Apple’s site has been pissing me off lately. It’s a silly little thing, but it’s frustrating to me. They’re advertising the iPhone on the front page of apple.com. It’s shiny, it’s pretty, it’s the bleeding edge, but the site is instructing me to do something that I can’t do.
I can’t “slide to unlock,” because the phone is just a quicktime video. And the second I click it, before I have a chance to slide, it sends me to the iPhone page.
It’s stupid, right? But I doubt that I’m the only person who tries to “slide to unlock.” And this isn’t just an annoyance. I want to slide to unlock. I want to be able to have a playful relationship with that image, and by extension with Apple, their website, and the iPhone.
Let me slide to unlock. If nothing else, give me the satisfaction of having that tiny interaction. At worst, it will give people a half-second of enjoyment. At best, it’ll make them feel a connection to the phone; a direct causal relationship to its interface. It might even make them want to play with it more.
2 replies on “On interaction, Apple.com, and "slide to unlock."”
That’s weird… when they first announced the iPhone they had it so you could do the slide thing. Don’t let it get you down.
Hmm… so they offered the interaction, and then subsequently took it away? Too glitchy? Too hokey?
It reminds me a bit of the “do not eat iPod shuffle” notice that used to be at the bottom of the iPod shuffle page. If it was cute and fun, why would they remove it?