I've noticed a few iPhone UX inconsistencies and issues in my cursory poking at the device.
Widgets everywhere: Upon playing with the iPhone, it's pretty clear that most of the apps are actually widgets. My first thought is that you can consider all of the 12 icons on the upper part of the screen to be widgets. Stocks, weather, clock, calculator, and notes are the most obviously widget-y of them, since they're already familiar to OS X dashboard users. Only the four apps in the lower part of the screen (phone, mail, Safari, iPod) are real apps. I wonder if Apple will allow developers to create iPhone widgets before they'll allow developers to create real apps.
Yahoo! everywhere: The iPhone is getting a lot of data from Yahoo! instead of other sources. The OS X weather widget gets its data from AccuWeather, and the stock widget gets its from Quote.com. This is a great opportunity for Yahoo! to try to rebuild its mindshare in the face of the Google juggernaut. Okay, so strictly speaking, this isn't an issue. It's just interesting to note the difference between them.
iPhone widgets aren't identical to their OS X counterparts: While many of the widgets are ones that are already on OS X, there are a few differences in them. The only difference between the OS X calculator widget and the iPhone calculator widget is that the iPhone one doesn't have an orange border. The iPhone weather widget is vertically-oriented instead of horizontally-oriented. The iPhone stock widget is virtually identical, but here's a couple of minor differences in how you enter additional stocks.
Reordering in widgets: The clock is the most fully-featured of the widgets, and it's the one that introduces the UX inconsistency. In the clock, enter the edit mode, and add your cities. The resulting city tiles have a little grab-handle on the right side, which you can use to drag them around. However, the other widgets just don't have that. The only way to get the items in those widgets in the right order is to enter them in the correct order from the beginning.
How much information is there?: Apps with more than one screen of information have scrollbars, but they only become visible when you're scrolling the screen. In some apps, it's obvious that you have more below the fold. But in some apps, such as the clock widget, it's easy to glance at the screen and not realise that there's more below it. One easy way to solve this without having to show the scrollbars is to not make the tiles fit perfectly on the screen. Instead, show me half of one of the tiles that's off-screen. Then I know there's more below (or above).
Stop with the stock apps: What is it about new gadgets that make people think that the one app that I simply must have is something to keep track of my stocks? Yes, I do own some individual stocks, but I'm not a day trader. I pay very little attention to what my stocks are doing on a daily basis, or even a weekly basis. I'm vaguely annoyed that I have to have this stock widget on my iPhone screen all the time, even though I'm never going to open it after I've set up my stocks in it the first time.
Your widget dragging inconsistency is illustrative of your improper assumption - likely the 'real' APIs provide richer drag functionality and used in real apps. The most likely answer is that the Clock is only partially a widget and uses application level parts where applicable (everything not in the widget on OS X). In addition, I'd say most of the apps are real apps based on the depth of what they do and the richness of said experience - Phone, Mail, Safari, iPod, SMS, Camera, Photo, YouTube, Google Maps, Calendar, and Settings. Obviously only a handful are driven with widget technologies.
How they're coded (widget vs app) doesn't matter to me as a user. What matters to me is that one app has one kind of behaviour, and another app has another kind of behaviour.
doesn't the re-ordering of call favorites work the same way as the re-ordering of clocks? that would be consistent. but, i'd say the ux is what sets this device apart from all before it. the emotional impact is there. you know, the problem with ux people is they concentrate on nothing but the logic behind a ui and forget about the emotion of it. finally, i think with this phone, that's proved the wrong way to go about it. i work for a rather large mobile company - our products' ux has obviously been defined by vapid engineers - and it shows. maybe now they'll listen to designers a bit more closely.
Stumpy - You know, I haven't tried that yet, so I'll have to do that next.
I don't think that it's fair to characterise me as forgetting about the emotion behind the UX, although I understand why you might think that from this post. I only whinged about a few things, I didn't post about the parts that I like. That post is half-written and coming soon. :)
This afternoon, I discovered the sheer joy of playing around with the bouncing effect when you hit the edge of the screen. You can swipe diagonally, and the page bounces on that angle. That's going to provide me hours of entertainment. (Yes, I know, I'm easily amused.)
You mention that the calculator is the same as the one found as a widget in ordinary. In reality that calculator is fully unusable. It doesn't even calculate correctly. It says that 2 + 2*2 = 8 - every middle school child should know that it is 6.
Furthermore, I need a much more advanced calculator than the standard calculator in MacOS X [which does calculate correct and which does have the ordinary functions like sine and exp]. I need a calculator at least as advanced as the powerOne on my Palm Treo 650 smartphone.
Also, implicitly you say that the is no built-in dictionary like the Oxford American English Dictionary that is part of MacOS X [and which can be set up to show the correct RP pronounciation instead of US pronounciation]. Also, such a dictionary is a must for me.
And not only such one. Bidirectional dictionaries like the Duden Oxford Großwörterbuch I have on my Treo is a must too.
It doesn't seem that the iPhone is sufficient advanced for me yet. And the very limited way third party companies are allowed to program for the iPhone makes it unlikely for such applications [graph calculator with solve function, English-English and English-German-English dictionaries] som come in the near future.
I think I will stay with the Palm Treo until this has been solved ... - but of course the European iPhone will be somehow more advanced than the US version. And more in line with what Danes need.
Ronne - regular calculators calculate as they go, you are expected to be the determiner of the order of operations and enter your calculation correctly.
It's true that some calculators allow you to enter an entire formula (2 + 2 * 2) then hit "=" In that case the calculator performs the order of operations for you.
But in the iphone calculator, (and the one on my site, MiniCalc) when you enter 2 + 2, then hit * the total is calculated (4) and that total is then multiplied by the next digit entered (2) which gives the answer of 8.
MiniCalc also adds the sine and exp functions that the iPhone Calculator omits. I'm still adding functionality to it. I could see an iPhone software update adding a more robust calculator. We'll see.
This is annoying.
As stated above, macs and iphones get their weather data from 2 different sources. So, RIGHT NOW, my iPhone says it's sunny today, but supposed to rain for the rest of the week. My MacBook Pro says it's supposed to rain today and tomorrow, but be sunny the rest of the week. The current temps are 2° off.
Completely ignoring which is more ACCURATE, it'd sure be nice if they were at least the SAME. A buddy reminded me, that "a man with a clock always knows the time. A man with two clocks is never sure."
I am so used to burning a CD in iTunes that now when I get a new text message on my iPhone, I am confused for about 5 seconds since it uses the same sound.