Ease of use is THE thing

Right?

My bet is that you've heard this at least once in the past year. Since Apple 'revolutionized' the mobile industry, with their 500-years-ahead-of-the-competition product. It is understandable that Apple would want you to believe this. The main thing that makes the iPhone stand out (except from the absurd pricing) is its ease of use.

Fine. They can use any buzzwords they want. Marketing is like that. And if you have incredibly clever marketing (like Apple), then you come up with such catchy words.

But the problem is this: even those that usually don't get fooled by marketing stunts fell hard for this one. It now seems like this is THE focus that the whole industry should have. Which is good in principle. Yeah, there's no point to loads of features if they can't be easily accessed and/or used. Anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves here, shall we?

WHO exactly is ease of use for?

I have not heard/read ONE good answer to this question. Nobody seems to care. "It has to be done". And that's it. Believe and do not doubt, that's what this is.

I for one DO doubt. Again, generally speaking, you know, "good is good" and "bad is bad". So ease of use is good as a principle.
But focusing the whole industry on this? Why?

Ease of use, the way the average Joe understands this concept, comes with lack of features. Always. The more features, the more the average Joe will be confused.
So the iPhone is easy to use. Good. Is a Nokia 1200 not easy to use?

Not to be misunderstood. The iPhone browser is the most easy to use browser out there. Which is nice, since that will push normobs to use mobile data more. Which is good for everyone. Operators obviously, but the rest of us as well, since presumably prices for data will keep going down.

But UI? Give me a break. The way Apple sees things, they know what you want better than you do. I know, this may be true, if you're a normob. But if you aren't, the last thing you should do is preach an Apple-like 'vision' of UIs. They have created a phone that is good for nothing else than calling, texting (in light of recent firmware updates only) and browsing. So it should be 'better' than the aforementioned 1200 because it also features that wonderful browser. THAT'S IT, ladies and gentlemen.

If Nokia came up with a UI similar to Apple's, I would not buy a Nokia smartphone. Period.

People might argue that this is only valid for so-called "power users". Exactly. It is. And what power users should do instead of constantly whining that the iPhone UI is not replicated by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and all others is actually SHOW a normob how to use those other, oh-so-complicated UIs. Which would make normobs either not want an iPhone or anything else overly simplistic, or make them suddenly realize that all they actually need is a Nokia 1200. Any other conclusion would solely be based on the desire to show off. Which I don't care for. I've seen way too many people that use N95s only for calling. I wonder what's worse: a holstered Blackberry or an N95 used for nothing else than calling? I haven't made up my mind yet, but at least the Blackberries are presumably given to such, erm, users, by their companies.

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