The iPad Mini is not aimed at the fanboy market or Apple shareholders. It’s aimed at the nearly 50 million “tweens” and teens that buy the iPod Touch and want an iPad but don’t have $500+ to spend. It’s aimed at the secondary market that values the portability that a smaller iPad offers them that they don’t get with the standard 10″ device. It’s not a device that the bleeding edge Apple geeks (like myself) need to have, and that’s totally fine. I’m happy with my iPad 3 that I had since day one and was subsequently made antiquated today with the release of the 4th generation iPad!

Don’t let the stock price dip fool you, the iPad Mini is going to be the most desired Christmas gift this holiday season and I expect millions of these things to be sold over the next couple of months. Is $329 too much? I don’t think so, especially when you look at the build quality that a device like the iPad Mini comes with compared to Android tablets. But what’s even more important than build quality and the sexiness of the device? The App Store ecosystem. That’s what is going to make customers pay $129 more than a $200 7″ tablet.

If I conduct a search on mobile and want to jump to the results for the same search term in Goole News, here’s how you do it:

Do a Google search on desktop and click on “News” on the top header takes you to the front page of Goole News, only without your search results pre-populated.

Front page without the search results pre-populated

This inconsistency drives me crazy. It’s the little details that Google always forgets that really affect the user experience.

Before you comment with “you can get that if you jailbreak,” let me just say that I’ve been there and done that and the hassle of keeping up with jailbreaking every time an iOS update is pushed out is too annoying, especially if it takes a while for the dev team crack it.

Hopefully Apple will finally wake up and add these sorely needed yet simple tweaks to iOS 6 before it is released to the public this Fall.

Bigger Folders

I have hundreds of apps on my iPhone. With 64GB of capacity, it’s pretty much begging for apps. Unfortunately, if I want to lump all my “productivity” apps or “social” apps together, I must create multiple folders since Apple only allows 12 per folder. This is an annoying feature that could very easily be fixed. How hard would it be to implement scrolling into folders? Answer: not hard at all!

More Sorting Options

This is a minor one, and something that I’ve never really heard a big rumble about but I believe would be extremely useful. Apple should have a sorting option that automatically arranges your iOS icons from most-to-least used. Not only would it give you a truly useful homescreen, it will also help you eliminate those apps that get tucked away and take up space that you have no use for anymore.

Simple Access to Bluetooth, WiFi and other Settings

Android has had this feature pretty much since day one; why doesn’t Apple allow me the one-click ability to turn on/off Bluetooth, WiFi and other commonly toggled settings? A simple placement in the notification center or multitasking bar would be perfect and eliminate all that navigation under settings. Granted, iOS 6 has moved Bluetooth up one level, but still – give me access without having to go to the settings app.

Better Multitasking Pane

I get that Apple doesn’t want people to “kill” apps they’re not using, but there’s no denying that it can help free up some memory, especially with some apps that require a lot. A one click “Close All” would be much simpler than having to manually “x” out of each app running in the background. Additionally, when you are in the multitasking mode, 80% of the screen above the bar is useless. Why not make the bar height three apps talland eliminate the extra swiping to get other apps? I never understood this from the beginning and it’s a huge oversight that still remains.

Notification Center Tweaks

I’d love to see the stats on the number of times people miss the “x” to clear a notification. The button is so small that it often takes a couple tries to hit it. Also, why not add a “clear all” option to erase all those notifications at once? I often come back to find my phone full of tweets, alerts and other missed messages that can be easily be consumed and erased in one fell swoop, however I must clear each alert by group. It’s stupid and time consuming and don’t get how it was ever this way to begin with.

iTunes Match Settings

Anyone that uses iTunes Match and commutes on a subway knows that it can be a real hassle trying to scroll through music that’s on your device versus what lives in the cloud. Currently, to view music locally synced, one has to go to the settings app, navigate to music settings and toggle the switch that only show downloaded music. Apple needs to put a simple toggle right within the Music app that shows local versus cloud-based files on-the-fly. Oh, and while we’re talking iTunes match, can we please lift that 25k song limit?

What are some of the no-brainer features that Apple has yet to implement in iOS that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Save for the recent Google+ app redesign that oddly hit iOS before Android, just about all of Google’s mobile app efforts premier on Android before making their way to the iPhone. Google now has a fairly decent amount of iOS apps available, but oddly, more than half of them are not optimized for iPad.

Here’s a list of apps that Google has released for iOS that could and should be optimized for the iPad. (Links lead to the iTunes Store listing for each app)

• Google+ (The design of the iPhone app is beautiful and would translate wonderfully on iPad)
• Blogger (One of the biggest blogging platforms on the web still isn’t optimized for iPad)
• Schemer (A new(ish) app that finally made it’s way on iPhone. They seemed to have a lot of potential when I met with them at SXSW this year but it appears that they’re getting put on the back burner while Google focuses more on improving Google+.)
• orkut (Sure, nobody in the USA uses this, but people outside the United States own iPads!)
• Google Voice (Sure, the iPad isn’t a phone, but making calls over 3G, LTE or WiFi would be really cool, as well as checking voicemails and responding to text messages.)

Aside from the apps above that exist only on iPhone, what about the Google properties that are a no-brainer for the iPad that still have yet to be released, including Google Docs / Google Drive, Google Reader, Google Play (aka “Google Music”) and a native Google Calendar app. The numbers speak for themselves, and if this chart doesn’t convince Google that the iPad can’t and shouldn’t be ignored, there’s nothing that will pull their heads out of the sand.

Source: KPCB Internet Trends 2012

I’m a firm believer that any brand engaging in social media must be all-in and show customers that it’s an important part of their communications mix by promoting their account anywhere they promote other digital properties. Simply placing a social networking site’s logo on one’s advertisements and expecting their customers to do the work in proactively searching for their page is lazy and stupid, especially in this world of spoof accounts and unofficial fan pages.

We’re quickly approaching a time when not having a presence on any social sites will make a brand seem as out of touch with their audience as not having a website looks today. Customers are so used to seeing a Facebook logo on everything from beer bottles to yogurt cups that it lacks any sort of impact anymore. If a brand is going to use it in their ads, at least make it useful to us.

If you’re not familiar with Path, it bills itself as “the smart journal that helps you share your life with the ones you love.” Basically, it’s a gorgeous app that looks like it could’ve been Facebook if Facebook debuted on mobile. Flipboard is a customized news reader that has been iPad-only for quite some time and finally made its way to iPhone & iPod Touch.

Path

Path is not a new app, but it feels like it after the recent 2.0 release. Path has always been a very beautiful app, but that’s all it had going for it. You could only share with a small number of people and the number of friends I had using it I could could on one hand. Path 2.0 takes sharing to a whole new level and ups the game in user interface design by doing so.

The first thing you see when you launch Path is your home feed. It comes pre-installed with a beautiful stock photo, but it can easily be  customized to anything you like.

Path also has a fantastic pop-out menu for sharing new content: photos, videos, music you are listening to, location, text, people & sleep/wake.

While some may argue that Path isn’t really doing anything new and that there are many social networks that allow for sharing all this information (a scrappy little startup called Facebook comes to mind), what keeps me coming back to Path is it’s user interface. It’s a joy to use as both a content sharer and consumer and is really pioneering mobile social sharing forward in terms of user experience. It will be interesting to see how Path’s momentum holds up once Facebooks revised app is released with support for “timelines.” It’s supposed to be incredible.

Flipboard

I always wondered how Flipboard was going to bring its magazine-style format to the iPhone screen and still have it feel like the Flipboard I knew and loved. To my surprise, they pulled it off wonderfully.

The app revolves mainly around upward-swiping gestures to navigate through individual stories. It also has a wonderful “Cover Stories” feature that attempts to highlight the content most important to you. Similar to Zite, this is supposed to get smarter the more you use it.

As you drill down into each tile, you get news, photos and other content that can easily be shared or bookmarked for later reading. This is all formatted in the same magazine-style format found on the iPad but perfectly tailored for the iPhone’s 3.5″ screen.

As you can clearly see, Path and Flipboard are really upping the game when it comes to UI design. I’m really anxious to see how other apps follow suit. The recent updates to the iPhone Twitter app area also a step forward in design aesthetic, it’s just unfortunate that it comes at the expense of user experience.

What other apps have you seen that have exceptional design? Let me know in the comments.

The social networking market is too saturated and is handicapping innovation. Aside from the user interface of Zite, Flipboard and Currents, where is the innovation here? Granted, Flipboard was the first to really succeed in bringing curated news in a table-friendly format, and Zite’s claim to fame was that it got smarter the more you used it, but with so many other competitors in the market now – AOL Editions, Yahoo! Livestand and Flud to name a few, it’s hard to differentiate between them all.  This is even more painfully obvious when each app is pulling in roughly the same personalized content.

I get it – make something successful and others rip it off. This isn’t anything new, however the difference here is that for the most part, when it came to mobile & social apps, companies were always one-upping each other and we the user won in the end with increased innovation.

Again, this is a problem across the board. Developers need to get back to basics and remember the mantra that to be successful, one has to do one thing and do it very well. I can’t think of a better example of this right now than Instagram. The photo sharing space was as saturated as it got, at least when it came to the web. Flickr and Picasa were the big players with a bunch of other clones. It wasn’t until the success of 500px that the web photo sharing market seen any real new innovation and disruption, but even so, 500px still has a far way to go before it can topple the big boys. Fortunately for Instagram, there was no clear leader in mobile photo sharing realm. Flickr and Picasa both dropped the ball on dominating the small screen and the success of apps like Hipstamatic and Camerabag showed that people love filters, although none of them were truly social. Realizing this opportunity allowed Instagram to become one of the hottest startups in years and grow to 5 million users in it’s first eight months. Not bad for an app that’s not even out on Android yet!

Instead of trying to be the next “(insert name of your competition) killer,” stop recreating the wheel and focus disrupting the industry. Instagram caught Flickr and Picasa with their pants down and neither of them have anything close to compete. This is how you gain an advantage and become the next “big boy.”

The article also presents some fascinating statistics. Of Twitter’s active daily users,

• 72% publish blog posts at least once a month
• 70% comment on others’ blog posts
• 61% write at least one product review a month
• 61% comment on news sites
• 56% write articles for third-party sites
• 53% post videos online
• 50% make contributions to wiki sites
• 48% share deals found through coupon forums

Twitter users are social media power users; these are the people that are going to be much more likely to help or hurt your brand; it’s wise not to ignore them. Sure, Facebook is great and 750 million active users is a sexy number, but it certainly shouldn’t dissuade you from doing a deeper investigation into Twitter as a medium of communications if you’ve avoided it in the past – you might just be surprised what you find there.

Photo by Josh Semans

Warby Parker
Warby Parker is a company that has been turning the eyeglass industry upside-down. Okay, maybe that’s a bit overstated, but they are certainly poised to do so. In a nutshell, they provide prescription eyeglasses that are highly fashionable for only $95. They also will ship up to five pairs of frames for you to try on at home before you purchase to make sure you like them. As the icing on the cake, they donate a pair of glasses and a portion of the proceeds to a wonderful charity called VisionSpring. I’ve already ordered two pairs from them personally, as well as referred four or five others that have all made at least one purchase and it’s mostly due in part to their fantastic customer service.

When I first went to order my home try-on’s, I was having a problem with the website. It wouldn’t accept my order and kept crashing the server. I made a comment on Twitter about how disappointed I was that I wasn’t able to order my try-ons and within 30 minutes I received a phone call and email from a member of their customer service team trying to assist me in solving the problem. After we both realized there was something awry with the site, the gentleman took my order over the phone and gave me free overnight shipping for the inconvenience. I was so impressed by the proactive engagement on Warby Parker’s behalf, not to mention the beautiful glasses, that they now have a customer for life in me.

Eye-Fi
I have been using an Eye-Fi memory card in my camera for a couple of years now. An Eye-Fi card can do many things, but the main reason I use it is to have my photos geotagged automatically. A couple of weeks ago I realized that my photos were no longer being geotagged in iPhoto and mistakenly thought I had to pay $30 for a yearly  subscription rewnewal of HotSpot access. After making the purchase and still not seeing any geotagging data, further investigation showed me that my model Eye-Fi card includes free lifetime geotagging. I emailed customer service and told them of my mistake and within 24 hours I had a refund in my account.

Where the customer service really impressed me was when trying to identify the cause of my geotagging problems. Evidently, recent iPhoto and Aperture updates have essentially broken the reading of the Eye-Fi geotagging data. After pointing out the issue to Eye-Fi on Twitter, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was causing the issue. While the problem currently remains, I have seen my issue escalated to their support forums by members of their team who really appear to be working hard to get to the bottom of this.

The Tie Bar
I will be the first to admit that I have a bit of an obsession with The Tie Bar. After discovering this amazing company a couple years back in GQ, I was hooked. They create gorgeous, highly-fashionable ties and accessories at unbelievable prices. Every time I get an email from them with the season’s new additions, I usually buy at at least two or three ties.

Last year, a tie that I ordered was marked as “delivered” by the Post Office tracking, but it never made its way to my front door. After reaching out to them on Twitter, I was handed off to a customer service representative that really went above and beyond to help track this tie down. A few days later, the postman evidently found it in his truck and delivered it to me, but the whole time The Tie Bar was in contact with me to try everything they could to track this down. What really impressed me is that they recognized me from my previous purchases and knew I was a loyal customer and not someone trying to rip them off. That little act of telling me how much they value my business really made me appreciate them much more than just another company, but a brand that I now have a real, human connection with.

What “kudos” do you want to give to a deserving company? Let me know in the comments.

One of the first things I learned in driver’s education class was that on the road, everyone is equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a Ferrari or a Chevy Nova, your essentially barreling down the highway in a giant instrument of destruction. This is no different with computers; no matter how one accesses the Internet, whether it be a fancy new MacBook Pro or a seven-year-old Compaq, we’re all the same. There are many companies out there trying to tell you otherwise by placing arbitrary influence scores on you, but at the end of the day, it all means nothing.

The power of social media is that it’s the great equalizer. If you have a connection to the web and something to share, you can literally change the world. Those that risked their lives in Egypt to share their revolution with the world were not allowed to do so only if their Klout score was higher than 40. If you can share it and people can search it, your words, images and videos are just as powerful as someone with 1,000 times the followers or “influence score.” Sure, just like the shiny Ferrari, those with the larger networks may have a faster ride to their destination, but don’t ever think that what you have to say isn’t as valuable as any “social media guru” or “Internet celebrity,” because in the end, getting hit head-on by a Chevy Nova at 70 MPH is going to hurt just as much as it would if it was the Ferrari.