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Though I literally had itchy fingers to start playing with my iPhone, I resisted the impulse and waited for the sync to finish. After all, it'd be hard to test it properly without at least some music, videos, photos, and contacts on it.
That's when things became truly amazing. The touch interface of the iPhone can be described, but to understand it you must actually try it. It's a feeling, not a scientific formula. The iPhone evokes an emotion, rare among electronics.
My first touch was moving the slider to unlock the iPhone -- that already classic gesture Steve Jobs demoed back at Macworld last January. I'd wondered just what that felt like. Did it feel like a you were really sliding a physical slider? How hard or easy was it to do?
It turns out the slider is brilliant: it follows your finger drag with ease, but if you let go too soon (before the far end), it snaps back as though pulled by springs. There's an arrow on the drag button, pointing in the direction you need to pull it to unlock. The gray words "Slide to unlock" pulse with animated left-to-right white glow that moves across the words, highlighting them and subtly reinforcing the notion that you need to drag to the right.
Once unlocked, the screen fades to black and the iPhone desktop -- "Home" -- zooms into view as icons slide into position from off screen. The animation is incredibly fluid, the icons brilliantly colored and vivid.
The first thing I noticed was how responsive it feels. There's no lag or delay when you press a button. The screen immediately responds with animation of the new application zooming larger from the center. When you are in an application and press the Home button, the application's screen shrinks down to nothing and the Home icons slide down into place.
These animations are not gratuitous -- they are essential in how they give the user feedback as to what is happening. The shrinking app says "I'm going away," while the arriving Home icons cry out "Here we are." The effect is warm and welcoming, and so subtle it just feels natural and inevitable.
My first experience was with the Weather widget, a simple but remarkably elegant application. It looks as glorious as the one in Mac OS X, except on the iPhone you can have multiple weather "pages." You simply tap the small "i" in the lower right corner of the widget to configure it, adding or deleting cities.
When I first did this I found it easy to add several cities, but then I couldn't tell how to switch the display between them. But it seemed logical they'd be side by side, so I tried swiping my finger across the display. Sure enough, this scrolled the weather panes horizontally, moving one off and another on.
Scrolling seems like such a simple thing, especially those of us accustomed to computers. But the reality is that it's confusing for beginners who don't understand the concept and often fail to notice the thumb on a scrollbar. Scrolling on the iPhone, however, feels natural, like flipping a page or moving a sheet of paper across the table in front of you. There's virtually no learning curve because it's something we already know how to do.
The page flicking in the Weather widget is one of my favorite activities. It's so amazing I just sit there and flick back and forth between weather reports. I have no idea how much research Apple did, but they got the physics exactly right. You can slowly drag a weather pane to one side and it will move with your finger, bringing a portion of the next pane into view. If you let go before the pane has moved 50%, it will snap back into position with a nifty little bounce as it "hits" the wall. If you drag it more than 50% and let go, it slides off screen as though being pushed by the new one.
But that's just the beginning. What if you attempt to scroll past the end? iPhone allows this, to an extent. Say I'm on the first weather pane and I drag it to the right. There's nothing to the left since it's the first pane, but iPhone lets me drag it but the drag is sluggish, as though stuck in mud and resisting. There's just a hint of it, but it's enough to make you realize you're at the end (or the beginning). When you let go, the pane slides back into position -- it does not snap -- and there is no bounce when it hits the wall.
But even more brilliant is how iPhone handles finger flicking. It is astonishingly sensitive. I can give it the faintest little touch, a tiny push in a direction, where my finger moves maybe a few millimeters, and yet that's enough: iPhone scrolls the pane! A tap does not do this -- it only works if my finger actually moves on the screen (a push or drag).
The scrolling is speed sensitive. If I drag my finger across slowly, the pane slowly moves off and is replaced by the new one. If I give it a quick flick with my finger, the pane zips off instantly. The result is that scrolling feels real. Your tiniest movement has instant ramifications, just like in the real world. It's brilliant.
Of course Apple's consistent, too. Though I was playing with this feature in the Weather widget, scrolling photos or contacts or web pages works the same way and is just as responsive. In Contacts, when you flick your finger the names spin by quickly and gradually slow to a stop like that big wheel on the Price Is Right.
One of the keys to making the interface's animation so fluid and natural is the iPhone's high resolution display. I adore it. Type is crisp and readable even at microscopic sizes and colors are vibrant. Such high resolution allows for subtle natural shading, gorgeous transparency, and fine detail. A good deal of the iPhone's elegant interface comes from the ability to display fine typography and obtain maximum use of the limited screen real estate with tiny fonts and maintain readability.
Next: In Part 4, Marc explores the Internet with the iPhone.
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 1 of 10
Buying the iPhone
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 2 Of 10
Activation and Syncing
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 3 of 10
Using the iPhone
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 4 of 10
Customization
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 5 of 10
Exploring the Applications
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 6 of 10
Exploring the Internet
iPhone:
First Impressions Part 7 of 10
Exploring Photography on the iPhone
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 8 of 10
Working With eMail
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 9 of 10
Using the iPhone as a Phone
iPhone:
First Impressions - Part 10 of 10
iPod on the iPhone
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