It’s certainly made the horn since The Talk Show podcast, but this is big news. Weight and heft has been the big pain points for iPad usage; it’s why my iPad generally stays in its case while my Kindle and iPhone get very heavy use. A (cheaper?) 7.85″ iPad could change all that, especially with full compatibility of existing iPad apps.
I’m a relative newcomer to Apple and Steve Jobs. Apple computers were an influence growing up, but I didn’t really start using Apple products until my post college days. Yet, after getting my hands on my first Mac, a Powerbook G4, I was hooked. The accessibility and design of Apple’s products always matches the tech power under the hood – a rarity in our industry. I don’t think any of it would have been possible without, as Jobs often said, Apple at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. It makes the company’s work unique and often amazing.
Jobs was a genius, yet still fallible; his flare ups of anger and arrogance were well documented. Paradoxically, the weaker sides of Jobs made him even more approachable, human, and charismatic. That made news of his passing all the more tragic. Not every Apple launch under Jobs has been a success, yet his successes fundamentally changed the technology industry at least three times with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone. Who other single person has had that kind of impact?
Jobs also had an incredible gift at intertwining technology and design, along with a relentless drive. Both are traits that I strive to achieve every day in my career.
Rest in peace Steve and thanks for always moving the ball forward.
With HP cutting its losses on the Touchpad and PC markets, the “post-PC” era begins with Apple firmly in the lead. The evidence is overwhelming: HP’s exit leaves Apple as the only major consumer PC maker with increasing profitability. Yet even with its leg up on the competition, Apple is shifting away from PCs. Over 70% of its previous quarter’s revenue was wrapped up in iPhones and iPads; it’s fair to expect that percentage to only increase in the future.
However, I disagree that the failures of HP, RIM and other companies in the tablet sphere make a long run Apple victory inevitable. In actuality, the post-PC era is divisible into two eras. The first is a transitional, “tablet as entertainment” era that we’re in now in which Apple clearly dominates. Yet there’s a final, longer term “tablet as PC” era of the future where I doubt a single company will control the market.
Technology gives us an amazing breadth of information, from email and Twitter to task lists on OmniFocus. Yet the sheer size of what’s out there comes at a cost; the decisions of what to tackle next can be overwhelming, stressful and, given the frequent contextual switches between programs, inefficient.
As a result I’ve lately found myself turning less and less to news sites, RSS and Twitter to catch up with what’s happening. Instead I’m increasingly relying on information sources that eschew decisions, pare down content, and make a conscious effort to slow the user down. Two iPad reading apps fit this goal perfectly: Zite and Palimpsest.
Both apps intentionally limit what’s on screen at once, emphasizing a “lean back”, more methodical browsing pace. Zite packages information from the user’s Twitter and RSS feeds in a magazine like format; each page rarely has more than five or six articles. Palimpsest takes this limitation even further, presenting only a single curated article to the user at a time. The experience is a welcome contrast to the “lean forward”, rapid scanning behavior that predominates nearly all RSS and Twitter clients.
It’s clear Google+ and Mac OS X Lion are getting a lot of attention from tech and design communities online. Some question the focus, but I think it’s well deserved based solely on both products’ visual design changes. However, it’s not flashy CSS3 animations or iOS-like visualizations that have me excited. Instead, I’m most impressed by the changes in spacing; Google+ and Lion provide significantly more room between UI elements and content than their competitors (or in the case of Lion, earlier versions of Mac OS X.)
That white space factor is one way Google+ distinguishes itself from Facebook and Twitter: Content receives extra padding and wider margins than I initially expected. Side columns are sparsely populated and the pages for Circles and profile management are spaced out to ensure editable elements have adequate room. Comment threads are limited in scope by default (though more customization here would be welcome) to keep the stream view uncluttered. In addition, while it’s not exactly Google+ only, listings in Gmail, Google Calendar and core Google Search results all received a bump in padding to increase readability.
I was relieved when Apple debuted iCloud last Monday; finally the company was addressing its subpar cloud connectivity head on. Given Apple’s penchant for great design, combined with its large install base and investment (a.k.a. its gigantic North Carolina data center) iCloud could move cloud computing to a much more mainstream level of integration and accessibility.
However, I’ve seen way too much hype from financial investors to tech pundits who are all accepting the Apple PR mantra of “it just works” as fact. Please, stop with the hyperbole. iCloud is not revolutionary. iCloud is very much a hard drive in the sky; Apple is merely obfuscating the details by burying them within their native apps.
In reality, Apple’s iCloud is less technical revolution and more philosophical shift. The company’s cloud system centers on tight vertical integration with iOS or Mac-friendly apps that have integrated Apple’s iCloud API. It’s a classic Apple move. An attempt to move an existing technology to the company?s comfort zone: its native user interfaces, hardware and software. I’d suspect iCloud will be easier, at first glance, for users heavily invested within Apple’s iOS and Mac ecosystem. A document will be saved, and given the likely heavy restrictions placed under the iCloud API, there’s only a few places it can go, namely the same file name and app on every other Apple vetted app.
In contrast, existing cloud sync systems from the likes of Google and Dropbox embrace a far more open, flexible structure that can be accessed in many ways (on any operating system, on the web, within native apps via APIs). Yet, that openness comes at a cost; more options and flexibility means a less unified, harder to understand interface, especially for the non-tech crowd.
There’s a reason Steve Jobs saved the presentation of iCloud for himself; it’s one of the company’s biggest announcements in years, arguably second only to the debut of the original iPhone and iPad. The ramifications of Apple’s cloud service are so big it makes my head hurt, and I’m mostly positive on what I’ve heard. That said, I’ve got a few questions and concerns:
Make no mistake, iCloud is fundamentally a syncing service. John Gruber can gush how it’s different and there will be “no conflicts or merging” but at some point an offline device has to sync with the latest iCloud copy. If both copies have changes, how will files be merged accurately? How will conflicts be conveyed and settled with the user?
It’s clear from their North Carolina venture Apple is betting big. But it’s a huge bet on something fundamentally not in Apple’s core competency. I still think they’ll pull through, but it’s not a guaranteed knock out of the park yet.
Judging from the response of tech companies (and the bloggers that cover them) this is the year of the cloud music service: Amazon came out of the gate a bit early, followed by Google and now Apple later this year, the details of which will be announced next week. I’d bet heavily on Apple and their stellar design work coming out on top, especially if rumors are true that Apple will provide cloud streaming for iTunes Store music sans uploads.
Yet the Apple vs. Amazon vs. Google music locker battle in the end is minor; the far more interesting question is Apple vs. Rdio; ownership ? la carte versus a nearly limitless collection for a flat subscription fee. It’s in that battle that I think Apple/Amazon/Google could lose. A few reasons why:
One of the primary arguments made against music streaming is that its lack of ownership is a significant downside; unlike movies or TV shows that are only watched once or twice, good albums are listened to tens, even hundreds of times. I disagree; music is a lot more fickle than people give it credit for. In particular, people’s tastes can change quickly; hard core niche music fans look aggressively for new material while more mainstream users want to hear the latest pop hits, the roster of which changes often. In addition, streaming’s sound quality and mobile connectivity have improved a lot over the past year, blurring the lines between a streaming experience and true song ownership.
Considering the App Store’s maturity I’m surprised how many new iOS apps like Pulse and Pocket Casts deviate significantly from Apple’s native visual style. Back in 2008 or 2009 such wide deviations and experiments were expected, yet today I’m downloading apps with solid functionality and design in a package that feels and looks like something Apple could have never designed; that?s a problem.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting developers that blindly copy the company’s aesthetic to automatically expect greatness. Originality of design and function, not to mention solid customer support and a well written code base are all critical factors behind app success. Nevertheless, the appeal of Apple?s native app look shouldn?t be underestimated: Remember a huge subset of iOS users spend most of their time buried deep within Apple’s native apps (e.g. Safari, Calendar, Mail, Messages), only occasionally branching off into other third-party apps. If a third-party app it just looks or feel too different from Apple?s approach, especially for novice users, it runs a risk of being ignored or eliminated. In addition, the bias of the Mac tech elite (e.g. John Gruber, Macworld) have toward more native Apple looking apps is significant; often it’s their recommendations that trickle down to other power users (e.g. yours truly) who in turn ultimately spread their influence to a wider, more casual audience.
I tend to be cynical when I hear journalists talk about how a new technology is a “glimpse of the future.” It’s often terminology synonymous with the overly ambitious, exotic and doomed to fail.
Real glimpses of the future for me instead come in surprisingly subtle forms, the most impressive being cloud syncing: Core bits of data are stored online in the “cloud”, in turn automatically referenced by different digital devices to keep media seamlessly in sync. Just as surprisingly? The usually innovative Apple has almost nothing to do with it.