Google’s newest feature, “Search Plus Your World”, is making a lot of people angry– and it’s not just because of the awkward name. The company’s recent attempts to encourage adoption of Google+ are troubling, if not downright creepy (just like this picture of Eric Schmidt).

“Plus Your World” is supposedly meant to improve the relevancy of your search results. By including more information from your social network, the thinking goes, your results will more accurately reflect your friends’ influence. Look up hotels in Prague, say, and you’ll see recommendations, advice and input from your friends first, followed by the search results.

It’s a decent idea in theory, so where did it go wrong?

What’s wrong with Search Plus Your World?

Essentially, it comes down to this: the feature is of no value unless you also happen to have a large, engaged network on Google+. For the millions of us who primarily use Facebook or Twitter, you’re left out completely. None of the value you might glean from those networks will make it to the Google results.

Useless Results.

Worse, assuming you’re one of the many who’s actually made a Google+ account, you’ll find the largely-irrelevant results “highlighted” from your network to be underwhelming at best. For most people, Google+ just isn’t an accurate sample of their social networks. Yet the two largest networks, Facebook and Twitter, aren’t represented at all. That means that, for most people, this attempt to “integrate social information” ends up as a transparent grab for power in the social space.

This Was Not An Accident.

Google, of course, is playing dumb here and insisting:

We’re open to working with others. But that information is not available to us. They won’t even let us crawl it.

That’s a boldfaced lie from a company who obviously could have, I don’t know, asked them before it started work on the feature.

Of course, Google knows that no company on earth would voluntarily give its data to another, rival organization.

Facebook and Twitter don’t want to share all the data they’ve painstakingly collected so that you can benefit from it on another site. Facebook and Twitter want to BE your search site. Facebook’s entire business depends on it.

And therein lies the problem: Google’s making this sound like they really want to be “open” and give everyone a big hug, and that they just “happen” to push G+ results hard, when in reality they’re abusing their power to shut out valuable and relevant information. When you search with G+YW, you get links to G+ pages, G+ people, G+ connections, and discussions on G+. Guess what, Google: the Web is a whole lot bigger than you are. And, at least this time, it’s painfully obvious.

So why is Google doing this?

Because Google needs an edge in social networking, and it isn’t really into the idea of playing fair. Google has done social before: Orkut was an outright failure by any standard.

While Google+ has fared much better, and is actually quite well-done, it owes most of its success to the fact that it’s “the anti-Facebook”. Lacking Facebook’s egregious privacy problems and incessant advertising, Google+ presents a cleaner and quieter concept of social, and it’s certainly more pleasant to use.

Of course, it hasn’t hurt that Facebook has pissed everyone off four or five times in the past year. (-I find it fascinating that Facebook is basically an opt-in dictatorship.) So, in a sense, Google+ hit a nerve by being in the right place at (sort of) the right time.

While that’s a reasonable place to start, it’s unreasonable to expect that anyone’s life revolves around Google+.

It’s simply not true. And that’s what makes this newest move so troubling: Google prioritized their own product (despite the fact that few people have a wide-enough network to make the feature useful) over providing impartial information in the form of a standard search.

More to the point, a tremendous amount of “breaking news” happens first on Twitter, none of which is taken into account. If Google was serious about improving the relevancy of searches, it would certainly be able to at least integrate some aspect of Twitter results. (Google and Twitter’s deal to share data expired last year, but Twitter’s data is readily accessible through hundreds of public, third-party tools… just saying’.)

What Google Plus Your World Means for SEO

The implications for SEO are startling as well. No one doubts that social search is the “next big thing”, but few SEOs are prepared to abandon their careers altogether. Once social networks become the de facto standard for recommendations, gaming the search engines will have little (or no) relevance. The only way I can see this playing out is that SEOs will have to focus on content that “gets shared more”–ie. “goes viral”. This shift will slide the entire industry away from “algorithms” and into group psychology instead. Marketing will broaden its influence. Ad agencies will be the new SEOs. And that’s pretty weird, but not outside the realm of possibility. It will take more than just Google to make it happen, though.

For now though, the “social results” are laughable at best: Search Engine Watch has a pretty fantastic example (I won’t spoil it for you here).

Will Google Search + Your World Take Over Your World?

GS+YW (such a catchy acronym!) has already gotten a ton of flak, so it’s quite possible the feature will be eventually shelved. In fact, the FTC may even get involved.. But what do you think? Do you find the inclusion of G+ results helpful? Is this just a really terrible precedent? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: news, social media, twitter, web 2.0, google, search, social, facebook

Most people don’t change their browsers much… but you might want to pay attention to this one.

Your Web browser is probably the most important software you use, but I bet you haven’t given it a second thought in years. That’s because the Web is open-ended, and most sites and web apps look and function (mostly) the same on any browser you use. (This is a good thing.)

So, some of us prefer Firefox, some Safari, some Chrome. (My vote’s with Chrome.) And, of course, some of you out there are on Internet Explorer– a problem you can easily fix right now.

New Web Browser Brings Apps to the Desktop

Raven is a brand-new kind of browser, designed for the Web we live in today– not the one from 3-5 years ago. Today’s Web is all about apps, whether you’re using Amazon, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, or Google+.

Think of it this way: any time you log in to a site to access your personal “stuff” there (messages, wishlist, entries, or notes), you’re using an “app”. Raven turns all those apps into a fun and intuitive way to look at the Web.

Raven’s scrolling “Dock” on the left side features large site icons that act a little like folders. They look like the Twitter app for iPad. When you open one, you see set of icons that point to different parts of the site, or related ones. It’s easier to show this than to explain it. Here, we see got shortcuts to my Flickr homepage, the Organize tab, Explore, and Upload. Nifty, huh?

These “App Tabs” Just Might Stick Around

Sure, you could click around within the site to get to all those places–but it’s great to have them all together in one place like this. That’s one of the reasons why app-based operating systems, like iOS and Chrome OS, work so well.

Raven’s even got a few tricks up its sleeve for sites that you wouldn’t think of as “apps”. Take Daring Fireball, for example. The DF “app/tab” puts you one click away from Gruber’s twitter feed, DF’s podcasts, and the site archives.

Better Bookmarking / Insta-Instapaper

Raven also makes a fantastic contribution to the process of bookmarking, which has turned into a mess just about any way you approach it. When you opt to save a page, it asks you whether you want to “bookmark” or “favorite” it. A Favorite, the dialog explains, is a site you use frequently, while bookmarks are articles, pages, or things you want to save for a while. Depending on which you choose, it either becomes a “local” bookmark (err, “favorite”), or goes straight to Instapaper. Yes, it’s that easy. (Now just give us support for Delicious!)

Overall, Raven is a novel concept, and its implementation is solid. Under the hood, Raven uses WebKit as its rendering engine, so (in theory) it should display things as well as Safari.

Unfortunately, it’s super-buggy and crashes about every 30 seconds. Sorry, did I ruin it for you? That’s OK – I’m sure it will get better. For now, it’s an addictive little app with some serious kinks.
Raven is 100% free, Mac-only, and available for download here.

In just a few days, you’ll have instant access to every song you own, anywhere you are.
Better yet, you can replace all the tracks you have that came from scratched CDs or “suspicious sources” (ahem).
You can even take all the DRM restrictions out of those old iTunes purchases. Cool, huh?

It’s called iTunes Match, and it’s an atomic bomb moment for digital rights advocates.

iTunes Match isn’t a streaming service with ads like Pandora or Spotify, and it’s not a downloading service like eMusic or Napster. It’s something completely different.

So how does it work?

What Does iTunes Match Do?

The service costs just $25 a year — so laughably little that it’s as if Apple went over to the RIAA and twisted everyone’s arms continuously for six months. There is no way in the world to legally download music this cheaply, anywhere. I have no idea how they got anyone to agree to this.

Essentially, you’re paying $2 a month for the right to stream high-quality versions of music you bought (…or “found” somewhere) to all your iTunes Libraries, iPhones, and iPads.

That $2 a month also gives you a permanent backup of all your music, so rain-soaked laptops, crushed iPhones, or freak accidents won’t stop Pink Floyd. (In fact, nothing can stop Pink Floyd– except for the members of Pink Floyd– but that’s a matter for another day.)

How Does iTunes Guess My Music?

Once you’ve paid for the service and signed in, Match looks through your iTunes Library and sends a list back to Apple. Then the long, slow (but one-time) process begins. Go get a coffee, or better yet, look at some awesome photos. It’ll be a while.

When iTunes Match looks at your songs, it takes an audio snapshot of each one so that it can compare them directly against the iTunes Store database. This way, even if you’ve mislabeled Brian Eno as The Beatles (“wow, their later work really pushed the envelope!”), iTunes will get you the right match.

The same goes for live concerts vs studio recordings: if it’s on the iTunes Store, it’ll figure it out. (A lot of people had trouble with this part initially, but as of now, it’s pretty flawless at picking the right version.)

There are something like 20 million songs on the iTunes Store, so chances are good that this will work for you.

Weird music tastes? Don’t worry.

But what about the songs that aren’t available on the iTunes Store? Surely we can’t confine our eclectic tastes to whatever pop garbage the kids are listening to, right? Well, iTunes has room for you, too. In fact, it lets you upload a staggering amount of your own tracks to the service (presumably 25,000), and doesn’t seem to care how much space that may take up.

My 16,000 tracks were mostly matched, but around 2100 needed to be uploaded. This process is, obviously, pretty slow, but you can keep using iTunes while it happens.

So, How Do I Make My Skipped CDs Sound Better?

Once you’ve uploaded everything to iTunes, you can delete files at will from any of your connected devices. Go ahead, get rid of them. If (when) you need them again, they’re just a quick download away– via the new “Cloud” button that comes up in their place.

Just click the Cloud to have a high-quality, DRM-free, 256k AAC version slide into place right where the old one was. Your iTunes library keeps track of all the metadata– play counts, your rating, date last played, etc., so there’s no downside to “upgrading” your music.

I’ve been listening to music through fairly high-end equipment for years, and while I can still reliably tell the difference between a 128k AAC and the CD it came from, I can’t do the same with 256k. If anything, it sounds better. And if you happen to have ANY MP3s under 320k, replace ‘em right now. You’ll love the difference.

Problems with iTunes Match

iTunes Match isn’t perfect. There are a few things about it that are downright irritating. Here are a few.

• Your device’s library is either local or “cloud-based”. It can’t be both. This means you can’t sync a few songs to your phone from your laptop and then, while you’re out, opt to download a few more from the cloud.

Tracks you’ve chosen to download will stay on the device, though, so this isn’t insurmountable. It just means that if you’re going on a plane or area with no network connection, you’ll need to manually download the playlists, etc. you want beforehand. (And suffer through how amazingly slow this is.)

• Audiophiles will complain. But then again, they do that a lot.

iTunes-Matched files are 256 AAC, which is nerd-speak for sounds incredible. But some people go to a lot of trouble to have collections at the highest-possible (even lossless) bitrates. iTunes Match simply won’t do what they need, if they really need Lossless files on their mobile device. Then again, many mobile devices aside from Apple’s won’t even play such files. In short, if you want your Lossless or 512k AACs on your iPod, you’ll need to put them there yourself.



• It inevitably consumes a TON of cellular data.

I have no idea how anyone will handle this, especially when you must store your entire library remotely (see above). Most people, even those with broadband, don’t have the connection speeds to download thousands of their own songs when they’re already on the computer in the living room. Apple needs to integrate this with Home Sharing, or something: right now, this is a terrible flaw.

• It takes up more space on your device.

Since most people don’t have 256k rips of everything, most people’s iPhones and iPods right now can hold a lot more music than they will if everything gets bumped up in size. Of course, the logical answer is that you’re less likely to have all your music on a device if you’re able to add or remove tracks at will. But who wants to go around deleting music they “don’t really need” to free up space? That’s the kind of housekeeping we shouldn’t have to do. It’d be nice if iOS asked you if you wanted to remove tracks matching a certain criteria– “downloaded >60 days ago, playcount=0 OR last played is not in the last 60 days”.

Then again, just make a smart playlist for that criteria and you’re good to go.

Does iTunes Match Encourage Piracy?

Not to be blunt about it, but yeah, it does. iTunes Match gives pirates access to high-quality replacement regardless of where the source files came from. But since pirates could easily download higher-quality versions of their music anyway, I’d argue that this isn’t (really) a big deal. Where this hits harder is in the area of “digital rights advocacy”. You’re essentially getting a free pass– and no more guilt in future–for all the music you’ve (allegedly) stolen. This may be an unpopular thing to say, but honestly, it’s about time. The music piracy issue got out of control long, long ago.

Is iTunes Match worth it?

The first time I heard the Matched version of a song from my childhood, when its atrocious staccato skips (all of which I’d memorized) were simply gone… well, it was quite a moment. You’re sure to find something to love when all your music gets the “cloud treatment”: whether it’s deciding to listen to a song you forgot to load on your iPod, or seeing a playlist appear instantly across your devices. Of course, the best thing about all this is that it’s a paid feature: it only happens for people who opt-in, so those who prefer the old method get to keep it.

Will you be using iTunes Match?

What do you think of its implementation? Are there features you wish it had that would compel you to sign up? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: app culture, apple, iTunes, iCloud, software, cloud computing, digital music

This evening, Steve Jobs passed away surrounded by his family at the age of 56. He was many things to many people: to many of us, he is the reason for what we do and who we are. But, as is often the case, he was more things, to more people, than anyone can express.

A sensitive soul

Steve dedicated his life to bringing mankind the future long before we knew what it was. But by all accounts he was also a devoted father and dedicated family man. Despite having altered not one, but eight separate industries, he still had time to share his life with his loved ones. His legacy proves it is possible to do transformative, world-changing work and still have time to care deeply.

The world’s great enabler

As an innovator and pioneer, Jobs was without equal. “I want to put a ding in the universe,” he famously declared; it turned out he would do much more than that. Who could have imagined that Steve’s vision–borne entirely of his own instincts, without a shred of outside feedback, approval or testing–could guide the entire world with such force? And who could have foreseen that Steve Jobs himself– on his own– would be the epicenter of ten or twenty revolutions?

From digital filmmaking to 3D animation to the technology that would put media, music and meaning in our pockets, Steve’s influence extends across every facet of our culture.

Before Steve Jobs, computers were the size of rooms and were off-limits to anyone without advanced degrees. Now, a metal-and-glass sculpture that fits in your hand can literally do anything you ask of it. Even talk.

Seeing the power–and promise– of technology was always Steve’s greatest gift: he always found new ways to show us what we could do.

The immortal inventor

Jobs was nothing short of a legend. No. He was more real, more tangible than that. He was a true leader. Of ideas, of workers, of markets, of industries. Ultimately, Steve made the future we live in today. He let us harness our own best qualities and make them even better. He gave us a “bicycle for the mind”. A way to go places faster. He gave us the tools to be our best selves. And he reveled in blowing our minds and changing our lives once a year, like clockwork, until the very day he died. There can be no closer thing to immortality than his surviving through what he has given us. How many of us found out about the news on a device he invented?

One of man’s great teachers

What Steve taught us is simple. It’s also complex.

Do what you love. Pursue simplicity. Be patient. Trust your instincts. Commit fully. Make things better, not just different. Chase what’s next, not what’s happened. Do the best job you can– and take as long as it takes to do it right.

Above all, Steve would say, do what it takes to make things more human. That’s the cornerstone of all Apple’s work, and the key that no other company “gets”. When other companies chased numbers and slogans, Steve chased visions no one else had.

Much of Steve Jobs’ approach — both to technology and to life — was summed up in the commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005– two years after first being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In discussing his life, he remarks,

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart… Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

It’s undoubtedly one of the most wrenching and inspirational speeches of our era, and there’s a reason it’s been making the rounds as word of his death has spread. I encourage you to watch it: it’s one of the best 15 minutes you’ll ever spend online.

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

The world lost a little bit of magic tonight, and our future is a little less clear. “He changed the way each of us sees the world,” notes Barack Obama. “From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino,” writes Google CEO Sergey Brin. (More great quotes are here.) Flags flew at half-staff across California– as far North as Redmond, WA, the home of Microsoft. The repeated mantra I keep hearing is “I didn’t think it would hurt so much.” Even those of us who never met him felt as though we’ve lost something in his absence. And the truth is, we have.

With Steve Jobs gone, I can only hope that his relentless pursuit of quality, of humanness, of emotional resonance will continue to guide Apple– and the world– for years to come.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me.”

Thank you for doing something wonderful, Steve. We’ll miss you.

Amazon enthusiastically unveiled their new tablet, the Kindle Fire, earlier this week. Many people–myself included–feel that, while it’s certainly no iPad, the Kindle Fire ultimately represents the first, and only, attempt at a competitor to the iPad (though, bear in mind, this device still hasn’t been released yet).

Why now? What makes the Fire so different from the Blackberry PlayBook, HP TouchPad, or the endless sea of Samsung Galaxy tablets? Several things stand out:

• Not only does Kindle Fire undercut the iPad on price, which no other manufacturer has done (Amazon’s said to be losing around $50 per device sold), but the Kindle Fire also competes with the iPad’s fast, easy access to content.

Amazon’s digital stores have grown exponentially, and Apple isn’t the only one with a “movies, music, rentals” ecosystem anymore. The fundamental reason devices like the Galaxy tablet haven’t caught on is because, unlike the iPad, they compete solely on a hardware level (which, let’s face it, is beside the point for most people) and don’t provide anything like Apple’s massive content library. Kindle Fire is the first device to give its users something to do when they get it home.


• The Kindle Fire introduces Silk, a truly revolutionary Web browsing experience.

Finally, another company besides Apple with the balls to innovate. Amazon’s new Silk mobile web browser isn’t just “faster” than others, it’s fundamentally different. Amazon calls it a “split-browsing” system: I call it remarkable. By using Amazon’s machine-learning engine–the same system that powers its recommendations–it can predict what pages you’re likely to read and load them immediately. And by using Amazon’s vast, powerful computer system, EC2, all of the heavy lifting is done behind the scenes, before you even ask, on a super-fast network.


This frees up your device’s limited battery life and processing power, and saves a ton of time, because EC2 is already wired to the backbone of the internet. Page requests happen automatically. Files are readied before you need them.

Most importantly, your experience as a Web surfer doesn’t change a bit: it just gets a lot faster.

Amazon really thought this one through, and built a system that gives the user MORE power and MORE features without complicating things. This also makes Amazon the only company to do so-called “cloud browsing”, and probably the only company capable of it (aside from Google). People are concerned about privacy, of course, but that seems a little ridiculous when you realize that it only works on non-secured connections (SSL connections are direct and don’t go through Amazon’s network at all). (Why be paranoid that “everyone will see your browsing history“? Amazon themselves state that “usage data is collected anonymously and stored in aggregate, and no personal identifiable information is stored.” So there.

It’s clear to me that this is the future of Web surfing: there are simply too many advantages, and few, if any, drawbacks.

• Amazon has the goodwill of millions and millions of lifetime customers.

Don’t underestimate this one. Google creeps people out–how can they not?

No matter how much we might love them, their services are a little intimidating. Google does maps, email, chat, social networking, search, advertising, video, laptops, mobile phones, news, translations, academic papers, blogging, RSS subscriptions, books, apps… is there anything Google isn’t involved with?…

At the same time, their “product”, Android, is so woefully inconsistent that it’s hard to say what the experience of using it actually is. Are you on a tablet or a phone? What size screen do you have? (There are about 12 common sizes in total.) Do you have a keyboard? Are you on Gingerbread, FroYo, or Ice Cream Sandwich? Is your screen high-res, or not? Does your phone use MotoBlur, TouchWiz, Sense, Launcher Pro or Pure Breeze? With all these options, defining what “Android” means is pretty difficult.

Contrast that with Amazon, who pride themselves on doing one thing–serving the public need for easy payment and reliable delivery. From a public image standpoint, it’s easy to see which approach is more, err, “trustable”.

What do you think? Is the a failure because it isn’t a “true” Android device? Is it about to take over the world? Are you buying one? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: app culture, apple, iPad, news, tablet, technology, web, amazon, web apps, web browsing





]]> http://appculture.net/kindle-fire-the-first-ipad-competitor/feed/ 0 http://appculture.net/kindle-fire-the-first-ipad-competitor/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AppCulture/~3/NG0QQBIzdiE/ http://appculture.net/steve-jobs-steps-down-the-end-of-an-era/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:05:48 +0000 DM Cook http://appculture.net/?p=928

With the news that Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple, the only thing most of us are wondering is, what’s next?




After all, few men can so drastically alter the world as Jobs has.

With an influence that spans eight industries–computer interface, mobile phones, web-connected mobile apps, retail strategy, music downloading, movie streaming, computer-generated filmmaking, and tablet computing– Steve’s vision for our world became one of America’s most meaningful contributions. As a leader, he was uncompromising; as a designer and futurist, he was unparalleled. And as someone who so radically shifted our expectations of technology, he was a real, live magician.


Love him or hate him, Jobs’ ideas pushed forward the most important technological developments of our time.


Without Steve Jobs, there would be no Microsoft Windows. No laptops. No wireless networking. No large-capacity, easy-to-use music players. No legal digital music downloads. No true mobile Web browsing. No touch-based tablets. No gestural navigation. No backlit keyboards. No App Stores, no high-end retail stores that boost local economy more than Tiffany’s… and certainly no proportional fonts.


The world was made a whole lot brighter by Steve, and, as a lifelong follower of the products he created, I know he’ll be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century’s true geniuses. Not since Ford or Tesla has one person created so much with his life.


Fortunately, he’s still onboard as Director of Apple’s board, but things are coming to a close, and we all know it.

We’ll miss you, Steve.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.





]]> http://appculture.net/steve-jobs-steps-down-the-end-of-an-era/feed/ 0 http://appculture.net/steve-jobs-steps-down-the-end-of-an-era/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AppCulture/~3/KhYJLZsTX-k/ http://appculture.net/ios-5-can-it-replace-your-computer/#comments Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:30:05 +0000 DM Cook http://appculture.net/?p=922

Apple took the wraps off iOS 5 earlier this month, giving many people the features they’d been requesting for years. Some of these features have already changed the game for some developers— potentially even sinking several companies by snatching their design right out from under them. And, hey, doesn’t the new “notifications bar” use a gesture that was snatched from Android?… Ahh, hell. It’s Apple, and we’re pretty used to this behavior by now.

New releases of iOS are special because iOS is such an important arbiter of UX on mobile devices. iOS an ever-changing product, a philosophy that pushes itself haltingly into new territory with each release. It isn’t in the business of grafting on features: iOS is, instead a careful study in restraint. Even when a new release comes out, it’s constructed around one (or two) specific features. In iOS4, it was the multitasking tray: apps were never the same. And in iOS5, it’s the idea of “PC Free”— between iCloud, a “real” notifications center, and the ability to use the device while syncing (and to sync wirelessly), the focus is on “cutting the cords” and reducing our reliance on computers. Particularly where the iPad is concerned, this is the key release that will push iOS onward for the next several years.

Can the iPad Replace Your Computer?

iOS had to gain numerous new features in order to replicate normal “PC” functions, and so it’s significantly ramped up some of its capabilities . More to the point, because iOS 5 offers such a complete “rounding” of its core feature set, this release is a great way to see how Apple re-responded to the challenge of designing a “full” operating system in a whole new era, and with a new interface paradigm.

So, where did they go right? Where did they go wrong? What challenges have they begun to solve, and what have they given up on?

iOS 5′s Most Important New Features

The first and most obvious aspect of iOS 5 is its enhanced notifications. You see them everywhere, and they are the first of several major shifts in iOS. No longer is this an app-centric, Zen process of choosing a task and then choosing another. Now, notifications occur without expressly demanding your attention— which most of us are thankful for.

But now, added to the Multitasking Tray at the bottom and the Spotlight search to the left, we have another, new main view: the notification center. You access this by pulling down from the top of the screen, which is fine, but there are two problems with that:

• if you fill the screen with Notification Center, there’s no clear method to get back to your apps (short of pressing the Home button). If you never discover the “pull-down” gesture, you’re basically out of luck;
• We now have three distinct “submenus” in iOS, but they are totally unrelated to each other. We read notifications at the top of the screen, switch tasks at the bottom, and slide the bottom part left to access music and screen-lock controls. We use a gesture to get to one, and a button to get to the other. Why? Is multitasking a “hardware” idea, and notification a “software” one? (It’s worth noting that the music controls used to involve double-tapping the Home button, but now involve a button press followed by an arbitrary gesture.)
• What if your most important message — the most recent email— is the only thing in your Notification Center? Do you need to pull the entire thing down to read it? (Yes.)

The Notification Solution

I would have preferred to see both menus integrated into a bottom-up menu that kept multitasking at the bottom (anchored) but which appeared first when the menu was brought up. The Notifications window would be a secondary layer just underneath this Multitasking pane (or, perhaps, a third layer after the music controls. This way, a quick thumb-swipe up would let you switch apps, but if you continued dragging, you could pull Notifications as far up as you like.



This solves two problems:

1. It would help with sorting through many Notifications quickly: your most important ones, at the top, would be visible first. In Apple’s method, the least-important notifications (those at the bottom) are displayed first, which quite simply makes no sense. Try dragging down an empty Notifications Center with only the Weather widget showing: you need to get it down to the very bottom of the screen in order to see anything!
2. It’s easy to understand: just keep dragging from the bottom for whatever you need. One gesture, one location. Apple’s already set the precedent that “bottom is best”: the OS X Dock and iOS Dock both hold your “important stuff”, the bottom of the screen is the most reachable for any user’s hands, and the app switcher is already at the bottom, too.
3. It leaves open the possibility for the one change I always thought would make more sense: Spotlight search from the bottom of your App pages. After all, it’s not as though “Swipe Left from your first page of apps” makes any sense (what if you’re on the third or fourth?). But “swipe up from any page”– that’s both sensible and memorable.

Managing Notifications

One other big problem with Notifications is that they’re an all-or-nothing affair. There’s no way to keep certain ones visible while dismissing others. This is ironic, since the old-style “blue boxes” specifically asked you to cancel or read each one. Even weirder, you aren’t able to mark individual emails as read, meaning that you must switch to Mail and read each message before it will be removed from the Notification Center. This has the undesirable effect of making your Mail pane take up a huge amount of space, simply because you haven’t switched to Mail and tapped on every message yet. Yes, I know you can “clear all”, but the system should be smarter than that! In EVERY OTHER LIST IN iOS, you can “swipe to remove”, but not here.

Discoverability: iOS’ Growing Problem

At its core, Apple’s attempt at simplifying technology has hinged on presenting things as simply and consistently as possible. Apple’s success in interface design owes much to their practice of using standardized, repeatable techniques across multiple applications. The consistent behavior of the Source pane in iPhoto and iTunes, or the practice of a black, bottom-mounted control for switching views and a “Now Playing” button at the top-right, are all cues that help the user automatically understand important features in an app.
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However, this devotion to simplicity breaks down when more layers of control are required. As an example, the multiple-window ideology of the original Mac OS in 1984 led to unnecessary complexity and, ultimately, chaos by the time OS X “Jaguar” arrived in 2002). This led to the creation of Exposé, to display open windows, and now Mission Control, to stack and contain those windows.



In the case of window management, Apple’s strategy was scalable. Take one view style that needs extra functionality, and add one secondary view that provides that control. But Apple’s insistence on simplicity doesn’t scale when there are many functions to present and only a few ways to show them.

In order to see the iPod music controls or take a picture when your phone is locked, you double-tap the Home button. There’s no reason that this action should be connected to the music controls, especially when tapping the Home button once does not have the same effect—rather, it has the same effect as pushing the Sleep/Wake button. Why doesn’t tapping on the Lock screen itself just bring up those controls? Why isn’t the other “interactive” part of the screen, the Unlock slider, a place to access those controls? This ambiguity is a sign of weakness in iOS’ interface design: it sets a precedent for making arbitrary design decisions which can permanently hinder discoverability.

One example of this is using two fingers to scroll inside of frames on a webpage. While extraordinarily useful, this feature remains undiscovered even by UI designers! Clayton Miller was surprised to find this feature:

… [I] quickly rushed over to my iPad to try it out… I didn’t realize you could do that!

If you can’t find a feature, you can’t use it. And if you can’t use it, for all intents and purposes, it doesn’t exist in the first place.

Popups and Other Controls
Because iOS now handles many more functions, its options panels have increased in complexity in order to present them all. Where it had once displayed just a handful of text functions, Mail now presents a scrolling, multi-headed hydra of a popup:



This is bad. This is bad on so many levels.

What went wrong? Too many options in one display. Mail’s now got to handle text indent/outdent (something I discussed with @TaylorCarrigan a few weeks ago) alongside three new formatting options (Bold, Italic, Underline). This in addition to its original functions of Select All, Copy, and/or Paste. And yet all these functions are crammed together in what is—get this—a MODAL POPUP. That’s right. Pick the Formatting button, and the only way to get back to your Copy/Paste control is to start over. Now, granted, you probably don’t do those two things together very often, and perhaps that’s why Apple chose to do it this way. But why not offer formatting as a separate control? Why not make formatting an integral part of the selection process itself, like so?

Another possibility would be to make text functions an extension of the keyboard. Documents to Go does this in a confusing and muddled way, but there’s no reason to think Apple couldn’t have pulled it off in a more practical way:


… But There Are Still Problems

Apple’s negligence in certain other areas of iOS 5 indicates to me that they only test user behaviors in certain predetermined sequences: often, one must go about doing a set of tasks in a specific order. This is perfectly fine in a phone operating system, but it is less acceptable in one meant to replace a computer. Attaching files to an email is one glaring example: you can only attach files when you begin the message, because the very act of attaching is what displays the message entry panel. Worse yet, you cannot find an attach button in Mail at all! If you have additional images to add, the only solution that makes sense is to revisit your images, add them to a new message, and then copy and paste one message body into the other. There is simply no reason for this. Whether through a button, a popup, or (the most straightforward) a folding panel up by the Subject line, this is a feature that just makes sense to include.

New UI Features, Done Right

iOS has taken on many features in order to be “PC Free”, some of them with greater finesse than others. The Storage view is a particularly great addition, indicating the amount of data taken up by each app. Simple and clear. (In a move I particularly approve of, you can’t delete apps from this view— because there is only one method to delete apps in iOS, and it involves directly manipulating them. This is the kind of minimalist, pure thinking that was so abundant in the original iPhone design: make things as simple, immediate, and specific as possible.

Another place where Apple’s commitment to minimalism shines through is, of course, with iCloud. I really believe that iCloud will give us a sort of “before and after” of mobile device ownership—not because cloud storage has never been done before, but because it’s so seamless and universal that it literally fades into the background. Dropbox does this on the desktop, and that’s one of the reasons for its incredible success. But iCloud does this with every app’s data, keeping things organized and synced on a very basic level.

Towards a new UI

Apple’s learned a lot from their refinement of the desktop UI over the years, and it shows in iOS’ level of detail. We also know that many of the ideas in iOS are headed “back to the Mac” when OS X Lion ships later this year. Among the more controversial moves is the reversal of scroll direction—which is about as disorienting a change as one can make. Apple wants to polish the Lion UI to be as simple and welcoming as iOS, a push that makes many nervous (myself included). But after playing around with Lion, I see why they’ve gone this route. As long as Apple never forgets to indicate where the “secondary layers” of control are—in this case, the menubar and Dock–they’ll be able to continue simplifying the UI. But I’m already becoming concerned with their insistence on tying basic functions, such as window navigation, to a “gesture” that one could never attempt to find on their own.

It’s been interesting to see how Apple scales back features in order to provide only the most relevant controls in iOS. (A fantastic example of this is Pages, which is missing quite a few features, but mostly ones you’d never notice.) Apple’s also shown they’re willing to remove or fundamentally alter basic features in order to advance Lion’s UX (such as Spaces and the direction of scroll movement). In some cases, this has proven to be problematic: in others, it heralds a new way of thinking about the computer UI. Ultimately, iOS 5 signals a faster, simpler way of handling many complex tasks: this despite its significant rough edges, where lack of imagination and inadequate testing have produced some careless design decisions. But it’s my hope that iOS will continue to refine and polish those edges: it’s just too damn good not to.

What do you think of the new iOS changes? Do you wish the OS could do more? Do you fear it getting too complicated? Let me know in the comments!





]]> http://appculture.net/ios-5-can-it-replace-your-computer/feed/ 1 http://appculture.net/ios-5-can-it-replace-your-computer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AppCulture/~3/Y-KPFSdfZPo/ http://appculture.net/exclusive-clayton-on-interface-design/#comments Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:47:13 +0000 DM Cook http://appculture.net/?p=879

A while back, many of us in the UI/UX world were blown away by a concept video called “10/GUI”. Predating the iPad and all other large-scale multitouch displays, interface designer Clayton Miller discussed a completely new method of integrating touchscreen on the desktop: a UI designed around gestures that kept some of the best elements of a desktop computer with the flexibility and usability of a tablet computer.

If you missed the video, I encourage you to step through this radical new operating system and read a transcript of Clayton’s ideas on multitouch.

I was so taken by the concept that I contacted Clayton to discuss gestures, multitouch, interaction design, and whether his ideas have changed since the iPad and other tablets have arrived. Fortunately, he was quite forthcoming and a pleasure to chat with! Enjoy the interview.

What’s App Culture Got To Do With It?

APPCULTURE: Due to its windowing system, 10/GUI’s horizontal window system seems inherently designed against multitasking, much in the way that iOS is (despite its underpinnings). I argue that this is a good thing, that single-task focus combined with optimized and specific “views” is the most efficient way to work, but that there are complications. Do you think that your design arose mainly out of frustration with multi-layer window management, or as part of a broader response to App Culture and the mobile world’s system of compartmentalizing personalized tasks?




Excellent question! The idea for Con10uum had its roots simply in the question of “what is the advantage of being able to move and scale windows in two dimensions?” The answer of “to see different information side by side” didn’t seem to require the amount of latitude most window managers have, so that was really my task, to narrow that latitude to only what was needed and to put what we didn’t need to control on rails.

App culture is an undercurrent of that, though. I think mobile has shown the need to see everything as a suite to be much more of an edge case than we’re conditioned to think it is. Sometimes we do need to see things together, but our windowed UIs are built around this old assumption that we need to work that way all the time, and with much greater granularity than we almost ever do.


APPCULTURE: Definitely. In this area I tend to attribute a lot of the “bad” notification design theory to Windows (and Facebook), both of which present a torrent of largely irrelevant information throughout the day… information that you must disable if you DON’T want to read it. It’s ironic that Apple’s notifications are the ones most in need of improvement! (Thankfully, that’s coming soon.)

UI, UX, and You & I

APPCULTURE: At the moment, what’s your favorite UI in an app (desktop or mobile?)

I just love Twitter for iPad. Its gestural navigation really makes me think about button navigation — do we actually need all the buttons that most tablet apps have? Whenever I go between Twitter and FlickStackr (though not perfect, probably the best Flickr app for iPad), I always want to swipe the views back and forth the same way you can swipe panels in Twitter. Though standard, the iOS “Back” buttons feel slow in comparison!

APPCULTURE: In 10/GUI there’s no mention of a systemwide notifications system, or a “widget layer”. Was this a conscious choice, or was it omitted for time? If the latter, what form do you think those features would take in 10/GUI? If it was a conscious choice, what’s your reasoning?

Definitely omitted for time. Notification is one of those things I don’t really feel like anyone is quite getting right yet, with the possible exception of HP/Palm WebOS. This is actually kind of a big, cultural question, though probably more so in mobile: What is our tolerance for notification? When do we want to be distracted, and when don’t we? Outside the computer, there’s this huge continuum of what’s important to us, and depending on what we’re doing, some notifications are going to be over that threshold while a lot won’t be, and on either end of that threshold, there are varying degrees of how hard we want to have our attention diverted. Add in variables of time sensitivity and contextual relevance, and building a good notification system becomes a vast design problem!

APPCULTURE: With internal scrolling functions (such as inside a form on a webpage), the iPad uses a two-finger drag: it’s one of the smartest methods I’ve seen yet. How would you propose handling this ability in 10/GUI without invoking a window command? Or is there a better way to address this in the first place?




So, I read this question, thought for a second, and quickly rushed over to my iPad to try it out… I didn’t realize you could do that!

Obviously I think there’s a bit of a discoverability failure here (ahem!), especially given that the iPad doesn’t really use a finger-hierarchical system in most apps. I’d probably lean more toward the way that scroll-within-a-scroll works on the desktop: Scroll gestures always target the lowest level, but pull the next-highest level in the same direction once the lower level reaches its end. It’s the most physically realistic paradigm (always a good thing for discoverability) and I think would tend to be the least frustrating.

APPCULTURE: What, if anything, would you change about 10/GUI’s implementation given recent advances in software, hardware or services? For example, the iPad launched after 10/GUI’s video: does its featureset (or the capabilities of any new products) alter your thinking about parts of 10/GUI, or do you feel that those products serve different needs?

Direct multitouch has obviously shot way up in terms of mindshare since the introduction of the iPad, but I still don’t think it’s going to displace decoupled touch interaction on the desktop. The two working in tandem is definitely a possible way forward, though:  the rise of companion apps, such as TouchOSC or some of Adobe’s concept apps points that way, but I think it will really come into its own once it can be taken for granted and apps designed specifically around it. The Acer Iconia, though awkward, is a fascinating attempt at this.

Touching the Future

APPCULTURE: Imagine it’s 2025 and every computer on Earth is running something like 10/GUI. What problems or limitations do you think people will have noticed after such extended use?

While I did kind of skewer the idea of 3D window managers in the 10/GUI video, I do think that eventually, 3D could very well play a big part in the way we use computers every day. If it does, it won’t be in the way we think of it right now: not silly Hollywood stuff with shapes flying all over, but less-sexy 3D used in a way that actually helps us understand information rather than obscuring it or making it more complex. And we might not need window managers anyway — the window as we know it could die out as UIs become more integrated and APIs blur the lines between app and task, further abstracting the way we use computers.


APPCULTURE: What do you think we’d be giving up in moving to something like 10/GUI? More to the point, what kinds of work, datasets or actions are largely incompatible with 10/GUI’s philosophy?

I don’t think there’s anything that by nature has to be incompatible with 10/GUI — the system should evolve and adapt as other kinds of work outside its initial scope run into any pain points. I think there’s a lot of room for adaptation with the right kind of creative thinking.

APPCULTURE: What do you think is the biggest challenge to hardware and software developers in producing and implementing something like 10/GUI?




To quote [CEO of Microsoft] Steve Ballmer: “Developers, developers, developers!” You could spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a new version of your desktop operating system and a 10/GUI hardware solution to work in tandem, but then you have to convince everyone who has software available for your OS to start over with a new, 10-finger-optimized, Con10uum-compatible version. Not to be snarky here, but… can you imagine how long it would take Adobe? That kind of uncertainty makes the investment into a completely new paradigm a very tough sell. Ultimately, the best way is probably baby steps, gradually weaning users and developers alike off old patterns and onto new ones.

APPCULTURE:Thanks so much for your excellent responses, Clayton. I’m so glad we could get in touch!
As always, I’d love to know what you’re thinking. Let me know in the comments!





]]> http://appculture.net/exclusive-clayton-on-interface-design/feed/ 1 http://appculture.net/exclusive-clayton-on-interface-design/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AppCulture/~3/tFW0C31UowY/ http://appculture.net/5-reasons-icloud-really-is-the-end-of-the-pc/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:49:16 +0000 DM Cook http://appculture.net/?p=870

Today, Apple showed off features of their iCloud project– an online sync engine that puts your photos, calendars, app data and documents on every one of your devices. While no part of this was totally unexpected, it’s the sum of these parts that matters.




1. It’s safe. In fact, it’s safer than your PC.

Apple’s ID system has, as far as I can tell, never been successfully hacked.That could change in the future, of course, but since everyone is getting hacked these days (Sony’s PlayStation Network, Hotmail, etc.) the fact that Apple’s stood tall is a point in its favor. When your personal data is in the cloud, security matters more than anything. Apple has shown they know how to handle it.

2. For almost everyone, iCloud will do it right–and you’ll never look back.

Apple’s reputation has always been based on doing the bulk (70-80%) of something with ease, simplicity and reliability. They may not have every feature in the book, but the ones they do are reliable and simple. MobileMe launch notwithstanding, Apple’s focus has always been on doing most of what people want without ever getting bogged down with major issues. iCloud will be no exception, and for most people, it’ll be everything we want: a seamless sync that handles tons of data without making a peep.

 

3. Its price is perfect.

iCloud will be free to anyone on iOS 5 or OS X Lion (coming fall and summer, respectively). MobileMe memberships are automatically being extended through next year. Whatever the final price is for membership, it’s bound to be free or super-low (remember, Lion is only $29). That’s a better deal than you’ll find anywhere else.

4. It makes the device you’re already using even better.




iCloud simply gives your device more capabilities. You won’t need to work to make it happen. That’s part of what makes it so exciting as a play in the “post-PC” era. Like Android, iOS 5 will usher in “over-the-air” updates, and with iCloud, virtually everything that matters to you can be backed up remotely– which means that there’s just no reason to stay tethered to a computer. Now, of course, there are many reasons why cloud computing still has a ways to go: what do you do without an internet connection? But for now, it’s great to see Apple moving forward on this. I’ve no doubt that iCloud is key to the eventual “mobilization” of all of Apple’s product line. You can already see this happening with the Mac App Store: one password lets you re-download all your apps to a new machine. Will iCloud let you save your Mac’s documents as well? We’ll have to wait and see.

5. You get all the benefits, and none of the hassle.

iCloud includes an incredible feature (iTunes Match) that lets you sync your music library across devices–even if you didn’t purchase that music through iTunes. A $24/year service lets you “upgrade” your entire library–even your own, ahem, “found” tracks– to DRM-free iTunes files which are synced across up to 10 machines. Basically, you get the added convenience of the Cloud, without having to do any more than the bare minimum. You don’t need to be a slave to the iTunes Store. You don’t need to shell out thousands of dollars in “upgrade” fees. You don’t even have to worry about uploading your music library. It’s as fast, simple and intuitive as can be, and it lets you forget about having to transport a bulky library around with you.

6. It’s a committment.



No one’s going to claim that these features haven’t existed before– Android has several of them, in fact. But by making this a built-in, OS-level storage function, complete with Mac and PC sync, Apple (which, again, is America’s largest technology company) is putting a huge investment into the Cloud as the “digital hub” of the future. No one, save Google, has even gotten the basic elements right so far. What we’re about to see is a bold new shift in Apple’s direction, and one that only they could pull off. The main reason I’m excited for iCloud? Apple knows how to do it right– and if they don’t, they know who to hire, grab, or talk to to make it right. And that’s big news for everyone.

What do you think of the iCloud announcements? Are you excited? Underwhelmed? Irritated? Let me know in the comments!!





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