Why do softphone interfaces suck?

Today i came across yet another voip soft phone. It’s features seem nice enough, most of what i’d want in a softphone, even with integration of IAX (is that a good idea?) for better connection to asterisk servers. But what strikes me is the terrible user interface. I mean, think about it, WHY are you displaying the phone buttons? A friggen photo of a phone dial pad? I’d say a good portion of why skype works is they steal their ideas NOT from a phone, but from IM (instant messaging) clients. User names not phone numbers. Sure you can dial out and in to phone numbers, but that’s only part of it. It’s got an interface which works on a computer.

Anybody can make a good voip client, you need two things, a simple interface, something which is understandable, a way of looking up a directory, ie creating a username / phone number easil, and easy connection to the network so that it finds its way out to the network irregardless of firewalls. Do that and you’ve done what skype does.

I just don’t get it why that should be so hard. Why on earth does everybody look to skinable mp3 players as a good idea for voip phone interfaces?

That said, gaba and my sipura 2000 just arrived, so we can have a nice hard phone, with an easy to use interface which has been perfected over the last 100 years. An interface where a number pad makes sense.