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iPad & Productivity: One Year Later

Instapaper developer Marco Arment makes the point on his personal blog about the iPad fitting more the entertainment category, rather than the productivity one. He thinks that, one year after its introduction, Apple hasn’t found the “sweet spot” yet for this new device:

Apple is now adapting to the market’s actual use by retreating somewhat from office productivity and pushing strongly into new territory — casual media creation — to see if that gets a stronger uptake in practice. I think it will be a lot more interesting than office productivity, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in iOS to make it practical (especially regarding file transfers with computers).

I still don’t think Apple has found the sweet spot for the iPad’s usage: the ideal role it fills in personal computing. And I don’t think we, as developers or iPad owners, have found it, either. But I know that sweet spot exists, and for a computer category that has only existed for one year, we’re rushing towards it remarkably quickly.

Maybe it’s just me, but in this past year I’ve found a number of ways the iPad can help me be more productive to complete a series of tasks that would require a laptop otherwise. More importantly, the iPad has also created a new category of tasks that didn’t exist before. Read more

iPad 2: Thoughts, Questions & Answers

Short of a full review, I wanted to go over some of the sporadic thoughts I’ve had while using the iPad 2. I want this to be a place where you can leave questions in the comments, and where I’ll update this post as ideas come to mind. These aren’t quite initial reactions, but more of an unfolding conversation in response to a new discovery or comment. Many of the initial reviews left me a little unsatisfied, and I want to fill that gap with burning questions about what’s on your mind. I can’t answer app compatibility questions, but feel free to plug away about the iPad 2.

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Twitter To Developers: Enough With The Twitter Clients

With an official announcement on the Twitter Google Group, head of platform and API at Twitter Ryan Sarver has told developers to stop building third-party Twitter clients that “mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience”. Basically: no more unofficial Twitter apps that look just like the official iOS, Mac, Android or BlackBerry apps and don’t add any value to the experience. Instead, focus on different areas of the whole Twitter experience. Uh oh.

The move is quickly causing a reaction among developers on Twitter that didn’t expect such a response from the company. Basically, although in a subtle way, they’re telling everyone to stop wasting time trying to emulate the official Twitter apps because 90% of users are already using Twitter through the officially provided tools. On top of that, though, it’s not only a matter of choice: it seems like Twitter is really going to force developers to stop building apps by “holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service”. Some key parts from the announcement:

With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.  As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app.  It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps.

Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter.  More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.  The answer is no.

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way.

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The iPad: Does It Need Programming Apps?

Many things have been said about the iPad as a content creation tool, rather than a device to consume media like music, movies and photos. In spite of the plethora of apps released in 2010 that proved you can actually do stuff on an iPad, at the iPad 2 event last week Steve Jobs himself wanted to remember the audience how the tablet is “no toy”, also thanks to the upcoming iMovie and GarageBand apps. But no matter how many apps allow you to produce and create original content using only your fingers and the virtual keyboard, there’s still a niche market Apple hasn’t addressed yet: coding apps. Read more

iOS Multitasking: It Doesn’t Need To Be PC-like

In a recent article on his personal blog, Lukas Mathis argues that the iPad’s multitasking doesn’t actually help people get things done and focus more as it forces you to constantly switch between apps. He writes:

a task (or an app) on a computer, and a task performed by a human don’t map to each other one-to-one. In fact, a single task performed by a human can easily make use of several applications running concurrently on a computer.

For example, right now, I’m typing this text in Notational Velocity, and I’m looking at the New York Times in a browser. The computer is showing me two windows at the same time. It is multitasking. I, however, am not. I’m absolutely focused on writing this essay. In fact, the computer’s multitasking is precisely what allows me to focus on writing my essay. I can type text into this window while looking at the Times article in another window without being forced to interrupt my task, and consciously switch between apps.

This is a common point being raised by people curious to try out iOS, but afraid it won’t help them be productive: “can I see multiple apps at once”? No, with iOS you can’t. And the way I see it, there’s good reason to enforce this implementation. First off, let’s consider the devices iOS runs on: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Apple TV. The Apple TV 2nd gen doesn’t exactly have apps and I don’t understand why would anyone want to see multiple photos and movies at once. The iPhone and iPod touch? The screen is so small (in spite of high resolution) I honestly can’t believe some people are exploring the possibility of seeing multiple apps on a single screen. It doesn’t make sense. Read more

iPad 2: Apple’s Smart Iteration

By now you’ve probably heard and read everything you need to know about the iPad 2. The second generation tablet that’s thinner, lighter (not so much, after all), has cameras and also happens to come with fancy (some people say revolutionary) Smart Covers to protect and clean your device without putting it entirely into a case. Pretty much as I wrote in November, this is the iPad upgrade I was expecting.

But is this the iPad 2 I was hoping for? Or rather, was March 2 the iPad 2 event I was looking forward to? I would say yes, and no.

I’m going to get an iPad 2 from the United States on March 11. 16 GB WiFi model with a $39 Smart Cover. I guess that’s what most consumers will end up with, and I’m happy to stick with my last year’s choice of “just” 16 GBs of storage considering how it’s possible that Apple will slowly move to cloud storage, always available at any time with a simple Internet connection. Which brings me to the second point: the geek in me was hoping for a brief mention of iOS 5 at the iPad 2 event which, you might have seen, didn’t happen. I can see, though, why Apple decided to keep iOS 5 for a dedicated event in Cupertino. Read more

The Genius of Apple’s Smart Cover

The most exciting part of the March 2nd keynote was not the introduction of the iPad 2, but the introduction of its surprise accessory that makes the iPad 2 twice as magical as its predecessor. Approximately twenty-five minutes into his speech, Steve Jobs broadcasts signals of pure excitement. Suddenly the mediocre announcement of the Digital AV Adapter was transitioned into what might have as been Job’s, “One last thing.” With the unveiling of the Smart Cover, Jobs hadn’t yet looked so happy in the keynote. Clearly, this was something to pay attention to.

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OS X Lion To Bring Direct iOS-Finder Integration?

After the release of the first Lion developer preview last week, we have seen Apple is bringing several aspects of iOS to the desktop: the Launchpad mimics iOS’ Springboard and folders, gestures allow you to move between apps like in the iOS 4.3 beta, Resume lets Mac OS save the state of apps (window, position, content) even after a logout or restart. We did a little bit of digging in the Lion preview, and we found some files in the Finder’s resources that suggest a direct connection between iOS devices and Lion’s Finder could be coming in the future.

The files, located in the System folder, clearly show iPhone, iPad and iPod touch icons at three different sizes, likely to be used in the Finder’s sidebar. Other icons currently not used by Lion like “Mobile Documents” (first spotted by 9to5mac) are in there as well. While the presence of mobile documents suggests a Dropbox-like functionality for the Finder is coming with MobileMe / iWork.com, we speculate these iOS device icons might be for a future direct connection between iPhones, iPads, iPod touches and the Finder itself.

Basing on pure speculation, we wouldn’t mind seeing Apple implementing the AirDrop functionality (which lets you share files between Macs running Lion with a single drag&drop) for iOS devices as well. Users with a Mac and a nearby iPhone or iPad could drop files into the Finder and instantly share them. A direct iOS-Finder connection opens to many possibilities, though: what about PDFs, photos, mobile downloads, documents coming from apps? Currently, these things are all handled by iTunes. While many users appreciate the comfort of a single application to manage all kinds of media ending up on their iOS devices, there’s no doubt having an iPad accessible in the Finder would be much more convenient for certain tasks like document sorting or sharing. Perhaps with a little bit of cloud integration.

Again, we’re just speculating here – but the icons are there and ready to be implemented in some way through the Lion Finder. There’s an Apple event tomorrow, iOS 5 is rumored to be previewed alongside the iPad 2 – maybe we’ll see what this connection between iOS and the Mac could be about.

OS X Lion and the Mac App Store Distribution Dilemma

Last week, Apple released the first developer preview of Mac OS X Lion. New and improved OS aside, something set apart Lion from the previous beta releases Apple seeded in the past years: Lion needs to be downloaded through the Mac App Store. That’s right: a 3.6 GB download, available for developers in the App Store infrastructure. How did this happen? Well, the how is easily explainable: developers can log in the Dev Center, request a Lion build and a unique promo code is generated. With the promo code, developers can fire up the Mac App Store and start the OS X Lion installer download. The promo code, as an additional security measure to prevent people from sharing it, can only be used once, on a single machine.

While the method is really clever and brings a bit of fresh air to the developer community (no need to have a download in your browser, you can just leave the Mac App Store do its job), this has raised some questions on the future of Apple’s OS downloads for consumers. Namely, some people are speculating the Lion developer preview is clearly pointing to a summer 2011 featuring Mac OS X 10.7 Lion available only in digital format. Apple is killing the CD, and physical Mac OS purchases. Read more