SAN FRANCISCO: Last week, Timothy D Cook, Apple's CEO , stood on stage at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference without a new version of the iPhone or the iPad or some new device.
After showing off new laptop computers and a new, cylindrical Mac Pro, Cook and other Apple executives spent the rest of their two-hour keynote address discussing the features of Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 7. With the image of a flattened smartphone interface with thin typography on a screen in the background, Cook proudly noted, "This is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone."
How does he figure that?
Cook's bold claim was based on something that is well understood in tech circles but is easily overlooked by consumers. It is the design of the software, far more than the look and feel of the device itself, that allows a company to leap over its competitors.
Hardware featuresprocessing speed or screen resolution or even how well a camera works offer only fleeting advantages in the constant competition among smartphone makers. And with more than 1 billion smartphones in the world today, many of them with the same rectangular design meant to fit in your hand yet large enough to be used as a phone, it is hard to imagine a breakthrough in their general look.
But changes to the software are limited only by the skill and creativity of a company's engineers and designers, and are not as easily mimicked since they appeal to softer notions"experience" rather than speed or weight.
Designers at Apple, Microsoft and Google appear to have been keenly aware of that when they worked on the latest versions of their mobile operating systems, experimenting with ways of making software that are unique yet as intuitive as a road sign.
"I have my home, I have my office and I now I have my phone interface," said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "When you turn a smartphone off it is an enigmatic monolith; it's the interface that not only animates it but gives it meaning."
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