David Pearce

that's not to say there aren't other better ideas.

Like there are lots of people out there who long for the idea of a sidekick, which had that sort of flippy open screen.

There are lots of people who miss their blackberries.

There are lots of people who might actually be really well served by a phone like the LG wing, which had a screen that flipped horizontally, which in a certain way actually makes quite a lot of sense.

Like if you watch a lot of YouTube on your phone, maybe a screen that just flips horizontally, it would make a lot of sense.

But again, it's just an uphill battle.

to convince people that they want that thing, to make software and accessories that support that thing, and to just push outside of the norm becomes harder and harder and harder.

The other half of that is also that once people become accustomed to a certain kind of device, they get really annoyed when you change it, right?

Like if your iPhone suddenly had a screen that flipped upwards, some people would think that's cool and some people would find it incredibly annoying.

My favorite example of this always is you look at an app like Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Word is filled with buttons and ribbons and icons and stuff that like no one thinks this is good UI.

No one, including at Microsoft, thinks this is like good, beautiful, modern software UI to have just a bunch of ribbons and 100,000 options in a menu.

But the problem is there are millions of people who have used Microsoft Word essentially as it is professionally for decades.

It is their livelihood to know where these things are in Microsoft Word.

And so if you just move a little button, like somebody at Microsoft has said this to us one time, and it's been stuck in my mind ever since, that every teeny tiny feature that almost nobody uses inside of Microsoft Word is still used by millions of people.

And so if you move that,

Even if you move it to a better, simpler, easier place, you have now created a bunch of new work for people to do.

And most people don't want to do that work.

And that's fine.

Most people have better things to do than learn where buttons are, right?