As an engineer, I often have observations to make of technical things. No longer punishing myself as the editor of the MacinTech newsletter, I need a place to ruminate, so my little blog is the right place. So, read the following at your own risk:
iPhone Copy and Paste
19 July, 2008
Many people have complained the iPhone does not yet have cut, copy and paste. It seems so easy/trivial to people, so why hasn't Apple added gestures for these actions? Leo LaPorte complained about this on the MacBreak Weekly recorded on 16 July, 2008.
Mac news sites are reporting that Greg Joswiak of Apple has stated copy and paste is simply not as high on the priority list as other features. Is this the real reason?
I don't think so. To Leo and all of you hoping for these new features, I don't believe it's as easy as you are thinking. Coding a gesture or two into the iPhone OS is not difficult, but there are other factors. Let's look at some of them.
First of all, what are gestures? Apple seems to refer to the entire iPhone interface as gestures, but this is a stretch. After all, touching a button is touching a button. There is nothing "gesture" about that. True gestures are things like the pinch zoom. Use two fingers in a precise manner to zoom or shrink a picture. This harkens back to the original ideas for gestures. Clear back in the late 60s and into the 70s, people working on computer interfaces envisioned a camera hooked up to a computer. The computer would recognize a user nodding her head yes or no to a question posed by the computer, thus reinforcing what the user types in. Think Hal 9000.
Gestures such as nodding your head are intuitive, natural and in most cultures obvious. The gestures on the iPhone/iPod Touch are do not fit this definition. Yes, nodding your head is a learned action, but it applies to life away from computing devices. Babies learn to nod. Give a Windows user a Mac, and ask them to do some tasks and they can figure out a large percentage of work needed to be done. Give an iPhone to someone who has never use one, even if they have used other smart phones, and they will have problems getting around. If you ask them to find a specific photo and enlarge the photo, they will likely be stuck.
This is not a criticism of the iPhone interface. I make this point, so you will realize developing a touch interface is not easy. Apple has to come up with gestures that once learned, seem logical and are therefore relatively easy to remember.
...continued on the ruminations page.
MacWorld 2008 Wrap-up
16 January, 2008
It was nice to have a year in which MacWorld announcements followed my predictions closely. Here is a summary of the products announced by Steve Jobs at the keynote.
One week prior to MacWorld, Apple released a press statement detailing the new Mac Pro towers. The towers now come standard with 2 quad core processors. Options include a single quad core chip or you can move up to dual quad cores running at 3.2 GHz. They even have an optional graphics card that is top of the line in th eindustry, but costs $2850!
At MacWorld:
1. Time Capsule -- is a WiFi base station. Essentially an Airport Base Station with "N" speeds combined with a hard drive for back ups; this is cost effective for those using the Time Machine capabilities of the Leopard operating system.
2. iPhone -- Jobs mentioned the new developer tools for iPhone coming in February. He discussed a free update for the iPhone that includes better Google maps integration and fairly accurate position determination using cell towers and WiFi signals. The update also includes the ability to SMS with multiple people, WebClips, which are live clips of web pages, the ability to rearrange icons on the home page of the iPhone, and to create up to 9 home pages. continued on the ruminations page.
Pre-MacWorld 2008 Notes
13 January, 2008
Just a few notes before MacWorld 2008. One of my predictions has already come true. I said that Apple would not introduce new Mac Pro towers at the MacWorld presentations. So, my record for predictions for 2008 is now better than last year!
Apple introduced the new Mac Pros last week in a press release. Very low key, clearing the way for announcements in 2 days. I will stick to the rest of my predictions, including the idea MacWorld will be heavy with announcements in the area of music, movies and the iTunes Store.
In my previous article on predictions for MacWorld 2008, I did not go much beyond the MacWorld time frame. The distant future (say 6 months from now) is difficult to predict, because Apple will be guided by market forces, not by the prototypes found in their labs.
I *do* believe Apple will announce an iPhone with 3G data speeds during 2008. But, the announcement will not come before the WWDC in June. There is some possibility Apple will skip a 3G phone and go directly to a 4G phone. But, this possibility is low as it will take longer for cell phone companies to decide on 4G standards and deploy these capabilities than they are now admitting.
I do not believe we will see a larger form factor touch device during 2008. The hardware technology cannot yet be delivered at a low enough cost, the interface software for more complete touch interfaces is not ready, and Apple cannot afford to release another touch interface device, when the general public has not completely absorbed the idea of the simple touch interface found in the iPod Touch and the iPhone.
But, we will see more touch devices in the coming months... continued on the ruminations page.
Prognostication for MacWorld 2008
30 December, 2007
Last year, my predictions for new products at MacWorld could not have been more wrong. The Steve Job keynote was all about the iPhone, which I did not predict for a few more months. The "Law of Averages" indicates this year's predictions should be spot on.
New Product Development
I believe this year's MacWorld keynote will be used to announce a number of upgrades and some new products, but no products defining new categories in spite of rumors floating around the 'Net. I don't believe people starting those rumors take into consideration many factors determining the products Apple will release.
The biggest rumor is for a large iPhone or iPod Touch type of device with a 5 to 9 inch screen (depending on rumor source), full touch capability, and functionality that brings it closer to that of a PDA rather than a phone or a music/video player. Perhaps it would be the 'Newton Touch'.
I will not wait to tell you I believe the likelihood of such a device to be rather remote. Many factors will keep it from seeing the light of day for at least another year. Let's look at these factors, which affect Apple's product development and deployment.
One set of factors is Apple's ability to integrate a brand new product into their sales support, marketing, warranty support, and so on. The sales support and warranty support staff need to fully understand products, so they can help the customers. Marketing people need to fully understand products, so they can differentiate these products in their own heads before trying to market these products to potential customers. In all cases, these Apple groups are still trying settle in with the iPhone and iPod Touch following introductions outside of the US. And, let's not forget the effort required to set up product channels for whole new products.
The next factor is the ability of Apple to make this product. Are the hardware components available? Well, a large touch device would need a large touch screen. Apple would need a large touch screen that is cost effective, reliable, of high resolution and in very large quantities. I don't think such a touch screen yet exists. The large touch device would also require copious quantities of Flash storage; I would not expect the consumer to be satisfied with a hard drive based device. Of course, Flash storage exists, but the supplies are constrained. We are constantly hearing the sales of the iPod and iPhone is straining the Flash now being manufactured. At this time, Apple doesn't need to release a new device that strains Flash supplies even more.
And as far as Apple being able to make this device, what about the software, the system support software? A large touch device with more PDA type capabilities than the iPhone or iPod Touch would require more touch capabilities integrated into the system software. The touch software would have to support more advanced gestures ... continued on the ruminations page.
Leopard Under the Hood
7 November, 2008
Now that Leopard is installed on my PowerBook, it is time to write the article I meant to write this past summer. It concerns the biggest changes found in the new version of the Mac operating system.
No, the biggest changes are not Time Machine or QuickLook or the integration of Notes throughout many of the applications. The biggest changes are under the hood.
Now to a developer, "under the hood" does not refer to new utilities, such as Core Animation. Such utilities are very useful to developers creating programs, because they contain code the developer doesn't have to write. And, developers like the fact that these utilities are available to all programs, and updates are supplied by Apple, so the developer can concentrate on the special code that makes the application what it is. Imagine the developer lives in a world like the Matrix. These utilities are like the buildings surrounding you as you walk down the street. The developer doesn't have to go into the building to take advantage of the services created by the business within that building. No, to a developer, the real OS is all of the plumbing that lies below the street.
OK, that analogy is going way way too far, but the point is that developers are excited by the changes in Leopard found beneath the street. And, there are a lot of changes ... continued on the ruminations page.
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