I remember about eight years ago, back in 2002, I had a Windows CE (PocketPC) device, and this is what I thought:
Windows98/ME was a piece of garbage. Windows 2000 was a good improvement, XP is already a step downhill. It's time for them to rewrite the Windows codebase and throw out all the legacy code -- no more emulation. Hey! Windows CE is a fresh tight OS, written from scratch. It would be really cool if Microsoft did an excellent job on Windows CE and groomed it as the eventual replacement for Windows XP. It would be a great way to leave all the legacy code behind and fund the development of a neat new clean implementation of Windows.
Fast-forward to now:
OSX is great, but it's big and accruing legacy code. iPhoneOS is focused, trim and almost entirely fresh. Apple shipped a new Tablet device, running iPhoneOS. Apple is on the crux of releasing a new set-top TV device, running iPhoneOS. Could Apple actually be in the middle of pulling off that super-slick move I hoped Microsoft would've done eight years ago? It's certainly starting to look like it.
Fast-forward another few years and OSX may be deprecated. Isn't that kind of what Apple is saying with WWDC by being entirely iPhoneOS focused? It wouldn't be so far fetched to see MacBooks shipping running a nicely tooled hybrid iPhoneOS. Then again, who's to really say we'll still need/want the laptop form factor?
If Apple does pull it off, that should make it into some kind of Hall of Fame.
Showing posts with label iPhoneOS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPhoneOS. Show all posts
31.5.10
iPhone Apps in front, App Engine in back
There were some great points in this UXHero article. The one that really hit home is that the iPhone's fixed (and known) screen size allows for designs to be much more consistent and more usable.
One simple piece of information, the certainty of particular screen dimensions has a huge impact on usability.
Great point. It started me thinking back to a lot of my design ideas for generic development pieces that are easily pluggable to generate flexible and diverse web apps. All of a sudden I hit on it. I'd been using Google App Engine as my REST web-service back end, and an rich javascript page as my front end. I could be developing iPhone apps as front-end clients for my generic web-services, and voila. Light-weight, highly usable and customized interfaces with a generic loosely coupled back end.
Perfect formulation for someone like me who just wants simple and persistent data storage and processing, so I can abstract that away and get to the meat of user interaction.
See? Just like my previous post, I want to see tighter integration between Apple & Google, not diversification. App Engine + iPhone Apps for the win!
30.5.10
Who benefits? I'm not sure its the user
I personally would've preferred to see Microsoft+Facebook square off opposite Apple+Google.
The way I see it, Google are engineers, Apple are artists. Yes Apple does good engineering work, and Google can produce nice UI, but I'm talking about when they're playing to their strengths.
Watching Google and Apple duke it out makes me sad that I can't have them both in one awesome product. Think about the integration and synching of the cloud with the simple elegance and usability of iPhoneOS.
If we need some industry bad-guy to spurr ingenuity and innovation, couldn't it have been Microsoft and/or Facebook?
I don't want to have to choose between Apple and Google. I want to see their products integrate smoothly.
In the end, I'll probably have to go the route of iPad + Android smartphone. But I'd rather have fully integrated google services on iPhone.
Maybe I should count my blessings that Microsoft wasn't invited to this party? Now how do we make Facebook irrelevant?
[I guess Twitter gets to be the kid who's always picked last.]
The way I see it, Google are engineers, Apple are artists. Yes Apple does good engineering work, and Google can produce nice UI, but I'm talking about when they're playing to their strengths.
Watching Google and Apple duke it out makes me sad that I can't have them both in one awesome product. Think about the integration and synching of the cloud with the simple elegance and usability of iPhoneOS.
If we need some industry bad-guy to spurr ingenuity and innovation, couldn't it have been Microsoft and/or Facebook?
I don't want to have to choose between Apple and Google. I want to see their products integrate smoothly.
In the end, I'll probably have to go the route of iPad + Android smartphone. But I'd rather have fully integrated google services on iPhone.
Maybe I should count my blessings that Microsoft wasn't invited to this party? Now how do we make Facebook irrelevant?
[I guess Twitter gets to be the kid who's always picked last.]
17.5.10
iPhoneOS design manifesto - turn search apps inside out
The Web is huge, the words vast and limitless also come to mind.
It is this nature of the web that mandates search as the best possible interface for the web. At any moment an even better solution to your current need may come along, how else would you know except to search for it?
By contrast your iPhone (or iPad/iPod) is tiny. It's storage currently maxes out at 64gb, that's virtually nothing. The important point is this: What's on your iPhone is your content. Every byte of that content was loaded by you, because you want it there. By contrast, what's on the web is a free for all. You have to sift through the web to find content of interest to you.
This makes a big difference when you develop for the iPhone. iPhone apps center around your content, your data, things directly meaningful to you.
If you have a search-based web app and you want to make an iPhone app as an interface to that search-based app, consider turning your app inside out:
It is this nature of the web that mandates search as the best possible interface for the web. At any moment an even better solution to your current need may come along, how else would you know except to search for it?
By contrast your iPhone (or iPad/iPod) is tiny. It's storage currently maxes out at 64gb, that's virtually nothing. The important point is this: What's on your iPhone is your content. Every byte of that content was loaded by you, because you want it there. By contrast, what's on the web is a free for all. You have to sift through the web to find content of interest to you.
This makes a big difference when you develop for the iPhone. iPhone apps center around your content, your data, things directly meaningful to you.
If you have a search-based web app and you want to make an iPhone app as an interface to that search-based app, consider turning your app inside out:
- Make the home screen a list of recent or saved searches, or a list of bookmarks. Chances are, users are going into your app from an iPhone to find something they already know is there.
- The second screen can be a search screen to obtain new results, but the home screen should always be populated with content already relevant to the user.
- Remember, stay focused on making the user's previous finds easily accessible, especially if there is a way to save or bookmark results.
- Allowing users to find new things on the web is great, but first make sure that what they've already found is still easily accessible should they want to find it again!
Sometimes this isn't what a user wants, but most of the time it will be. Consider your App, consider your user base and see if this kind of design works for you.
PS. make sure you aren't stomping all over a bunch of privacy issues while you are at it :)
21.4.10
No more files
I just realized why syncing for iPhone/iPad is so painful. Apple wants to eliminate the idea of files and replace it with a more useful concept. I don't think they've finalized the concept yet, or exactly how it will work when accessing the same "things" for lack of a better word (ie. not "files") from multiple apps.
In the meantime they don't provide an easy way for users to sync files between iPad and your computer, not because there's no easy way to implement file sync -- Dropbox does a killer job of that across multiple systems-- but because they don't want users to bring the file concept from PCs over to iPhoneOS.
There's something else in store, and just like Cut&Paste and Multitasking when we see files replaced with "things" (or whatever they will be called) we'll understand why we had to wait.
In the meantime they don't provide an easy way for users to sync files between iPad and your computer, not because there's no easy way to implement file sync -- Dropbox does a killer job of that across multiple systems-- but because they don't want users to bring the file concept from PCs over to iPhoneOS.
There's something else in store, and just like Cut&Paste and Multitasking when we see files replaced with "things" (or whatever they will be called) we'll understand why we had to wait.
11.4.10
swiping not tapping
I just saw these demo videos for Swype -- an interesting typing alternative on touchscreen phones (there's an android beta) .. it's exactly what my fingers keep wanting to do on my iPhone. Hope it will make its way there soon.
When you have a highly sensitive touch screen.. this kind of input methodology is a lot more fluid than tapping -- having said that, their videos, even the ones demonstrating speed don't seem to allow faster input than accurate typing would. Perhaps there's a more ideal swiping keyboard layout than QWERTY that would make a very significant improvement to input speed -- but require a higher learning curve.
When you have a highly sensitive touch screen.. this kind of input methodology is a lot more fluid than tapping -- having said that, their videos, even the ones demonstrating speed don't seem to allow faster input than accurate typing would. Perhaps there's a more ideal swiping keyboard layout than QWERTY that would make a very significant improvement to input speed -- but require a higher learning curve.
10.2.10
iPhoneOS multi-tasking alternative
It seems the main desire for multitasking in iPhoneOS is twofold: (1) Running background processes, either to do something else like Pandora music (the #1 complaint I've seen mentioned) or to update other apps like Twitter or Facebook. (2) Relating to information in one app from within another app.
Putting aside the first issue, which has been half excused with push notifications (though it seems like a hack) the second issue has perhaps even a better solution than multitasking.
If iPhoneOS apps could publish controls that other apps could access then a user's experience could be more seemless and smoother than the current multitasking experience in Windows or OSX.
Imagine for a minute, if you want to quote a mail you recently received, you perform the 'include' gesture and you are presented with a popover or modal screen presenting you with a choice of the 'include' controls published by your other installed apps. You can click the include mail control, and be presented with a list of your mail to select one or more messages and 'include' them in your current app. The means by which they are 'included' depends on how your current app chooses to deal with included material.
This is essentially what the many image manipulation programs do now when you go to your photo roll to select an image to edit. In addition to being more seemless and more intuitive from a simple user workflow, we've eliminated the concept of files and replaced them with resources belonging to one app or another.
Similarly you could provide 'peek' functionality to just look at another app (at least the info they make available through their peek control) for a moment without leaving your current app. I'm sure there's probably six main types of controls (including 'include' and 'peek' mentioned here) that could create a standard visual and user-flow language that would answer most of a user's multitasking needs in a way that is better than multitasking.
The controls have to feel very responsive lightweight and fast, of course, but the benefit is that the line between the OS and the apps is blurred in terms of who provides functionality, but clear in that it is apparent when you are using an app's controls, and apple still has ultimate control to ensure the user experience doesn't suffer. You could even use the 'lift up the app to reveal a page behind' interface we saw in the map app in the iPad demo as the default place for the user to choose one of the six control types, and then be presented with a list of controls.
I for one would welcome an iPhone/iPad app-control-oriented future instead of a multitasking future. Users won't be able to lose windows, or leave tasks running in the background which they have forgotten about. It's a serious win for the 80% users.
Putting aside the first issue, which has been half excused with push notifications (though it seems like a hack) the second issue has perhaps even a better solution than multitasking.
If iPhoneOS apps could publish controls that other apps could access then a user's experience could be more seemless and smoother than the current multitasking experience in Windows or OSX.
Imagine for a minute, if you want to quote a mail you recently received, you perform the 'include' gesture and you are presented with a popover or modal screen presenting you with a choice of the 'include' controls published by your other installed apps. You can click the include mail control, and be presented with a list of your mail to select one or more messages and 'include' them in your current app. The means by which they are 'included' depends on how your current app chooses to deal with included material.
This is essentially what the many image manipulation programs do now when you go to your photo roll to select an image to edit. In addition to being more seemless and more intuitive from a simple user workflow, we've eliminated the concept of files and replaced them with resources belonging to one app or another.
Similarly you could provide 'peek' functionality to just look at another app (at least the info they make available through their peek control) for a moment without leaving your current app. I'm sure there's probably six main types of controls (including 'include' and 'peek' mentioned here) that could create a standard visual and user-flow language that would answer most of a user's multitasking needs in a way that is better than multitasking.
The controls have to feel very responsive lightweight and fast, of course, but the benefit is that the line between the OS and the apps is blurred in terms of who provides functionality, but clear in that it is apparent when you are using an app's controls, and apple still has ultimate control to ensure the user experience doesn't suffer. You could even use the 'lift up the app to reveal a page behind' interface we saw in the map app in the iPad demo as the default place for the user to choose one of the six control types, and then be presented with a list of controls.
I for one would welcome an iPhone/iPad app-control-oriented future instead of a multitasking future. Users won't be able to lose windows, or leave tasks running in the background which they have forgotten about. It's a serious win for the 80% users.
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