Apple’s One Big Design Flaw

June 13, 2010

Related: Digital Living, Fun and Fail, User Interface

There’s no denying that Apple makes beautifully designed products. From the simplicity of the Mac Mini to the impossibly tiny iPod Shuffle, Apple wins design kudos for form and function all time time.

But there’s one big flaw in Apple’s design of the iPhone and iPad that still hasn’t been fixed — the onboard speakers.

On both the iPhone and iPad, the speaker is located on the rim of the product — which means that when you’re looking at the screen and listening to audio, the audio is shooting out away from you. This isn’t a problem for audio that’s recorded at decent levels, but so many videos out there (especially those on YouTube) are recorded with levels that are way too low. Cranking up the volume doesn’t help.

I often end up having to hold my iPhone in this position:

Although silly looking, this actually increases the volume significantly. On my audio test, cupping your hand in front of the speaker increased the decibel level from a peak of 70db to a peak of 78db. Since dB levels are logarithmic, this is quite an increase in the volume.

All Apple would have to do is locate the speakers on the front to provide better quality audio. (Misdirected audio also tends to drop a lot of the high-end frequency ranges, making the audio also sound muddier and duller.)

I’ve MacGyver’ed a solution for my iPad — tin foil (folded over several times to make it thicker) taped to the back and shaped in the same hand-cup form. It’s goofy looking, but works like a charm and makes listening a much better experience.

Griffin, which makes excellent ‘iProduct’ accessories, has an acoustic amplifier that looks great, but isn’t quite portable. ThinkGeek has come up with a simple but awesome solution — the iPhone Audio Booster is a simple piece of plastic that clips onto the bottom of your iPhone and essentially forms a plastic cup that does the same thing. Genius. And only $8.

Still, the right solution is for Apple to simply locate speakers on the front. Steve? Please?

N.B. On the iPad, speakers on both ends would also be good to provide stereo listening. But I’ll take what I can get.