March 11th, 2010
While sitting in an Apple Education Seminar on software development for the iPad and iTouch yesterday, I started doing some research into iPad user interface design, and I’ve run into an interesting question.
No, it’s not how liberally Steve Jobs borrowed from Orson Scott Card’s vision of Ender’s desk — although that was a good excuse to re-read the brilliant Ender’s Game
. But it dealt with where exactly does the iPad fit into the spectrum of smart phone to laptop computer.
For me this question involved thinking about how I would use an iPad. What makes my iPhone smarter than my circa-2000 Denso mobile phone from Sprint is the addition of some very computer/laptop-like functions: e-mail, Web browsing, music playing and other applications. So other than screen size I was wondering what is the difference between the iPad and either my iPhone or my MacBook Pro.
In reading the Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the iPad I found a distinction I didn’t expect. Apple tells me the iPad is NOT a computer:
Although iPad applications can allow people to create and manipulate files, this does not mean that people should have a sense of the file system on iPad… On iPad, there is no application analogous to the Mac OS X Finder, and people should not be asked to interact with files as they do on a computer.
But that left me wondering what defines a computer — at least to Apple’s user interface designers. Is it the exposure of a file system? As more and more devices share information over the Internet, the dividing line between devices that are computers and those that are not will get harder to draw.
The next generation e-mail using, Web-browsing mobile phones will be so ubiquitous that it will be silly to discuss smart phones — every phone will be smart. But that still leaves a category to be defined. Will the iPad be an example of a tablet — an internet-enabled device larger than a phone, but without a keyboard? A tablet computer? Or despite Apple’s guidelines just a computer in the shape of tablet?
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February 4th, 2010
Yesterday I addressed a new cohort of Medill graduate students, discussing the future of interactive storytelling, the importance of Human/Reader-Centered Design and the need for collaboration between Journalists and Technologists. During the talk I got two particularly interesting questions:
- Long-form, magazine stories are not easy to read on mobile devices. What is the future of long-form if — as I suggested — journalism’s future is not the Web but new devices? *
I answered by saying that journalists need to be more sophisticated about serving the right kind of content to the right audience depending on the device the audience is using. On a smartphone audio is always an option. Doing more to reformat the text or break it up would make it more device friendly. And new platforms like e-book readers and tablets may be better options for long-form stories. The key is not to pretend that televisions are radios, that smart phones are magazines or that tablets are laptops. Let each device have the type and format of content most suited to it.
- Another student asked if I was concerned that proprietary OSes (for the iPhone, Kindle & Palm Pre) and formats (he meant Flash) would limit the potential of content distribution? *
The proprietary OS issue worries me less — it reminded me of the late 80s when software development was very platform specific. The marketplace forced developers to make the software cross platform and created common user experience regardless of where the software lived. Besides most users are really using an App or a Web browser to get data from the Internet so the content itself is still not locked down.
But what about Flash and Apples iPhone/iPad? Sadly I wasn’t prepared to quote Jeffrey Zeldman: “Flash won’t die tomorrow, but plug-in technology is on its way out” or John Gruber: “Web site producers tend to be practical. Those that use Flash do so not because they’re Flash proponents, but because Flash is easy and ubiquitous… Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There’s a big difference between “everywhere” and “almost everywhere.”
The issues with Flash will solve themselves — either mobile devices will find a to run Flash or designers will present their content without it. Technology issues on new platforms are real, but pay walls and and exclusive content deals are a more insidious threat because consumers, just like developers, can decide they can live without journalism if its not accessible.
* Questions are paraphrased to shorten and add context as needed.
Tags: Journalism, Smartphones
Posted in Articles, Storytelling, The Future? | 2 Comments »
