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The best iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus reviews

Reviews are in from all over the web as Apple launches the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus today. The verdict? The best iPhone yet. Instead of yet another meta review about the new iPhone, which are everywhere already, let’s do something more fun: review the reviewers.

I tend to like two types of reviews: ones that focus on the phone’s impact on the reviewer’s personal life, and others that go in-depth and test everything to the nth degree. Rarely can a review do both. I don’t like reviews that lack analysis and are glorified spec sheets. Or reviews that couch everything, ready to duck criticism — reviewers should have a strong point of view. With so many publications out there today covering gadgets, it’s essential that reviews entertain while they educate. Videos help too.

Here are my top 5 favorite, pre-launch reviews for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

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Better to be boring: one consistent design across all OSes

We previously wrote how Skype did a smart thing by creating one consistent design for its version 5 across iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.  It’s smart because it will save time and raise the probability of a high performing, consistent experience.

App developers should test and iterate their apps’ design until satisfied of greatness.  If you have a different design for each OS, that’s multiple times the amount of work needed to test and iterate.  Totally unnecessary.  A great design is universally intuitive; an iPhone user will be able to use a well-designed Android app and vice versa.  And if they can’t — requiring the back button to navigate the Android version for example — guess what, that’s not a great design.

There are many examples of good cross-platform design and the most obvious one is Instagram.  The Android version is nearly identical to the iPhone version.  When the design works, why risk changing things just for the sake of the OS?  Of course, you should still take into account each OS’ quirks.  For example, with feecha the sharing function is native to Android, whereas we had to custom build it for iPhone.  But if we were to port feecha to Windows Phone, it will look exactly like our design for iPhone and Android.

Then there are apps that are designed differently for iPhone and Android, and often to bad results.  One such example is Yahoo Sports.

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Here’s an NSA-styled conspiracy theory about Yahoo and Flurry

Yahoo has acquired Flurry for a reported $200 to $300 million.  Ostensibly it’s for Flurry’s targeting ability and fledgling ad network; but I have a more sinister suspicion, totally unfounded.

To wit: Yahoo’s ambition is to be your daily habit, whether that’s mail, news, weather, etc.  Increasingly, that means mobile.  However, their impact there so far is questionable.  What Yahoo app is a must-have?  None.  How can they be smart enough or visionary enough to create the next Snapchat?  The next Instagram?

Flurry can be the answer.  Mine the Flurry database and analyze which apps are doing well — based not on fluff like hype and press coverage, but on the actual metrics that count like growth, retention and engagement.  Study those apps and then decide whether it’s something Yahoo should clone.

Nutty conspiracy theory?  Maybe.  Given Yahoo’s disappointing results so far, Marissa Mayer may decide it’s time to change the rules of the game.  “What matters is we build products that people love,” she said.  If Yahoo can’t do that on a level playing field, maybe it’s time to cheat a little with Flurry.

Yahoo Weather enters storm with only design as a defence

There was a great story on re/code about how Apple’s iOS8 has replaced Yahoo’s weather app with one from the Weather Channel.  This is an embarrassing loss for the purple icon.

The real value of Yahoo Weather isn’t in its fancy design; it’s in its data and distribution.  Neither of which belonged to Yahoo.  The data for weather was provided by — you guessed it — the Weather Channel, who unsurprisingly supplied better data for its own app.

Apple provided the bulk of the distribution.  Marissa Mayer wants “daily habits” to be the cornerstone of Yahoo’s strategy, but in this case iPhone users didn’t have a daily habit of using Yahoo Weather; their daily habit is to use whatever weather app Apple provided.  Discovery remains the biggest challenge of the apps business and Yahoo Weather is no exception to it.

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What apps and websites should copy from IKEA

A good friend asked for my feedback the other day for his start-up, still in stealth mode.  It’s a finance website with lots of cool ideas, but I thought the website and especially the homepage was a bit of a mess.  (He agrees.)

Given a choice between one big feature or many small features, it’s better to have one big feature.  You don’t want to be the product that can do lots of little things but nothing great enough for users to remember you by.

People don’t have the energy or desire to understand your product’s nuances; they need to be grabbed right away with that one thing they must know about you.

My friend’s website has a lot of useful tools and interesting content, but it wasn’t well packaged.  You don’t know what you’re supposed to do when you first visit it.

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I’m a Mac and I’m a PC: Take 2

For 13 years, David Pogue was the tech columnist for the New York Times before making a move to Yahoo in October last year. Pogue was not a fan of Windows 8 or the previous Surface Pro, so imagine everyone’s surprise when he came out with a positive review of the Surface Pro 3:

If you own or carry around both a tablet and a laptop, then the Surface is calling out your name. There’s nothing like it. It’s so much better than the sales figures would indicate. We, the buying public, are not giving it a fair shake. If this marvel of engineering doesn’t lift the Microsoft hardware curse, I don’t know what its designers are supposed to do.

What’s more eyebrow-raising is the video review that accompanied it, which is probably the most creative and entertaining tech gadget review I’ve ever seen: it’s a spoof of the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials that Apple ran before.

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