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The iPad as a standalone device
The iPad is a device you could easily use without another laptop or desktop computer to sync it with. A $500 internet-consuming device, no configuration needed. I can imagine a lot of people will buy one so they have a light device able to check their email and Facebook when they get home from work. Cool, this is what Apple had in mind, their perfect audience!
But there’s one thing you can not do with a device running the iPhone OS that Mac OS X can: Uploading files via the browser. People will want to upload a new avatar, upload holiday photo’s to sites that don’t have a native app, uploading documents to their company’s intranet…
There are still a lot of unknown facts about the iPad (and Apple is known for adding last minute features). Also: In the SDK currently available, the simulator doesn’t have a copy of Safari to play with. My guess: Rumors about iPhone OS 4.0 are true, and it’ll be more than just a bug-fixing update.
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So I tried changing my Twitter password...
- Read this scary article on Twitter’s status blog (why news this important isn’t on their company blog is beyond me, way more readers over there)
- Decide to do the right thing and change my password
- Go to bed
- Wake up and try logging in with my new credentials, only to find all Twitter applications throwing authentication errors at me
- Make a cup of chai hoping I was just dreaming
- Go to twitter.com and try again there, failing
- Getting mad and flipping the bird at the caged bird
- Realizing this is the ultimate 1st world problem and feeling ashamed
The end.
- Looks like too many apps tried loggin into Twitter without the new password all at once. This caused the service to temporary disable access to my account. Fair enough.
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The Apple iPad
The internet right now is a complete shitstorm existing out of 2 major hurricanes. On the one side we have hurricane “Flash vs. HTML5” and on the other side there’s hurricane “The iPad Rocks vs. The iPad Sucks”. I already briefly expressed my opinion on Flash and HTML5 (in short: I couldn’t care less if Flash disappeared from the face of the earth and gave me back my battery life and CPU).
In the discussion whether the new Apple iPad is a thing of genius or should be archived together with the AppleTV, there are 2 major camps, both with an almost equal number of members, spitting out a massive amount of blogposts expressing their opinions, in favor or against the device.
Honestly, I’m sick of reading all these pre-launch opinions about it. I digested about 20 articles on the subject so far, and decided to not even bother reading the other 20 I’ve Instapaperized. But there was one article that jumped out and echoed exactly what I was thinking.
In Future Shock, Fraser Speirs (from Connected Flow fame) hits the nail on the head: We aren’t the iPad’s target audience. The target audience is your parents, your grandparents, people who have no interest in learning how to operate a computer:
[…] they are the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways. There are also many, many more of them than us.
Sure, the iPad is in some areas a bit limited in features, but who needs those features, besides us power users? Fraser continues:
I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.
We have MacBooks, we have iMacs, we have Mac Pro’s. Does this mean we’re not allowed to be seen with an iPad in public because it’s not “advanced” enough? No. Here are a couple of reasons I’m buying one:
- Because it’s Apple hardware, and it’s teh sex.
- Because I want a compact device for when I’m not working. Ever thought about how little we use the keyboard when we’re consuming instead of creating?
- Because I want to design for it, and so should you. In the near future, mobile platforms will become as popular as the web.
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YouTube HTML5 Video Player
This is big: YouTube now has an opt-in beta where you can help testing their new HTML5 video player (instead of the CPU-hogging Flash-player). It currently supports Chrome, Safari and even Internet Explorer (with Chrome Frame installed). Still rough around the edges, but I think this might be the death stab for Flash video on the web. (via)
- It seems not all video’s support the HTML5 player. Here’s one that does.
- It seems Vimeo has also released an HTML5 player! I guess at Adobe they’re all learning how to play the sad trombone. It also makes me think about why they’re releasing it so suddenly (and maybe even more awkward: on the same day). Apple Tablet?
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Siteseeing, week 3
A short one this week. (I blame traveling and Belgcamp)
- If you’re going to read only one of the things I’m linking to this week, read The importance of teaching your clients and being the boss, and amazing article by Sam Brown. “Grow a pair” immediately jumps into my mind.
- In Why you can never work “full time”, Jon Hicks writes about how little of your time you actually spend on designing when you’re a freelancer. I too found this out the hard way.
- Associating Colour With Interaction
- Good products are one in a million: Reality is that 1,000 people build things they think people will love.
- The Apple Store’s Checkout Form Redesign