02.21.09 - iPhone as a music player? Not without changes.

First off, let me say, I love my iPhone. I love it more then you really should of an inanimate gadget. However as a music player, it sucks. When the iPhone was released, I was hoping it would replace my iPod and now Zune as my full time music player, but to my disappointment that was not the case. You can’t control that damn thing without looking at the screen. The lack of textural feedback really makes this a sometime (and I mean sometime) music player.

With the iPod and Zune you can “feel” you way around the controls. You can accomplish all the basic, next, back, play, pause and volume controls, while laying in bed half asleep, while running with it attached to your arm band, or while inside your pocket walking to the grocery store. You can safely skip to the next song without worry about getting hit by an on-coming car.

I remember while lying in my bed, with shuffle-mode enabled and wanting to skip to the next song. Not as easy as it sounds. I double tap the home button to bring up the controls, lift my arm, bring the phone to a viewable angle and distance, open my eyes, get woken up by the bright screen, look for the next button, and press ">>" to skip to the next song. Rinse and repeat and you’ll eventually you realize you’ll never fall asleep and that this is stupid. With my Zune, it's a twitch of the finger and on you go.

Solution? Gestures of course! It's only natural.

The iPhone has an entire screen ready to take feedback. Why not make use of it. Gestures are already part of the UI mental model for navigating contacts, photos, etc. Why not music? It seems like a perfect natural progression.

Don't get me started about cover flow while laying on your side (a fairly common music listening position). Steve, can you hear me? Until then, long live Zune.

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