Tablets are billed as “post-PC” products designed to replace the job of a PC for most people. The argument goes, most people don’t need a truck (a PC) and instead they just want a small car. True as that may be, I see a problem when the car only gets supported by the manufacture for 2 years. That’s the case with the original iPad. According to Apple, iOS 6 will not run on the iPad 1 which was released in 2010. Buy not having the latest operating system, this means the latest security updates will not be available, nor will the latest developer APIs. Many of Apple’s own apps (such as the Pages) will likely be updated, and these updates will only support iOS6 (this was the case when iOS 5 was released). Will the file formats be compatible? Let’s hope so. The same will probably happen with a lot of 3rd party applications. It also means the new OS features such as shared photo streams and Facebook integration wont be available.
Yes this is a fast moving industry, and yes the iPad 1 was woefully underpowered (especially when it comes to lack of RAM, the version of iOS it came with didn’t support multitasking remember) and you might argue the that iPad 1 is a special case, as it was mostly purchased by early adapters who will probably be running the latest model of iPad by now. I can also see how Apple might not want developers to hold back their software to ensure it works on the older hardware - iPhoto doesn’t run on it today.
That said, I really think Apple should be sending the message to consumers that their tablet will be relevant in at least 2 years time (you would expect a laptop to be). If they can continue to support the iPhone 3GS (released roughly 6 months before the iPad in 2009) then why not iPad?
On my holidays this year I’ve noticed a large number of people donning iPads. In the pub, on the train, on the ferry and even sat on the beach. Like it was intended to do, the iPad is finding its way into places no one would ever imaged a laptop would. One thing did strike me though, and that is how nearly every iPad I’ve seen out and about is parcelled up in a protective case (one person who sat opposite to me proceed to get their iPad out of one case, only for it to be inside another).
Yes, I get that these things aren’t cheap, but they’re also not as fragile as most people think. Why pay all that money for iconic design if you’re not going to ever see it? This is exactly the thinking behind the Smart Cover, which protects the screen while not in use without sacrificing the slimness and design.
It turns out that this domain imarc.co.uk celebrated its tenth anniversary in April this year. How time flies!
In 2002, the web was a very different place compared with today. The first dot-com bubble had just burst, and there was still far more amateur content online. It was quite common to find personal home pages complete with family photographs or sites devoted to someone’s favourite band. These days, the web is far more corporate, and everything we share is via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Why is this? Has web design become an elitist art form? Textured backgrounds and blinking text may have looked horrible, but back then it was all about a love of the subject matter, with appearance very much secondary. No one doubts that modern design techniques have improved the look and accessibility of the web, but have they frightened off the average Joe armed only with a copy of FrontPage?
Perhaps the world has simply ‘moved on’, as our favourite Gunslinger once said. People have better things to do than maintain their own sites. Blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger offer the ease of use of Facebook while allowing a greater degree of personalisation and independence. Perhaps these days people are writing apps instead.
Or maybe I’m just getting old. Who knows? I’m simply rambling.
Remember the good old days of popups on the web? Back in the late nineties before all of the major browsers employed popup blockers, it was common for web site owners to bombard their users with a terrible experience of having to dismiss a popup before being able to use the web site. Geocities was famous for forcing these popups onto its users pages as part of its ill-fated revenue model.
Like everything eventually, popups are back in fashion. This time they’ve manifested as inline DIV tags that bypass popup blockers. Don’t be convinced by the transparent background – having to dismiss a popup before you can browse a site is a still a horrid user experience.
What were they thinking? This one disappears by itself, but not all do this.
I understand sites need to make money from advertising. My worry is that the more obtrusive advertisements become, the more likely users will be pushed to install ad-blockers, and then they wont see any advertisements at all.
iOS delivered when it removed the need to synchronise with iTunes, and incorporated cloud backup right into the device. But what is still missing?
iTunes Account Sharing
Yes the bosses at Hollywood and the big music companies will hate this idea, but we humans like to share. Who knows what evaluation might have thrown up if we had been purely selfish creatures. That means when my partner downloads a TV show on her iPad, it would be quite nice if we could watch it on my iPad without jumping through hoops. How about a feature to link up to 5 iTunes accounts, so they can all download each others purchases? It would be one more argument for buying DRM protected content as opposed to downloading it for free from other unofficial sources.
Automatic App Updates
More ‘normal’ users don’t religiously check the App Store for updates, so having an Android-like feature whe selected apps can update automatically would be useful. This would need to be user-controlled, as some apps makers have a tendency to make their apps worse over time instead of improving them.
Standard platform for magazine/newspaper content
Digital newspapers and magazines are a mess. Most are custom apps that contain a series of digital images. There’s no ability to email links, lookup words or save out articles. What iOS needs is a standard system for newspapers (and a lesser extent magazines) – that offers a consistent way to navigate articles. When you pickup a newspaper, you expect it to work like every other newspaper. That’s not the case on the iPad. App makers might say this limits their creativity, but I think the egos of software developers can take the hit, and that the written content should take centre stage. It would surey be cheaper to produce for a system like this where all the publisher needs to worry about is the content and not the cogs and wheels that drive the app.
Less Clutter
iOS 5 seems a little bloated in placed. Cick the action button in Safari and the options no longer fit in on one screen on the iPhone. Where we once had ‘Add Bookmark’, ‘Add to home screen’ and ‘Mail link to this page’ we have now options to Tweet, Print and do even more. This is systematic of the OS in many places.
System wide sharing to other apps
Instead of a ‘Tweet’ link hard-coded into the operating system, why not have a share system simular to Android. The UI would need some work and the ‘intent’ be more specific that Android (on my Androird phone, sharing a link brings me a list containing Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox and a File Explorer app, why would I want to send Dropbox a URL?) – perhaps a way for apps to register as social applications ?
Scheduled Notifications
I like the fact my iPad has push email. I don’t like the fact it notifies me of new email at 2 in the morning. ‘Nuff said?
Last week, both Google and Microsoft launched cloud file synchronisation services. Together with Apple, three of the biggest players in tech are now competing with the likes of Dropbox and Box.net.
Google’s service, named “Google Drive” (a name I was hoping they would reserve for their exciting autonomous car project), offers tight integration with Google Docs and other Google products such as Picasa, and no doubt with their Chrome OS and Android operating systems in the near future. One of the key selling points of Google Drive is its search facility; they even use OCR to let you search images. You get 5 GB free and can pay for up to 1 TB of space. Crucially, Drive supports sharing files with others, making collaboration on documents much easier. There is support for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS (no Windows Phone).
Microsoft’s SkyDrive has actually been around for a few years but has always been a web-only interface, so despite their initial offering of 25 GB free it was difficult to see how anyone would ever use it if they had to upload files one by one in a browser (I think they knew that too, since now it’s more usable it only offers 7 GB free). SkyDrive also has tight integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem; the upcoming Windows 8 will use it to synchronise data within apps and to keep your settings in the cloud. Office documents can be opened using Office Web Apps and there is support for sharing files too. It supports Windows, macOS, Windows Phone and iOS (no Android).
Apple’s iCloud is rather different. There is no way to use the storage arbitrarily like a folder as you can with the other services mentioned here. Instead, developers use the APIs to build iCloud into their apps. For many people this is fine: most ordinary users just want their documents and photos to be safe and do not care much about the file system underneath. For many (including me), this is a major limitation. It’s great if you own multiple iOS devices (say, an iPhone and an iPad), because your bookmarks, notes and documents will stay in sync. It’s not so great if you want to share a document. There is no way, for example, for two iPad users to work on a spreadsheet using Apple’s Numbers app – it just can’t be done. Of course, Apple have not added support for cloud rival Dropbox to their apps, so I found myself continually emailing a spreadsheet back and forth as if it were 1998. Welcome to the future. The biggest drawback of iCloud is the lack of Windows support. Not that I would be able to open my Pages documents on Windows anyway. However, if you have a Mac and use only Apple’s products, it’s not bad.
So who needs Dropbox?
With all these major players now involved, I’ve read many blogs and comments suggesting “Dropbox is doomed” or that there’s no point in it any more. How wrong they are.
The purpose of these three services is to keep you within an ecosystem. Each has its own small limitations that might seem like a minor inconvenience now, but remember—this is your data, and one day you might decide you no longer want to belong to a particular ecosystem. How easy will it be to move all those gigabytes of data? Dropbox (and other pure‐cloud providers; I just happen to use Dropbox) is not trying to get me to adopt their phone operating system or make it difficult for me to share with a rival. They are just offering cloud synchronisation without the platform politics.
I thought I’d share with you some of the apps I use most often on my phone (a HTC desire S). Here are a few links to some “must have” apps (non-games).
I enjoy listening to Audiobooks while at the gym or driving, and this app makes it so easy. You can download any books you’ve purchased from Audible and the 30s rewind button and sleep timer are excellent additions. The ability to bookmark is also nice. Being owned by Amazon, I’m surprised your position and bookmarks are not backed up to the cloud (as they are when reading a book using the Kindle app) – so this means when I launch the app on my iPad I’m not in sync. Great app and great service.
I don’t like answering calls from anonymous callers – it’s usually someone trying to sell me something I don’t want. This handy little app silently sends anonymous incoming calls to voicemail, meaning anyone who does actually want to contact you can still leave a message for you to call back.
A while back I blogged about a rather convoluted way to mimic the excellent Photo Stream feature found on iOS on Android. That just got much easier thanks to the latest update to Dropbox which can now automatically synchronise photos and videos to your Dropbox account. No more plugging in your USB cable to download all your photos, and if you loose/wipe your phone your precious memories are safe.
A great chat application that lets me sign into MSN Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook all at once. The app cleverly maintains your sessions on their servers, and uses a highly efficient Push connection to keep you connected – meaning you can be signed into all your accounts and your battery won’t even notice. (Also well worth getting for iPad)
I love podcasts, and Dogcatcher is a great player for Android. I wouldn’t say it has the nicest User Experience I’ve ever seen, but functionality it has everything I could ask for from a mobile podcast player – including automatic downloading of new episodes (you can specify WiFi or Plugged in only). iPhone users should checkout Podcaster which provides similar functionality.
Hope you find this useful, let me know if you have any favourites.
If you search around for WiFi connection problems relating to the Kindle, you’ll soon discover that Amazon seem to have played a bit fast and loose with the WiFi specification and problems with the Kindle are rife.
It was no surprise to me then that when I switched to BT ADSL that both my Kindle 3 and my Dad’s Kindle 4 wouldn’t connect to the Home Hub 3 router. I counted 11 other devices in the house which connected without any trouble; laptops, iPods, Xboxes and phones of different makes – so I knew the problem was with the Kindle. After not getting much help from Amazon (for what its worth, their support staff answer the phone quickly, and were pleasant to deal with) I decided I would just need to go through a trial and error process myself. This was time consuming, because the problem only seemed to manifest itself once the Kindle had put the WiFi radio to sleep, so after making a change to the router’s configuration and reconnecting the Kindle, it would always work, and only after 30 minutes or so when the Kindle failed to connect would I know if there was still a problem.
Anyway, the solution for me was to disable mixed WPA and WPA2 encryption, and set the router to use only WPA2. Contrary to other Internet sites, changing the wireless channel or turning off ‘N’ mode made no difference to me. This fixed worked on my Kindle 3 3G and the new Kindle 4 WiFi. All my other devices still connect fine (event a first generation iPod Touch) so not having the original WPA specification in use doesn’t seem to have any drawbacks.
I hope this is of use to someone – let me know in the comments if you’ve had the same problem.
I have to wonder if anyone from the world of UX ever approved the update wizard that Flash Player for Windows uses. It seems to be designed to annoy users, especially since it is modal and shows above all other windows.
On the first screen, checking the checkbox will stop you from progressing and installing the update (contrary to almost every other wizard I’ve seen) yet on the second screen the checkbox needs to be checked in order to continue. What were they thinking?
Most people will not read the associated text (they certainly wont lead the license agreement), and will check the box assuming they need to for the update to install. As Raymond Chen wrote (one of my favourite tech blogs) “Don’t require your users to have a degree in philosophy”
Is this bad UX or am I just wrong? I’d be interested in hearing comments.
A few weeks ago, the iPod turned 10. Hard to believe I know, at the time I’d just recently been bought an iMac (of the original curvy variety) and so I was keeping a close eye on all things Mac (only my AOL dialup connection). I remember reading about the announcement of the iPod and thinking “Wow!” – and feeling pretty smug because as a Mac user I would be able to get one (they were Mac-only to begin with). Of course at the age of 16 £300 for a gadget is hard to come by and so I wait until that Christmas and to my surprise I had an iPod in my stocking.
What struck me was the simplicity and purpose the device was beaming with, it integrated with iTunes so well and songs transferred across at lightening speed. Before the iPod I had been using an MP3 CD player which was a nightmare to navigate, and exceptionally bulky. I was getting the bus to college daily, and I remember I would have to pack it up the stop before because listening on the move wasn’t really an option due to it’s general bulkiness.
Any music player is pretty useless without good music to put on it, at the time I remember listening to Turin Brakes’ debut album The Optimist LP. Even today when I listen to this album, I am reminded of the novelty of the first iPod (as well as standing in freezing January weather waiting for a bus).
Apple released various updates, to support AAC and improve battery life – but the iPod remained the same essentially, a beautiful music player.
By about 2004 my iPod was well and truly battered, this was before it was common knowledge that that “durable” metal back was also very stretchable. I decided to move to a HP PocketPC running Windows Mobile 4, with a 500MB Compact Flash Card. It was nowhere near the 5GB of the iPod, but the geek in me wanted something that could play video and surf the web (using IrDA and GPRS). It was a functional little device, but shoddily built. In 2006 I decided to get an iPod Video 5.5. By now Apple had moved well and truly away from the physical scroll-wheel to a touch-sensitive one – I still use this iPod today and I have never managed to get on with it as well as the first iPod. The video was great though, and the battery was even better. I remember it got me through the hours I had to sit in LAX when my flight was cancelled. That trip was to New York in 2007, a few months after the release of the iPod Touch. After visiting the Apple Store on 5th Avenue, I couldn’t resist the spending my entire holiday money on one of the things and promptly purchased an iPod Touch.
The first generation iPod touch was all about music, and being able to buy it online wherever you were – there were no games, no apps, you couldn’t even edit calendar appointments – this was all about the music (and video). It was therefore a nice addition when Apple released an update (I think it cost about £5) that gave users the ability to install apps.The iPod Touch was also the first time I had ever used a mobile browser and actually enjoyed the experience. My phone at the time (a Nokia N95) was a great phone, but browsing the web it it was awful.
The iPod Touch, like the iPod Video I own remains in use today (I have passed it down the family). Shocking when you think since 2008 I have had 2 laptops fail on me yet these devices still work perfectly. The original iPod powers up, but the battery only lasts a few minutes, and I don’t have a PC with FireWire to get songs onto it anymore
So just some of my iPod memories! I wonder what I’ll be using in 10 years time?