In his “take” on the new Galaxy Nexus phone (An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Galaxy Nexus), MG Siegler compared its Google Android operating system to a Honda, and Apple’s iOS to a Mercedes. That’s not quite accurate.
In the realm of automotive analogies, I consider the iOS the Honda, and Android a Ford. Continue reading
I have no doubt that Apple’s head honcho, Steve Jobs, uses his iPad au naturel.
But I’m not so sure the rest of the world is buying into his less-is-more philosophy. Even as the world has already become overburdened with iPod and iPhone cases, we seem to be entering an era of iPad keyboards.
Oddly, most of this new niche of iPad accoutrement seems to be designed to make everyone’s favourite slab of glass less like a tablet and more like a laptop.
Regard:
Adonit takes the minimalist approach with their folio-like Writer case
Qmadix is all-in on the laptop replacement look with their "Portfolio with Removable Bluetooth Keyboard for iPad 2"
Zagg pretty much opened up the floodgates of this market with their "Logitech Keyboard Case by ZAGG for iPad 2"
The Crux Loaded doesn't leave any doubt that laptop replacement is the goal. Their demo images even depicts an iPad running a full version of Photoshop.
So what’s your take? Are these manufacturers on to something — is the iPad a laptop wannabe?
Or is the iPad at its best a la Jobs: without any add-ons?
There’s no debating that “google” is a verb. If you wondering about something, you just open a web browser and “google it.”
But for my 7-year-old son and the small circle of friends and cousins he hangs out with, whenever I’m around and they want to know something (that I don’t automatically know), they tell me to, “Ask the iPhone.”
And I might Google it for them, or I might use an app. But I inevitably get them an answer that satisfies whatever question they asked within a minute. (The last one was, “Ask the iPhone how many minutes there are in a year, Dad.” The answer is 525,948.766, by the way. And I got that from Bing, oddly enough.)
The point being that, because we carry our permanently internet-connected devices with us all the time, the window through which we peer at information has been lifted from the platform to the device level. For an emerging generation it’s not all about Google’s robust informational data store as it was for us early inhabitants of the web. It’s about the multitudinous entry points to knowledge that a mobile, connected device affords us.
We’re firmly into what’s commonly called the “Post-PC” era.
The iPad has sparked the gradual demise of both desktop and notebook computers. The mouse-click of yore has become the finger-tap of tomorrow, and the screen itself is now our primary means of inputting data into a computer.
Meanwhile, the “cloud” – aka the internet – has evolved into our primary information storage medium.
We have less and less need for local storage facilities like hard drives and DVDs. The more information we deposit into the cloud, the easier it is to access and manage.
There’s no doubt that the iPad as a device is truly revolutionary and has turned the technology industry upside down. Meanwhile, the cloud is redefining how and where we store our most valuable information.
Unfortunately, both new computing paradigms are weighed down heavily by the legacy of the PC.
And that’s extremely frustrating. Continue reading
By far, Apple’s great success has been its mobile devices: the iPhone, the iPod, and the iPad.
The popularity and tremendous sales of these devices have overshadowed the company’s legacy Mac platform in recent years.
That’s lead a lot of people to wonder if Apple is phasing out the Mac OS in favour of the iOS.
It’s an interesting question, and one that deserves consideration.
Is Apple killing the Mac? Continue reading
So I was laying in bed with my iPad the other night trying to jot down some notes from the day and I was frustrated by the experience. With the iPad cradled on my belly, it was really difficult to cram my hands down under the keyboard to type comfortably.
And to be perfectly honest, I have some difficulty typing on the keyboard even when sitting up with the iPad on my lap. It’s not as easy as Apple makes it look in the commercials.
Then it occurred to me that the positioning of the keyboard below the text you’re writing is a throwback to the days of the notebook computer. It doesn’t have to be down there. The keyboard on an iPad can be displayed anywhere on the screen. So I figured, why not adjust its position to better accommodate different typing positions (like laying in bed)?
So I mocked this puppy up (based on a screen grab from the excellent SimpleNote):
I figured that your arms will naturally spread apart to make the “page” you’re typing on visible while providing more natural accessibility to the keyboard itself.
To provide a glimpse of my idea in action, here’s a shot of me “typing” on my mockup.
Playing make-believe on the mock-up makes me feel like it’s a solid idea, so I’m posting it to the public domain in hopes that a developer currently producing a note-taking or word processing app (SimpleNote? Evernote? Hog Bay? Heck, Apple?) on the iPad will borrow it and make it real. If you are one of those people, I’ve got a slew of other ideas on how to implement, if you want those, too. Just drop me a line.
If you do borrow the idea and implement it, please let me know – I’ll be first in line to buy the app!
UPDATE:
One thing I forgot to mention when I originally posted this. My hands, situated above the “page” I was typing on, acted as a sort of visor that reduced glare and reflection on the portion of the screen that my eye were focused on (that is, the “page”). Just another little bonus to having the keyboard up there.
Update 2:
So it occurs to me that another benefit of a top-screen keyboard (I like that term better, too) is privacy. Your hands and arms would naturally provide a screen.
I was managing my calendar on my iPad last night and something was bothering me about the experience.
Every time I deleted a repeating event, I found myself pausing in thought, losing trust in my instinctive nature.
Managing my calendar is something I do naturally in iCal on my Mac, and it’s a very natural process. So I took a moment to examine the process on my iPad to see what might be tripping me up.
I was surprised to find that it was Apple’s poor sentence structure.
Check these screen shots:
Repeating event deletion in iCal on Mac OS X
Repeating event deletion in iCal on iPad
Repeating event deletion in Calendar on iPhone
Do you see what tripped me up? It’s Apple’s funky grammar and sentence structure, regarding the word only.
The use of the word only in different positions of the sentence is confusing, not only for a user like me who uses both the Mac OS and the iPhone OS, but also for anyone using iPhone OS to delete repeating events.
On the Mac, the sentence is: “Delete Only This Event”. On the iPad and iPhone, it is: “Delete This Event Only”.
In iCal on the Mac, only is used an adverb, so it is modifying the action the user is taking. (Or that’s how I read it. I’m no grammar king, so I could be off in my technical specifications there. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) Whether adverb or not, however, the fact that only comes early in the phrase is primarily important to communicating the meaning of the button’s action clearly.
On the iPhone and iPad, Apple turns only into an adjective (again, I could be wrong on my grammatical specifications, but that’s my take). Only now modifies the sentence’s subject, rather than the action. Not only that, but the word falls off the end of the sentence and could be ignored. And that was my problem. I was reading just “Delete This Event”, which is a full sentence and represents what I was essentially trying to do (delete one event in a collection of repeating events) and ignoring the modifier that hung off the tail end: only.
I think Apple’s got the phrasing wrong on the iPad and iPhone. The correct sentence structure to communicate the meaning to the user is, “Delete Only This Event”. The element of modification occurs early in the sentence and is immediately communicated. “Delete This Event Only” is, imho, not only bad grammar, but bad user interface design.
So, I was watching this video co-produced by HP, Adobe, and Microsoft yesterday…
…and I was struck by one thing: they still don’t get it.
And by it, I mean the iPad specifically, but in a more general sense I mean humans.
Like, check this screen shot:
This is how Adobe, HP, and Microsoft imagine that you want to edit photos on a mobile device.
The problem is, there’s hardly any photo on screen to edit. Look at all that surrounding interface! A browser bar, a browser tab bar, a massive tool panel, scroll bars (that aren’t even required!), and then big, fat, black bars on either side of the photo.
There’s more interface here than photo!
For comparison sake, I snagged a screen shot of Adobe’s Photoshop.com Mobile iPhone photo editing app:
Like, oh my gawd — it’s a big photo!
Not as if that makes sense or anything; I mean, filling the screen with the photo you’re editing and kicking the interface to the curb?
Even though these two screen shots demonstrate the exact same application – Adobe’s Photoshop.com – they clearly demonstrate the difference between Apple’s approach to mobile computing and the approach that just about everyone else is taking.
While it’s true that Adobe is responsible for the user interfaces in both screen shots, it’s important to examine the constraints that they experienced in designing each.
For the interface demonstrated in the first screen shot, on the HP device, Adobe was limited only by what its own proprietary media platform, Flash, could do. In other words, that’s Adobe’s version of an ideal mobile photo editing environment.
In the second screen shot, for the iPhone app, Adobe had to conform to Apple’s iPhone human interface guidelines. That’s why such a different app was produced.
I think of it this way: there are two parts to every sentence in the English language, the subject and the predicate. Apple’s mobile philosophy focuses on the subject – the person or thing which the sentence is about. In most cases that would be the person using the device or the material on the device they’re dealing with.
The other guys focus on the predicate aspect of mobile computing. They focus on the aspect of the situation that modifies the experience of the user. In most cases that is the software or the device itself.
So if I write a sentence like, “Sue edited the photo on her mobile device,” Apple would be concerned with the primary subject, Sue.
On the other hand, Adobe, Microsoft and HP would clearly focus on the mobile device and its software.
The result in the latter approach is an overabundance of technology. In the first screen shot, there’s definitely too much interface. The app has decided not to consider the needs of the user and instead just sort of pukes out everything it’s got in terms of functionality, cluttering the screen with a distraction of visual detritus.
Apple’s iPhone, on the other hand, provides the user with what he or she wants, as he or she requires it. Toolbars disappear off-screen when they’re not required for use. They don’t hang around to distract in perpetuity.
In many iPhone apps, there is literally no interface. Consider this screen shot from the acclaimed iPhone writing app, WriteRoom:
That’s it. Just you and your writing. Nothing else.
Compare that to Microsoft’s take on mobile word processing:
I’ll skip past the horrid green skin and just point out that, even on a miniscule screen, Microsoft believes you need as almost as much interface as subject area. And that’s just wrong.
The point of the matter is that, as Apple continues to release revolutionary new devices, first the iPhone and soon the iPad, competitors continue to miss the point. It isn’t about the device at all. That’s why Apple’s physical design is so minimalist, and it’s why they don’t pump the tech specs in their ads.
It’s about friction. Apple is all about reducing the friction a person experiences when they interact with a technological environment.
Until the other guys figure that out and quit drowning us in over-designed user interfaces and dramatic device forms, Apple’s just going to continue kicking their collective ass.
