Good news everybody! Apple’s iPhone OS is (some would say finally) getting into the multitasking game. Well, they are about to get into the game, the new OS was just announced today.

I was following the event via Engadget and saw something that caught my eye. Here’s a quote from the QA session in the iPhone OS 4 event (from Engadget):

“Q: How do you close applications when multitasking? A: (Scott Forstall) You don’t have to. The user just uses things and doesn’t ever have to worry about it. A: (Steve Jobs) It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.”

Now, this is why I have a serious love-hate relationship with open source as a whole: It just seems to be unable (as a process) to provide good UX or usability. Lately I’ve been following the Android camp a lot, and I’ve even became quite giddy about the new HTC Desire: The way it (Android 2.1) handles multitasking, notifications etc. is just amazing. Same couldn’t be said about iPhone, at least so far, until the Android-like multitasking arrives.

However, the problem with Android is that it’s open source, which inherently means that anyone can pitch in, even if they have no experience in the matter. Good example is that some Android developers even keep saying that Android needs a task manager, because it’s a multitasking platform. Which, no matter what way you look at it, is just the wrong way to look at the problem. Or, one could even say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem… Meanwhile, UX/usability experts are trying to tell people that if the most downloaded program in Android Market is a task manager, something is inherently off. When it comes to good UX, the user shouldn’t be worrying about these things, rather than just use the damn thing.

This, is something that open source process has, so far, been unable to deliver. However, commercial projects realize this, just because they do focus group testing, they do UX/usability evaluations etc. I’ve talked this lot before and I will say it again – Open source, as in it’s current form, is just not capable of providing products that deliver good UX. Good UX (like good usability) needs designers and testing, neither of which are present in open source projects. Or, if they are, their voices can’t be heard from all the other opinions making themselves heard.

So tip of my hat to Apple. This might actually be enough to get me into the iPad game, since for me the no. 1 problem, hands down, was the lack of multitasking. If I can’t run for example IM messaging, Spotify and a browser at the same time, the device is as good as dead weight for me. “It has the best browsing experience, ever! Boom!” – Well, it doesn’t matter to me if that’s ALL you are going to do with the device. Besides, my main browsing experience is not going anywhere from my desktop and full size real keyboard (and hopefully soon new big screen). But now, with multitasking, the device just got a whole lot interesting!

Now, if they would just let me use it properly without iTunes, I would be a happy camper. But, knowing S. Jobs, that is never going to happen. Which just makes me a sad panda.

PS. I have to say that, I think Steve was wrong saying “stylus is just making it wrong“, as I have bunch of designer/artist friends who would just looove this thing with pressure sensitive stylus.

This article goes about to paint a hypothetical future where megacorporations rule the world, plus just how that might happen. Today’s subject is Apple (includes some speculation of new product release).

First things first, what is a Megacorporation?

According Wikipedia,

“It refers to a fictional corporation that is a massive conglomerate, holding monopolistic or near-monopolistic control over multiple markets (thus exhibiting both a horizontal and a vertical monopoly). Megacorps are so powerful that they can ignore the law, possess their own heavily-armed (often military-sized) private armies, hold ’sovereign’ territory, and possibly even act as outright governments. They often exercise a large degree of control over their employees, taking the idea of ‘corporate culture’ to an extreme.”

While the private armies are bit of a stretch still, the rest of it just could be possible.

Why Apple?

For all of you haters out there, even though I tend to criticize Apple a lot, this isn’t personal. The whole thing started when I was thinking about a product concept and came to conclusion that there are couple of things that are vital to the concept, and all of those Apple has a stranglehold. Thus, the idea was scrapped and morphed to Megacorporations article.

First of all, Apple has bunch of special traits that tend to tint it towards possible Megacorporation:

Continue reading “Cyberpunk Megacorporations – Apple”

Today I stumbled upon an article (Apple vs. Palm) in Engadget, where they analyze the rather blunt patent infringement threat that Apple made towards Palm (and Android) when asked what do they think of ‘em. Now, I’ve never been a particular fan of software related patents, just because you basically seem to be able to patent anything, be it simple or complicated. However, now I’ve got new pet peeve: user interface patents. (I try to keep this short, as I have tendency to rant…)

Patents, bad!

Patents started as a way to protect something that was basically expensive and time consuming invention to develop, and could be copied by competitors thus earning unfair edge; gaining new tech without the resources spent for actual research. In those golden ages patents were good, in fact, in many cases they were essential for upstarts and thus healthy market. The problem comes when they are applied directly to the fuzzy world of IT; they just don’t work. In fact, they start to work against the market, restricting the possibilities of upstarts and fortifying the big companies. Basically, patents have become a stick that you keep beating your competitors with, by patenting everything and all you absolutely can. *wham* *bam*

Continue reading “Is Apple becoming evil?”

RETYPE is a new concept for text input in touchscreen phones/devices. Instead of that huge QWERTY keyboard, which wastes massive amounts of valuable screen estate from your small screen, it relies heavily on gestures. Each key can be used to enter three letters; tap, swipe up and swipe down. It also seems that they have done some optimization regarding the letter positions, the most common letters you can simply tap, the not so common letters you have to swipe.

One potential problem with the concept though: whenever optimized letter positions come to play, the whole keyboard becomes heavily language specific. Now, of course you could optimize the layout for every language but it’s a quite big amount of work. Nevertheless, it’s a intriquing concept.

Check the video from full post

Continue reading “RETYPE the text in your iPhone”

I can almost see Apple enthusiasts rallying up with their pitchforks and torches, but let’s just continue bit further into this, before going all witch-hunt on me.

Well, ok. Multi-touch as a concept isn’t completely useless, I give you that. The simple idea of using multiple input points has so much potential but everyone has been just blindly following Jeff Han, whos initial concept was just that, a concept, not a polished product. The idea has depreciated so much that today, even though there are practically no products around, multi-touch is useless, just a buzzword to sell a product and nothing to do with usability. So far, I haven’t seen single useful commercial end user solution. Why has no-one stopped to rethink the whole idea?

Continue reading “Multi-touch is useless, dead”