I love thoughtful programming.
I crave innovations that make our lives easier.
And ultimately, I appreciate a good product.
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Apple products and design. I think it’s served apple well to control most aspects of the user experience. It helps to create a sense of consistency and when it serves THAT purpose…I approve. However, sometimes Apple (and others) take their bright ideas too far and stifle competition and choice for the consumer. So I’m going to let loose a few gripes I have.
1. Safari 4 has this “nifty” feature that will make auto-suggestions in the Google search bar.
There are two problems with this.
- You CAN’T turn it off
- You can’t change the search to anything other than Google.
The first bullet: it’s great that Safari wants to make lives easier by offering suggestions but by making it impossible to turn off this feature, Safari 4 has effectively ruined Inquisitor. Inquisitor, for those that don’t know is Search…on crack. With Inquisitor I can search any search engine I want, right from the same Google search bar that sits in Safari by default. It makes keyword AND website suggestions. I’d love if Safari had the suggestions on by default with an option to turn off. That way the majority of users would get the benefit while not punishing power users and those 3rd party apps that improve the browser. I almost switched to Firefox permanently because of this. Though I’m still using both.
I am still making this plea, Apple, allow us to turn off the auto suggestion feature!
The second bullet point, I love Google and normally I wouldn’t even dream of switching my default search engine to anything other than Google. And with Inquisitor I didn’t have to, other search engines could just be options beneath my default Google search. Now, I want to try out Bing just for fun, to see what it’s like. Is that so wrong? Why can’t I do that?
2. iPhone interface.
I love my iPhone, it’s 1 of the 5 best things I’ve ever purchased. It’s incredible. I think it’s served Apple very well to control the user experience. However, there is a certain lack of customization mainly in the home screen. By sandboxing off the iPhone there are a number of innovations I’ve seen in Jailbroken versions that I think would be fantastic on the iPhone.
This leads me to my point. Tightly controlling the user experience is a good thing….sometimes. Other times it gets in the way. Apple has done a great job with a number of their products but they have to be careful not to control too much. Just look at the problems they’ve had with the App Store and the approval process. People want options, which is one of the reasons that Firefox has been so successful, it’s still one of the reason’s people buy PC’s with Windows. I’m not advocating that Apple open the floodgates, because with that openness does come some problems, but locking things down has it’s problems too.