iPhone Applications

When Apple announced that the "sweet" iPhone Software Development Kit was going to be AJAX and "Web 2.0 stuff", most developers scoffed. A few went to work, and now we are starting to see some web applications built specifically for the iPhone.

First up is a very nicely designed shopping list application named OneTrip. It was the first iPhone application released as far as I can tell. It's also my personal favorite.

Then 37Signals Ta Da List web app simply senses if you are hitting their website from an iPhone and adjusts to look like this:

OmniGroup is working on a version of their getting-things-done application OmniFocus for the iPhone and they have some screenshots online here.

Notice how these iPhone web apps follow or try to follow very closely the iPhone look and feel. This is a testament to how these developers really get the "build the experience" ethos. That said, even with all this focus on looking "iPhone-like" without the smooth transitions, it's really quite a different feel.

An attempt at a full list of all iPhone web apps can be found at iPhone Application List, but be prepared for some ugly looking iPhone apps. I think the delay in releaseing a "real" iPhone SDK may actually help cement the iPhone experience. With a solid customer expectation of what it means to be an "iPhone app" this could actually lead to an better user experiece with all 3rd party iPhone applications long term. Let's hope!

Apple's official documentation and guidelines for developing for the iPhone are located here: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

Transitions

You may have heard the saying, "It's the journey, not the destination." I like this saying, but I have never applied it to user interface design.

Normally, when prototyping or sketching up a UI design, I focus on the end states, the screenshot. Once you have that, you link screenshot to screenshot in a kind of storyboard that shows the process the user will follow to accomplish a task. Most of the time, these are just paper sketches. Sometimes I'll do some high fidelity screenshots, but normally the sketches are enough.

What's amazing to me about the iPhone experience is how much time Apple spent, not on the end states, but the transitions through and to the end states. I'm really starting to think that what makes you feel so great about the device is just as much the easy to use screens, but the ease and smoothness of "getting there." The "journey" through the iPhone interface is filled with great transitions from beautiful state to beautiful state. It really is just as much about the transitions as it is about the destination.

I started to think about other great experiences that I've had at restaurants, shopping, even a few websites and I realized that a very large part of what made them so enjoyable was really the way they managed the transitions. Every step of the way was cared for, curated really. I've always known the "out of box experience" was important, and the functional flow through the application critical, but designing the visual flow through each functional transition, this is a whole new idea.

Apple Form Factor Evolution: 1976 through 2007

Core 77, one of my favorite design blogs, links to Edwin Tofslie's visual time line of Apple products from 1976 to the present day. Very cool. Print this out, then put a mark by each device or accessory you've personally touched at least once. It's the perfect Mac User Group conversation piece. :-) Enjoy the walk down memory lane.

iPhone Envy

Admittedly, my sample is skewed, but I have yet to talk to anyone at work who doesn't want an iPhone. Even the skeptics, after playing with one in person have tried to purchase one. Tried and failed only because every store in the state of Washington is sold out right now. There's even been some talk about iPhones as our ship gifts for Office 2008, but I think that's just a vicious rumor. The universal reason for not getting one: finances. I'm not saying that Apple over priced the iPhone, but that the iPhone is so compelling that no one is saying they don't want one. Everyone does, just not everyone has figured out how to work it out financially just yet. Now that's impressive.

The 1.0 that wasn't

From what I can gather, the biggest problems with the iPhone seem to be as follows, in order of severity:

1. You can only use AT&T network

2. The EDGE data network is slow

3. The keyboard takes some time to learn

4. Making a phone call can take more "taps" than with other phones

5. No way to Cut, Copy or Paste

(I'm leaving off the list the fact that so many are having trouble activating their phones. I think this is AT&T's capacity planning problem, and I don't think we'll see this happen again.)

This is remarkable. The iPhone is NOT a simple device. It is a complex feature-laden phone, iPod and web device. And with all this functionality, the most folks can do to complain about it is reference something related to the items above.

This phone flies in the face of all those who think that 1.0 products must be either fully focused on one task to be done well, or those that consider 1.0 products something you should avoid by default until the next release, you know, the one with all the bugs worked out. The iPhone while complex and full of features, does have a simple interaction and experience. It is so compelling and just fun, that to miss out on this version while waiting for the "next rev" seems almost unbearable, once you've played with it. As others continue to market proudly their "alpha" and "beta" stickers, Apple shows us all, that you can deliver a 1.0 experience that really is complete.

What it means to be 1.0 will never be the same.

iPhone Activation and Sync

Before we knew the iPhone was real, the common wisdom was that in order for Apple to make the experience something of acceptable quality, they'd have to own or at least rent the cell network. Take a look at this iPhone activation and sync video. This is clearly an Apple experience, simple, clear and elegant. Apple is doing what it does best, and AT&T is doing what they do best. This is how every business partnership should be.

Doing activation and sync away from the store allows Apple to control the "out of box experience" which I think is key. You don't get an iPhone without your calendar, contacts, pictures, music and videos. If you did get a phone without all the above personalized data, the first time experience would be decidedly different. From a logistics and spontaneity perspective it also allows people to buy the iPhone quickly, cash and carry, and allow them to do the longer part of the process in the comfort of their own home. No pressure, everything at your own pace. This is designing an experience, not a phone.

Rubber Edges

I spent some time today playing with the iPhone and there's one interaction I just love. It's that when you scroll to the edge of the web page, the iPhone allows you to drag/scroll as far as you like past the edge. It just lets you stretch right past the edge into the "grayness", but when you do let go it pulls back to the end/edge of the data being displayed. It's like the iPhone is saying, "You're in control, but there's no more data over there. Honest, but if you want to go there, sure, you can. But I'm telling you there's nothing there. See, I told you, nothing there. It really is the end." This is very clever. It gives you both a sense of control, but also a sense of boundary. It's like the difference between a corral with split pole fences and one with electric fences. Both define the boundary, but with one, finding the edge is much more unpleasant.

iPhone. A Guided Tour.

This week Apple has released a 20 minute guided tour of the iPhone that shows in great detail the new user interface. You can download the high quality version here.

Apparently there are millions of people excited, even hysterical, about the iPhone's release this Friday. I must be out of the core news/media channels, but I haven't felt the fervor as much as it seems others have. That said, I'm very interested in a phone that "just works" and the iPhone has every indication of being just that. If this post adds to your hype pain, I'm sorry.

While the demos and ads for the iPhone thus far have been persuasive, they really didn't show all the details about the actual user interaction with the iPhone. Not so with this guided tour. If you are on the fence about the iPhone, this 20 minute tour will at the very least, make you want to visit the store and try it out.

Some of the things that caught my attention from a user experience perspective follow:

Everything moves very fast and fluid. Seriously, I'm so used to delays, even on my Mac, this responsiveness really makes you feel in control.

They actually show someone typing on the keyboard with their thumbs, but mention that you shouldn't try it for a week and until you've learned to "trust the intelligence of the keyboard." Personally, I have a hard time believing any touch screen keyboard can be better than something with real tactile response. That said, I tend to see small devices as mostly read only for me. I don't plan on doing major data entry on my phone. Add an appointment, respond to simple text message, type quick answer to an email, add a new phone number to my contact list, sure, but if I end up "living on my phone" I think I've got bigger problems than even a tactile keyboard will solve.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how you are supposed to tell the keyboard to "auto-complete" with the word suggested. I think it's hitting the spacebar, but I can't tell if that's just for spelling corrections or for auto-compelete as well.

It seems like the double tap is taking the "get me more info about this item" that the double click has represented on the Mac for so long. What is interesting is that they are adding to this gesture the sense of "I'm done now, get me out of here." For example in Safari a double tap both zooms in and zooms out. But this behavior is not consistent. In the Google Maps application, to zoom out, you need to tap once with two fingers. So, no zooming out while driving. ;-)

When browsing the web, it sure seems like the zooming is based on CSS devisions. I wonder what kind of problems this will cause on sites with poor or none existent CSS devisions?

It looks like a triple tap is what "activates" a link in the web browser. I think that's a good solution, but I wonder how many times folks will drag, flick or zoom before they actually figure out how to click a link? Activating a link or phone number in an email or SMS message only takes one tap. While not consistent, given the context, I think it will work. In my mind, this shows how weak consistency is, compared to the power of context.

The exterior buttons on the side of the phone actually look hard to press. And there's a button specifically to silence the phone's ringing. That button is one of 4 buttons on the unit. Way to go Apple for elevating that general need to silence a ring tone in a quiet meeting.

You can turn off the phone which looks to be quite painless. I wonder how long it takes to boot up?

The "drag your finger from left to right" seems to be the "authorize this action" or "serious stuff happens when you do this" gesture. You use it to unlock the phone, to confirm a shutdown and to initiate a deletion.

It looks like 5 buttons at the bottom of the screen is a theme in these iPhone applications. Kind of like a toolbar, but one that can never have more than 5 items. It's a constraint really based on the constant size of people's fingers. Apple still let's you "customize your toolbar buttons" at least in the iPod app. The upper portion of the screen is where "confirmation buttons" are located, like "Done", "Clear", "Save", " etc.

Sheets always come from either the bottom or side of the screen, never from the top of the screen. That area seems to be a sacred status area.

Dragging is done by touching a "drag handle" button that let's the iPhone know you are trying drag, not gesture. When you drag, the item increases in size so you you can see around your finger. Nice.

Sometimes you can drag and other times you can "flick" or "throw" things, like when scrolling a web page. I wonder as a designer, how you decide when you can do what? Also, how does the Safari app decided between a "flick" and a quick short drag? There must have been some fun iteration around that algorithm.

Big buttons actually look nice and not "too big and bulky", but not all buttons are huge. Like the audio scroll control in the voice mail application. I wonder how Apple decided when to make a button "finger size" and when to make it small?

The landscape orientation is like "full screen" mode on a Mac.

Airplane mode is awesome. I wish my Mac had that kind of mode as well, not just for airplanes, but for when I just want to be "off the grid" and focus for a bit. Call it QuietRoom: a place where distractions go away.

It looks like when someone calls, you might see a full screen photo of the person who is calling, not just a small thumbnail. If that's so, that's very cool.

Clicking some buttons, but not all, causes a "glow" response. It seems to be how smaller buttons register the click. I think it's a great effect and it looks like you can mostly see it around your finger, which I think is the whole idea behind the effect.

The ring tones seem really high quality and distinctive. Depending on how cool they are, Apple might even get some extra marketing out of "well known" iPhone ring tones. When folks hear a ring, they'll know that person has an iPhone, so even if Apple never sells ring tones, I hope they spent a lot of time working on them, because it could very well pay great dividends. Especially if for some reason they don't allow using a portion of an iTunes song as a ring tone.

All very interesting stuff, for me at least. :-)

What I really appreciate about Apple is their example of taking some domain that people largely view as "solved" and allow changes to occur by introducing new methods, ideas, or products or simply altering existing ones in new ways. Say, for example, how a human interacts with a small computer. Clicking and pointing with a device was "the way it was done," and "using a keyboard" before that. With the iPhone, Apple has said in essence, "No, there is a way to communicate with a computer that removes even the pointing or input device!" They remove the mouse and the stylus and take direct manipulation and human computer interaction to a whole new level. It's really amazing to watch. Allowing for changes to occur in any business is extremely hard, much harder than you might think. Seth Godin said it succinctly in his post on Reasons and excuses:

• Most organizations need a good reason to do something new.

• All they need is a flimsy excuse to not do something for the first time.

• And they often need a lawsuit to stop doing something they're used to.

If there's a space in your area of expertise that people generally view as "solved" or "commodity" or "not interesting any more" look again. The very fact that folks consider that area devoid of innovative potential is probably your greatest indication that there's something more lurking under the surface.

iPhone requires iTunes account?

I just got the second email from Apple after signing up with them for breaking iPhone updates via email. I read the mail a little bitterly, since I felt the least they could have done was to send me an email when they had the ship date nailed down. Well, the tone of the email was mostly, "Here are things you can do to get ready for your iPhone...", but it ended with this:

To set up your iPhone, you'll need an account with Apple's iTunes Store. If you already have an iTunes account, make sure you know your account name and password. If you don't have an account, you should set one up now to save time later. To set up an account, launch iTunes, select the iTunes Store, and click the Sign In button in the upper right corner of iTunes. Sign in and you're ready to go.

My first thought was sure, you'd need one if you wanted to use protected iTunes content, but on second thought, I wondered, could this be something more? Could it be that you'll need an iTunes account for other iPhone features to actually work, like maybe purchasing music from the store over WiFi? Could this be how ring tones are purchased? Could this be the mechanism for adding Apple applications and features to your iPhone? Maybe some integration with a new and improved .Mac service, like real time sync? Maybe to make up for the forever lost hidden features in Leopard, there will be some "sweet" hidden features in the iPhone? Nah, never mind.

Forward Looking Font Display

Yesterday, Apple released their own Safari 3.0 web browser for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Amid the security and performance comparisons, folks are also noticing that Apple has also ported their own sub-pixel display technology to Windows. Joel Spolsky summarizes the differences sucintly:

Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.

Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface.

I think Apple's method will turn out better when we all have resolution independence along with hi-resolution displays. The real question is will the current font display fuzziness in Safari turn off the current unwashed masses, so that even when hi-res displays become standard, it's too late. If that happens, Safari will follow a great Apple tradition: high technology ahead of its time.

Coming Home

May we all experience a joyful reunion like this! And for those in the United States, Happy Memorial Day.

Silverlight

The best thing about Silverlight is its icon. For regular users it's a web-browser plugin that allows you to view and use Silverlight content. What Silverlight content is there? Media and stuff. Have you ever seen a website done completely in Flash? Well, now you can do that but with Silverlight. From my perspective this is fundamentally about competing with Flash. There are some cool things going on under the covers to make this happen and as a developer, I understand the geek factor there. By the same token, as a developer, my ability to develop amazing software is directly related to the toolset available to me. So I ask myself, "Which toolset gives me the greatest ability to develop amazing software?" Flash or Silverlight? PHP or Ruby on Rails? Cocoa and Core Animation or XAML and .NET? I don't think I can compare any of these with much authority, but I have a hard time believing that the next killer app, web or otherwise is going to show up as a Silverlight application. Still, I love the icon.

Blogger 2.0

Some people are getting re-posts of my older blog posts. As far as I can tell, this has started since I moved to the new version of Blogger. When I upgraded this blog to Blogger 2.0, I gained the ability to tag or label my posts. Very cool. I also lost my formatting in all 240 of my older posts. Not very cool. As a result, I'm going through my older posts one by one to manually fix the formatting and add tags/labels to the content. If I modify any one of my posts, either textually or by adding a tag or label, Blogger sees this as an update, and treats this old post, as a new one. I don't know how to get around this. Further, not everyone sees this behavior.

Bottom line: As I work through fixing up my older posts, you might get a re-post of old content. I'm not trying to spam you with re-posts, just trying to clean up my blog. I guess, with Blogger the adage, "You get what you pay for," applies. Maybe in the future I'll consider moving to MoveableType or something like that, but right now, that's not in the cards. Thanks for being patient.

Apple Slips Leopard to Oct 2007

From Apple's Hot News web page:

Apple Statement
iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

This is interesting. Apple, like many companies often slip their release dates. Historically, however, Apple has only slipped a little on ship dates, but this slip, from Spring 2007 to October 2007, is the largest slip I remember. It's very uncharacteristic of the rhythm of shipping Apple has had over the last 5 years.

Leopard is certainly Apple's most ambitious OS release yet, so it stands to reason that they could have bit off more than they could handle. I'm sure this was further compounded by the additional resources needed for both the Apple TV and the iPhone. I also wonder what the "secret features" are that Jobs referred to in his last keynote. Some have suggested that this slip was to add unplanned functionality, but I don't get that sense. I tend to believe that this is just what it's stated to be, a resource issue.

There are 3 variables you can change when managing a project: scope (how big it is), resources (how much money and people you can allocate) and time (how long the project will take). It looks like Apple reduced their allocated resources for Leopard, and without a corresponding reduction in scope, they were forced to increase the time the project would take. I'm sure this is super painful for them, it always is, but not long from now, they'll ship and this will all be a distant memory. Personally, I'm glad I don't have to put up with all the rumor sites constantly suggesting that Leopard is just about to RTM. ;-)

Update: Best quote from our chit chat around the office here: "Woah. October? :( Stupid iPhone. I want my Time Machine."

Credibility

I was just skimming through the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines and while in the Design Principles section I came upon this title, and I just had to laugh:

There is a point where marketing ceases to be marketing and becomes information; relevant, valuable information. There's also a point where something, truly informational becomes marketing. Branding folks like to say that any interaction with your product defines your brand. Whether you are working on marketing or strictly informational stuff, it's important to pause and ask yourself, "What does this say about me?" Sometimes, it's that simple human question that's enough to help you know when you need to work a little harder to remove a subtitle.

Hardware and Software

John Gruber writing on Apple's choice of AAC as the DRM-free format sold on iTunes, makes this interesting comparison:

Apple’s use of AAC in lieu of MP3 is analogous to the Mac’s switch to USB in 1998. USB was an industry standard that wasn’t taking off because PCs didn’t ship with built-in USB ports, which PC makers didn’t include because there weren’t many USB peripherals on the market, which peripheral makers didn’t want to build because there weren’t enough PCs shipping with USB ports.

Then came the iMac, whose only peripheral port was USB. (It didn’t even have FireWire.) All of a sudden peripheral makers had a reason to make USB gadgetry, and after that, PC makers had a reason to include USB ports on new PCs.

Hardware and software are the Yin and Yang of the tech industry. Some argue that one is more valuable than the other, but you can't separate them. You need both. Apple is one of the few companies in the position to capitalize on this reality. From a human computer interaction (HCI) standpoint, if we are going to move forward the interaction, this necessitates hardware advances. And who is in the best position to push forward hardware advances that are included by default? Apple.

The newest and perhaps most interesting HCI advances recently have been the result of great software and great hardware, together. The Tivo, Microsoft's XBox and XBox Live, Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPhone and Apple TV are perfect examples of what amazing things can happen when great hardware design meets with great software interfaces. Additionally, from a purely experiential perspective, people feel better about laying down large quantities of cash for something physical rather than something that's purely intellectual property, as much as I personally value the later.

Fundamentally, where should you look for human computer interaction innovation? You should look to the people who can move forward the whole stack, and can integrate it fully, seamlessly. In the realm of personal computers, that leaves only one company: Apple.

Great by Default

The Future Parc at the Cebit trade fair in Hanover, Germany is a place to showcase future technologies. I didn't go, but two of the products I read about caught my imagination and got me thinking. Here they are:

Tobii Technology's eye tracking system

It's one thing to use multi-touch to move things about on the screen, but it's quite another to simply look at something, and have the computer recognize where you are looking and move your pointer there. A blink or a tap on the keyboard and you've clicked. I'd love this technology simply to review how folks use software. It's hard to tell, but it doesn't look like the "device" is that intrusive for installation in regular computer displays. In fact, Tobii even sells eye tracking hardware to OEMs that can, "provide eye gaze point, eye/head position and pupil size data. ... There are no external cameras or lightning units. ... The user does not need to "do" or "wear" anything and can move freely. Tracking is fully automatic and high accuracy can be relied on regardless of glasses, contacts, eye colour, age, ethnic background or light conditions."

The Fraunhofer Institute's Face Finder

The Face Finder is a system that can find faces, human faces even in low lighting conditions and then recognize if the face is angry, happy, neutral, sad or surprised. Of course they say this could be used for targeting advertising (an original business plan, I know...) but I think there's potentially a broader application in terms of simply recognizing when it's appropriate to "interrupt" a user. In my opinion, computers should keep things quiet when we are "in the groove" in order to maximize our effectiveness. This kind of technology seems a great fit for answering the, "Is it okay to notify the user event x just occurred?"

Both of these inventions require a computer with a video camera or some sort of hardware video device. I don't know if you could build an eye tracking system with only one iSight video camera, or even if the video camera installed on my MacBook is sufficient quality for something like Face Finder, but every new Mac that ships with a built in video camera makes for more fertile soil in which innovations, just like these can sprout, grow and even take root.

One of the things I've always loved about Apple hardware is that you can't order a "stripped down" version of any Mac. How long has Apple included FireWire standard with every Mac? More recently the Apple remote is "default equipment" with any Mac and a built in video camera comes with any Mac that includes a screen. By keeping the "lowest common denominator" experience so feature rich, Apple is able to create experiences that simply start at a higher level. Both Apple and their developers can assume a certain quality of system that Windows developers fundamentally can't depend upon. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons it's always so exciting to be a developer on the Mac platform.

It's never too late to start! :-)

Google Desktop vs. Spotlight

Over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Scott McNulty has a review of Google Desktop for the Mac version 1.0. If QuickSilver were not enough, may this provide Apple the substantive reason to improve the speed and responsiveness of Spotlight. Please.

Classic Apple

When Apple announced the iPhone, I signed up for "more information" and gave them my email address. Today they sent me this:

On so many levels this is classic Apple.

Update 1: The graphic I uploaded from the email I got from Apple has misteriously disappeard. I'm guessing it's some copyright issue, but I recieved no notice from Apple or Google, just that the graphic was gone. Interesting.

Update 2: Looks like I'm too paranoid, the picture is back. Must have been just another blogger bug.

Apple: Confidence vs. Protectionism

Today Apple announced that all songs from EMI will be available free of DRM (digital rights management) limitations. In the past it was like this for EMI music on iTunes:

$0.99/song

$10.00/album

AAC at 128 kbps

All music with DRM (only playable on 5 computers, can't burn in same playlist over 7 times, only playable by Apple applications or devices)

Starting in May 2007, all EMI music will also be available as follows:

$1.29/song

$10.00/album

AAC at 256 kbps

No DRM

This affects not only music but music videos. From the press release:

iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free format for 30 cents a song. All EMI music videos will also be available in DRM-free format with no change in price.

Famous business man, Warren Buffett once said: “In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats’.”

"In days of old, a castle was protected by the moat that circled it. The wider the moat, the more easily a castle could be defended, as a wide moat made it very difficult for enemies to approach. A narrow moat did not offer much protection and allowed enemies easy access to the castle. To Buffett, the castle is the business and the moat is the competitive advantage the company has. He wants his managers to continually increase the size of the moats around their castles.

When looking to purchase a business, Buffett pays careful attention to a business he understands not just in terms of what the business does but also of “what the economics of the industry will be 10 years down the road, and who will be making the money at that point.” He is “also looking for enduring competitive advantages.” This, in a nutshell, is what makes a company great: the width of the moat around the company’s core business."

Apple has decided that the enormous moat it has in DRM is not as valuable as making customers feel unlimited by their technology. This is like Apple sending forth from its impenetrable castle and scheduling a battle, say next month on the open valley, Apple against everyone, all sportsmanship like. This kind of courage and confidence is something unique indeed. So what of Buffet's moats and competitive advantage analysis? I think it still holds, it's just that Apple's sustainable competitive advantage is their deep trust in the inherent value of their products and the experiences they provide. Almost no one has that these days.