windows Mobile Professional. There’s also a version for actual phones rather than PDAs with built in phones that works only using a key-pad. Maybe I chose the wrong WM device.↩
2. This is a reference to Oolon Colluphid’s god-busting trilogy.↩

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In a previous post about Internet Service Providers I hinted that their current business model — where it’s possible to download as much as you like when you like — was unsustainable. Since I’ve had a few people asking me about that I thought I’d dig into the subject.

The first question that we need to ask before we get any further is, What does your ISP do? This may look like a silly question at first glance but exactly what data they pass where is the key to understanding how they make (and lose) money.

Unfortunately the answer gets rather complicated very quickly so I’m going to make some assumptions. First I’m going to assume that you’re in the UK. Second, that you’re using ADSL and not cable or something more exotic. And thirdly I’ll assume that your ISP hasn’t “unbundled the local loop.” If you don’t know what this means¹ you can be reasonably sure that the following is, if not correct, then fairly close to the truth.

Let’s look at what happened when you tried to download this web page.

1. The request went from your computer to your router or modem.
2. Your phone line is owned by BT, so they (and not your ISP) pick up the request.
3. BT move your request around the country trying to find the nearest connection to your ISP.
4. BT hands over the request to your ISP.
5. Your ISP does not have direct access to every site on the Internet. Instead they probably pass your request onto another supplier. This is called “peering.”
6. This other supplier actually ends up talking to the machine that this web site is hosted on.

The interesting thing about this is that the bit that your ISP directly controls is actually fairly small. Of course there’s much more to it than I have listed above and it’s clearly an important part, but fairly small nevertheless.

Your ISP pays both BT and the peer for their services. BT get paid both for the number of customers and for the amount of data flowing the over the network. And the peers also charge by the amount of data transferred.

Yet you most likely pay a fixed fee for your Internet connection.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a supplier receiving a fixed payment and paying a variable fee. This happens all the time. For example your mortgage may well be fixed rate even though the rate that your bank pays to borrow the same money is highly variable. And the wholesale price for gas and electricity varies on an hour-by-hour basis yet your tariff only changes once or twice a year.

However, two things have been happening in the consumer Internet connection world.

Firstly usage has been rocketing upwards. An increasing number of people are using high-bandwidth sites such as YouTube and the BBC iPlayer, and services such as movies downloads and iTunes².

On the other side prices have been pushed down, with companies offering free broadband when taken with another service and other ISPs having to respond.

The cost of bandwidth does, of course, drop over time and ISPs are also consolidating which also reduces their overhead, yet I think it’s fair to say that usage is increasing faster than costs are dropping.

Okay, so that’s the problem. What is the solution?

An unrealistic solution, and one I see fairly frequently from the people that tend to download the most, is that the ISPs should just bite the bullet and provide the service that they promised. They said “unlimited” so they should mean unlimited. I have a certain sympathy for this argument, in the sense that it’s a problem that the ISPs have made for themselves. However it should be clear that the numbers just do not add up.

The ISPs are choosing a second option: either selling their users surfing habits to third-parties or billing popular websites for access to their customers. Both seem to be abusing their own customers, and yet there is still no guarantee that these new revenue streams will cover the increasing costs.

It seems to me that the only solution that would work on a large scale is to charge end-users for the bandwidth that they actually use³. This may not be popular in the short-term, but it’s a whole lot better than them limiting what services you can use and when.

1. If you do know what it means any want the hard numbers, have a look on the plus.net blog.↩
2. Some people pin the blame on illegal downloads over peer-to-peer services. I deliberately left that off the list as typical bandwidth usage is drastically increasing even if you exclude infringing activities.↩
3. Of course the most likely scenario would be “bundles” of bandwidth, much as you buy bundles of texts or minutes for your mobile phone.↩

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I hesitate to say that it happens often, but people do sometimes talk about special abilities or super-powers, even if it’s phrased as a “party trick.” Today I realised that I have what might best be described as a special inability.

I took a quick wander into Wimbledon, the nearest town to where I live. It looked gloomy outside and the weather the previous day had been windy and a little chilly. I decided to wear a jumper and my jacket. It didn’t take me long to realise that I had misjudged the weather and that I was very warm.

This happens to me all the time.

It’s a skill that I’ve never had. I often go out only to find that I dramatically underestimated the weather. This time I dressed for arctic conditions but I can’t count the number of times that I’ve misjudged the situation the other way around.

Does this happen to everyone? In town no-one else seemed to have been caught out. Many were dressed in small jackets or jumpers — but not both — a few were in t-shirts.

How do they know?