Tinotopia

I like the iPhone, I really do. It’s great. But as I use it, I keep coming across these things that suggest that there was no, or nearly no, actual user testing of the thing.

When you play videos in the iPod or YouTube apps, they play sideways; that is, the bottom of the movie is on what is normally the left side of the display. You have to turn the iPhone 90 degrees.

This is better illustrated with pictures. The iPhone is normally used like this:

When watching a movie, you turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise, like this:

You’re not given a choice; the video only plays sideways, no matter which way you hold the phone.

This isn’t the problem. The problem is that the video is upright only when the phone is rotated counterclockwise. If you look at the sideways picture (clicking on it pops up a bigger one), you’ll note that holding the phone like this means that your left hand gets in the way of the headphone wire.

It would be better if it played the video rotated 90 degrees the other way. When you hold the phone this way, the headphone cable is above your right index finger, and behind your right thumb. It’s not in the way at all:

In fact, it’s easier to hold the thing this way than with no headphones, because the headphone plug takes some of the weight of the phone.

This can be fixed pretty easily in software, but it’s still kind of surprising that Apple didn’t spot this in the first place. Any user testing at all of video playing with headphones on would have turned this up in about ten seconds.