No company in consumer technology engenders as many rumours or as much wishful thinking as Apple, but even this takes the cake. Apparently the UK’s Daily Mail is short on real news, so they are reporting that an “industry insider” believes that Apple will be making all our dreams come true with a smaller and cheaper iPhone.
Apparently, this item will be the same size as the iPod Nano with a ClickWheel on the back. This goes against everything the iPod and iPhone lines were built around: simplicity of the user interface. Let’s think about it from two points of view:
First, the size of the screen will not lend itself to the iPhone’s big draw, the multitouch interface. Because it is directed by human fingers, multitouch is relatively clumsy. In my limited use of an iPhone, I found that I really needed the whole screen for it to be truly useful.
So, to get around this issue, we come to our second point. There is no way that a click wheel on the back of the device is going to constitute “simple”. First of all, telephone interfaces left the whole rotary thing behind decades ago. Secondly, you cannot put the damn thing on the back. How are you going to get any sort of visual feedback (like knowing what number you’re dialling)? This also have the effect of making the already tedious business of typing out text messages virtually impossible. And given that this product is going to be pitched at the lower-cost “pay-as-you-go market”, which tends to use SMS a lot, I don’t see it working out well.
If it’s a slow news day, by all means titillate us with rumours of new Apple products. It’s easy to imagine up something, attribute it to an anonymous “industry insider” and drive traffic to your site. But at least make it slightly plausible.