Computer enthusiasts have bitched about how limiting iOS devices (iPhone & iPad) are to creating content, claiming these are computers that are used for content consumption and not production and I disagree.

First, all pure touchscreen UI computers are more kid-friendly and will allow children to interact with them at an earlier age than a mouse/keyboard does. They are a simpler computer interaction allowing more people to feel comfortable using a web device, young and old.

As for creativity, well, my writing this post on my iphone is content creation. People writing blog entries in Wordpress, Twitter and Facebook posts or emails is a form of creative expression. I’ve seen the Brushes app lead to some amazing finger paint art work.

The $5 iMovie app is pretty amazing. It pulls photos and video clips together, let’s you use your on-board iPod music, toss it all in one of a few themes and renders a video in 720p, which you can make available to anyone on the web. It’s not a full-fledged video production, but it makes some nice little movie clips in 15 minutes. If done by someone with enough attention to detail and a good feel for proper timing of transitions, while tweaking panning speeds of the “Ken Burns effect” on photos, it’s pretty amazing because this is all done on a “PHONE”! Are technology enthusiasts THAT jaded that this stops being impressive? I think it’s hard to find a video editing program on ANY computer that you can figure out how to pull photos, movie clips and MP3/itunes music together in 720p and have it shared online within minutes!

No, these aren’t computers meant for tinkering with the hardware, like people do with Windows PCs, and you can’t produce iPhone apps on an iPhone (unlike other computer platforms). But these are a different class of computer. “iPhone” is a device name that doesn’t really describe the true power of the iOS. It’s more of a Mac Micro. But it’s ok that it isn’t as capable as a Windows or Mac machine.

Some nice iOS 4 features I’m digging:

Dates appear as hyperlinks in the Mail app. If tapped, it allows you to create an appointment in your calendar right there. No need to manually switch over to Calendar to create an appointment anymore. This is just like the feature on Mac OSX Mail.

If you get a tracking number in your email, tap and hold it and the UI in Mail says “Track Shipment”.

If you’re a Mac owner and use iPhoto ‘09, import photos to the iPhone through iTunes to sync with the Photos app, and it imports the iPhoto ‘09 galleries that use facial recognition to group photos of one person across all photo galleries you have. It’s amazing that I can just bring up all photos of my wife, my daughter, family and friends.

Some really intuitive features in the software to make interactions simpler. It also does for video conferencing what was, at times on desktops and laptops, buggy and restrictive. FaceTime in your hands anywhere there’s wifi (and one day soon, even more widespread) is something very compelling. Apple’s wisely pulling at heartstrings with it in their latest ads, making it the marque iPhone 4 feature and putting the technology in context to our lives, not focusing on new hardware stats or that it has lots of “apps”. The old ads put those apps in specific context to life situations and the new ads with FaceTime indicate it’s Apple’s proudest achievement: seeing your friends, colleagues and loved ones anywhere you go, not just tied to a desktop or lap. The current restriction of iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over wifi will:

1) help sell iPhone 4’s with a standout feature of unique quality of video chat (flipping the camera to front/back is really neat and easy to use)

2) not last forever. It will eventually work with Skype, iChat, AIM or other video conference software and hardware, and maybe even one day, will work over 3G wireless data. Apple did say this wifi restriction was just a “2010″ thing, until they can get things worked out with wireless carriers.

It will be interesting to see who those carriers are in 2011, ESPECIALLY in the U.S. …

It’s interesting that the paid subscription of Netflix has become a huge disc/stream content distributor, while TV networks like NBC and Fox co-own Hulu, yet they’re still working from an ad-supported revenue model and trying to be profitable. Obviously THAT’S going to change. Hulu won’t be “free” for long.

Netflix says the app works well when switch between WiFi AND AT&T’s 3g network. Well, THAT explains AT&T ending unlimited data plans for new subscribers. I actually exceeded 2gb over the cell network one month, probably because it was when my daughter was born. Lots of constant data streaming/posting that month. Maybe I’ll keep that “unlimited” plan…

This is pretty spectacular though. As Netflix adds more streaming content licenses, they’re going to be incredibly successful in competing with cable TV providers as an on-demand, everywhere content provider. Netflix has wisely forgotten about former rival Blockbuster and is clearly targeting a different market. I already know a handful of people that went without cable and solely Netflix before they even had streaming Internet distribution.

The trade off of 30-day delays on new disc releases for the rights to other shows/films to be distributed through streaming is actually looking better and better. I’m getting more impressed with their on-demand streaming options (lots of educational TV, like NOVA, History Channel, etc. which are crazy expensive to buy on disc).

The CEO should be commended for being a visionary and realizing that disc-based media, which his whole company was founded on, could become the next VHS in a short period of time. Few business leads create something so successful and don’t rest on their laurels, assuming things won’t change. Reed Hastings has wisely bargained a small fraction of the Netflix subscribers’ value (first month availability to rent a movie) to content providers in exchange for more content to provide at available at anytime, nearly anywhere. Few customers will drop Netflix because of this. In fact, with their brilliant moves of pushing streaming content onto every single modern home video game console on the market, they have a tremendous number of ways to get people access to content on the place they wanted it most: their big screen TV. If it wasn’t for live HD sports, I’m pretty sure I could cancel cable TV right now.

Comcast is claiming Xfinity will bring their “content everywhere” goal to life. On Demand from your DVR through the cell networks or wifi to your phone is a great counter to Netflix everywhere. The sticking point I’d have with that being a reality is the HUGE disparity between service quality levels when you compare Netflix and Comcast. With streaming through cell towers coming in weeks, not “one day”, Netflix has already started beating Comcast to market with a similar premise and a lower price. It’s not exactly the same, since you’re limited to Netflix’s streaming library, but the concept is real and it is comparitively inexpensive.

The other angle on this new competition is consumer satisfaction. One of these companies is a service that subscribers LOVE and sell to their friends on the convenience, expediency and quality. One emails subscribers with quick surveys to keep tabs on how they’re doing by gathering data on how quickly subscribers are getting discs and the quality level of streaming content: a method of consistent quality control.

I’ve never, EVER had Comcast ask me how the Eagles game looked in HD, certainly NOT when there were issues with the cable line that weekend. Nor did I ever get the feeling that any complaint I had would be resolved quickly.

The irony is that Netflix is increasingly dependent on Internet service providers and Comcast is also the same company that I’m saying they are competing with (who also owns majority of NBC, a content provider of TV shows that Netflix rents and streams).

If battle lines haven’t been drawn, they may be soon. I wonder if a break down of net neutrality would ever have negative effects on the stream quality a firm like Comcast allows to a competitor like Netflix streaming content. Suddenly, that net neutrality issue is no longer about cutting down on piracy through bit torrent. It’s potentially about Internet service providers limiting consumer choice and monoploistic practices.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/gmail-drag-and-drop/

Apple is applying a few new approaches to computing with this to be the first true touchscreen computer.

A specialized operating system for touchscreen interface.

People think of the form of a computer device as the method of functionality: keyboard, screen, abstract pointer device (mouse, touchpad). Think of the iPad as a more universal form of content consumption without those limitations. The form is meant for light use because it’s physically light and convenient, but the interaction is also more efficient for those 90% of tasks. This is how I think the Apple crew sold it to Steve Jobs, who kept sending the concept back to the drawing board, because he wouldn’t sell a smaller, underpowered laptop or something that just surfs the web while you’re on the can.

By scaling up the iPhone operating system to the iPad, Apple is choosing to embrace a new method of how we use and what we can expect from computers based on these new hardware interface capabilities that make the mouse and hardware keyboard unnecessary for primary computer tasks, while maintaining the Bluetooth hardware keyboard sync so it CAN be the thing you write longer emails or Word documents on. They could have taken the Mac’s full OSX system, popped it into a traditional tablet computer and tacked on touch controls to replace mouse functions (like Windows 7 tablets do), but the approach would lack an intention of design, marrying form factor to the system and content delivery, which is Apple’s greatest strength.

File management.

Think of how often you create and manage file folders to organize your digital stuff. Why do we do this? To catalog and make it easier to find later. And yet, we still lose shit in a complex file structure. These days we have a stronger system search (compare Google’s Desktop search results to Windows XP file searching and you’ll see the difference). We have meta tags (descriptions of files beyond the very limiting file name). As we move forward in the digital era, we’ll rely further on computers to be our bookshelf, movie and music collections. Sifting through entire collections is going to be even more complex and overwhelming for casual computer users. File names won’t cut it and casual users hate trying to find shit.

Compare a photo library in file folders you make in Windows to how Apple’s iPhoto works. You open a program you want to use and have a series of thumbnail images of what files that the program can manipulate, regardless of where they are on the computer. They’re organized by events you choose, not folders with limited character names. It makes it less abstract and more intuitive. It also uses meta tags to organize content.

For instance, it pulls digital photos off your camera and groups them into an “Event” based on the camera’s meta data (date/time when photo was taken) with a thumbnail image from the group to represent it (like a photo of me blowing out candles to represent all the photos from my 30th birthday). But if I want to find all the photos of Jaclyn across all events, iPhoto uses software to identify her face in all the files in the system. Try doing that with files named 100_104.jpg from your digital camera in folders strewn through your My Photos folder. Do I take time to name each individual photo with a file name “Jaclyn doing something.jpg” to describe it and find it later? It feels archaic in comparison. Now make the form of that computer just a touchscreen, make it thin, light, and coffee-table presentable. A netbook doesn’t serve that purpose of presentation or organization.

Take this approach to photos and scale it up to the entire system’s file management. Most casual users save every download to the Documents folder or the desktop. How many times have you seen a casual user’s (or even experienced user’s) desktop loaded with files because they don’t want to take the time to archive them into a folder structure. It’s a drag.

iPhone OS hides the file system from the user, which is what polarizes people. Some get it because they can appreciate the simplicity of a front end for efficient, causal use, while others denigrate Apple for dumbing down the computer system and not fully exposing the system to the user (for user tinkering and customization). Most people don’t need that kind of access to their computer because they wouldn’t know what to do with it and have no interest in learning.

Customized touch UI is better than tacking on touch features to an existing one.

Creating an OS for touch interface instead of tacking touch onto an existing OS is the unique aspect of this. Once you’ve used a touch-screen device like iPhone, iPod Touch, Droid or Palm Pre, you see the difference. When you directly interact with digital content with your fingers instead of something else, the UI presents functions at the point of contact with pop-over lists, something the iPad UI is expanding on. It’s a smoother, faster experience.

All traditional computer programs have menus across the top with the features and functions buried in drop down menus, which aren’t in close proximity to the point of interaction (except the limited functions list presented by a right-button mouse click). We’ve gotten used to that time-wasting learning curve for software, learning what functions are available and finding where they are in menus. Perfect example: When you highlight text on a touchscreen device, immediately a little pop-up appears to tell you what you can do with it. No further interaction is needed from the user to find out what you can do with the selection. Physically stretching a photo with your fingers is better than Menu > Photo > Expand > 30%.

The lacking feature of Flash plug-ins, the peripheral add ones to connect to a camera or SD card, the jokes about the name and other complaints are myopic when you consider the next several years worth of iPad clones that will come along. We still don’t know how reliant this version of iPad is to connect to a desktop PC. Is there wireless sync of Word files from my desktop to my iPad? Do I have to sync via USB cable? Is it strongly tied to a cloud computer system? Can you store files on Apple’s MobileMe server so you always have access to them everywhere instead?

A laptop is a desktop system with a screen attached, and a tablet is a laptop system with a tacked on touchscreen. The interaction is a crunched version of the desktop. This is a true touchscreen computer right off the U.S.S. Enterprise. Did Geordi LaForge ever sift through a file menu with a stylus on his PADD? Did Data have trouble finding the Tachyon Pulse command somewhere in the deflector dish settings? I know that was fiction, but this is a step to actually getting us there. That’s really cool to me because I’m a nerd for this stuff. It should have been what the tech media focused on and not the spec sheets.

That sound you hear is Microsoft and its third party support sweating (even just a little). The dominance of the market share is splintering further. Let’s see: Google is #1 in search, RIM’s Blackberry OS is probably #1 in mobile OS, with iPhone, Google Android and Palm Pre’s WebOS getting good reviews and growing fast, Microsoft IE is the #1 web browser, but continuously losing market share, and Windows is still #1 desktop/laptop OS (this is based on what I’ve read and seen and is not 100% fact, but I’d put money on this being REAL close). I hear more and more positive things about Linux, with netbooks getting more prominent as low-cost portable computer solutions.

Apple notebook sales are growing stronger than other manufacturers’ (in a lousy economy, too) and their marketing forced Microsoft to respond, and do so awkwardly. They’ve had to spend a lot of money to overcome Vista’s faults, such as the annoying security messages, initial driver problems, and most importantly, Microsoft’s business model that allowed third party hardware pre-installed with Vista without the specs to optimally run it. First they had Bill Gates hang out with Jerry Seinfeld to our amusement. Lately they’ve been marketing as the low-cost provider, sending people into a Best Buy with cash for a notebook, but leaving out the hidden extra costs involved, like a need for an annual anti-virus software license, the more expensive Windows 7 upgrade (when compared to the price of Snow Leopard for a Mac buyer/Leopard OSX owner) and the stark difference in brand consumer satisfaction. My earlier blog post was about the weird decision to use gross imagery to market IE8, in a desperate attempt for attention.

Google has the money and brand power to further split the market that Microsoft and Linux are sharing. This next decade will be very different from the 90s. VERY different.

The Internet is certainly an enormous leap over print publishing with its speed and participant access to join the cultural collective consciousness, but so far, it’s been a sociological evolution. The speed at which knowledge is shared has evolved beyond even the first incarnation of the Internet. CD-ROM killed the print encyclopedia and Wikipedia replaced Encarta. E-mail was limited to who you directed the knowledge to be shared because you needed their e-mail address, just like you needed a mailing address for print letters. Chat rooms were limited to a specific time and group, not much difference from a conference call. The newer social web, with server-based storage of those interactions, which doesn’t require a specific time-frame (made possible by server storage and some nifty JavaScript work) or specific address (just search for them on Facebook). The more people expect others to be on Facebook, the more people will join. It is far more efficient for a participant’s time, like DVR-ing an on-going, digitally public conversation.

The social web is happening just as the mobile web is transferring from “business class” to “coach”. A brilliant scientist can write from anywhere to potentially everyone. It’s stored somewhere, for all to see, and they can instantly share it with everyone they know, who can then share it with the next group level out, and the knowledge spreads super fast. Unfortunately, the same power is given to an idiot who can’t string a sentence together in the comments section of a website.

A mobile web device is a world-wide communicator. Combined with a social web site, it’s a powerful tool and is not limited to some silly fad for celebrities or for moms to post baby pictures. It’s being used for potential social change. I love that the State Department specifically requested that Twitter delay shutting down for maintenance because it was a great subversive tool to embrace the public outcry in Iran and undermine Ahmadinejad’s re-election. The Internet used as a foreign policy weapon without the bad PR of a loss of American blood and money.

But again, that’s all sociological change. Evolution would require some change to our biological existence.

Will we achieve eugenics altering technology before, after or concurrently with cybernetic enhancements? Either way, Hawking brings up a good point: we’ll have evolved on our own terms. It sounds very cool: less hereditary diseases, on-board knowledge at any second, but it’s also very scary:

Resistance is futile

I need to watch this again.

What happens to our species when we direct our own evolution?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Another example of Microsoft’s horrendously awful marketing lately. Apple uses Justin Long and John Hodgman. Fun and clever. Microsoft uses bullshit laptop buyers in a Best Buy going for cheap instead of quality, and now, projectile vomiting.

Ironically, it’s how I feel when writing CSS bug fixes for IE6.

What will we see from them to market Windows 7? Someone with a stomach virus and diarrhea thanks to a lesser operating system? I can’t wait.

I’ve been asked why I haven’t fixed some issues with my site that come up in IE6. I’ve decided that, while I could (and maybe should), I’d like to encourage an IE6 user who checks out this site to come enjoy the tastiness of tabbed browsing and more web standards compliance. Experience the web applications that will change your future, like Gmail and Mobile Me, with unique features made possible by new browsers.

And that’s where cars differ from web browsers. While some classic cars can still be restored and have an elegant beauty and design, justifying a wave of nostalgia, few look back at old computer technology like 5.25″  and 3.5″ floppy drives, read-only CD-ROMs, and dial-up Internet access and think “Wow, I really want to go back there. It was better.”

Nope, those things are jalopies. Wikipedia states: “When a jalopy gets to a state in which its maintenance becomes too expensive, its owner would be required to make a decision about its fate.” IE6 is a resource-guzzling mess and should be retired as soon as possible. It’s becoming too time-consuming and expensive to justify resources used for hacks and fixes. We designers and developers have a responsibility to encourage its demise. Innovation depends on it. Let’s take the hand of IE6 users and pull them out of the Dark Ages.

Get Firefox, Safari, Opera, or at least Internet Explorer 8.

UPDATE: Probably the best solution on how to deal with IE6 style sheets that I’ve seen. I will adopt this method immediately, although I’ve kind of done that already by informing my clients that the site won’t match pixel-for-pixel in IE6. But I won’t ever leave them hanging on the functionality.

It’s interesting that we have to struggle to justify our existence to many business people who don’t value what we offer, or refute all attempts at the return on investment good designers can deliver. We also justify our existence by insisting that design could and should lead development, or that we’re not simply a brand police that slows down product development.

We need to articulate our value beyond the impression that design is just a new coat of paint on a perfectly fine working car. Our work should help prevent users from closing the browser in frustration, from closing the tab before clicking “Checkout”, or the potential demo not leading to a buy in. If comparison is done on a nicely designed interface to one that “technically works” but lacks desinger input, the designed one will sell more. Isn’t that worth the cost of design? You’ve wasted hours making a functional application or product that few people want to use, or worse, don’t want to buy. Congratulations, you’re limiting sales potential.

Realtors call it curb appeal and in the newly competitive real estate market with more buyers than sellers, you better make an effort on the quality of your home interior and exterior if you expect to get the price you’re asking for.

It’s why iPod and iPhone users generally have such a good impression of Apple as a brand. The device design invites people to pick it up and use it, with a minimal interface that has less buttons exterior buttons. It’s seemingly simple, but incredibly versatile. I can get more done faster with my iPhone than my old Blackberry, and the experience of buying new content, watching a show or listening to music on my phone is far better for a $200 device, and it’s the design that impresses as much as anything. Now, AT&T just needs to do a better job of getting their system to match Apple’s quality.

It’s time we realized that we don’t simply make things pretty, we add quality.