The 4 inch iPhone 5

It seems that The Verge Forums became a platform for techblog readers, that can think and have something more to say, that just troll the comment section. A recent post by modilwar is a good example of that. In a nutshell, modilwar speculates about how Apple can increase the size of the iPhone’s display, while getting the maximum effect from it (i.e. increasing the display resolution) and avoiding the issues with fragmentation and existing applications. His solution? Change the aspect ratio, so that the display becomes more vertically elongated.

Modilwar also proposes two solutions to fight fragmentation issues, which would arise from moving to a different resolution: applications that use standard iOS user interface elements can just scale up to use addition screen real estate to display more content, while applications with custom a UI (e.g. games) can run at their native resolution of 960 x 640 pixels with black bars occupying the unused space.

And while this does seem like a generally good solution, it’s highly unlikely that Apple will use it. First of all, as some commentators have already mentioned, scaling an application isn’t that easy — sure, the layout of UI elements can scale, but it isn’t the only thing that needs to work. What about animations, transitions, effects, gestures and content? Current applications can scale, but they weren’t designed to. Suddenly adding scaling into the equation will just result in a mess.

Moreover, different behavior of applications, with one set of applications “just scaling” while other fallback to displaying black bars will just add confusion for users — something that Apple clearly doesn’t like or want to. If Apple does indeed change the aspect ratio in the described manner, it’s more likely that all “old” applications will display black bars or something other instead of them, e.g. notification tray, multitasking bard, etc.

Nobody to say “no” to bad design?

Seth Weintraub, 9to5Mac:

Former Apple TV UI designer and “Professional Hobbyist, AppleTV” Michael Margolis went vocal on Twitter about the new Apple TV redesign last night. He says that Steve Jobs himself tossed out the new designs 5 years ago. He adds, “Now there is nobody to say ‘no’ to bad design.”

I call bullshit on his comment. As most of us know, such product development choices are rarely made at the last minute – people work on them for years before the final product is released. This means that most of the “recent” design decisions at Apple, with high probability, still went thru Steve. Steve’s absence from Apple will only influence Apple’s design maybe in something like 2 to 4 years.
Read More »

$399 is significant enough

While commenting on the recent story at MacRumors about the possibility of iPad 2 being offered alongside the new iPad 3, Marco Arment makes an interesting and generally right conclusion — offering the iPad 2 at a lower price point as the low-end model does makes more than enough sense from a business standpoint. However, I strongly disagree with his remark at the end:

How far down can Apple push the price of the iPad 2’s basic design, maybe with only 8 GB of flash? $199 probably isn’t possible and $399 probably isn’t a significant enough reduction to change anything, but if they can get it down to $299, that would take a lot of wind out of the 7” tablets’ half-assed sails.

Read More »

The next step in iPhone’s screen resolution

As Android smartphones continue to grow beyond any reasonable limits both in screen size and display resolution, pundits in tech blogs are becoming increasingly more vocal about Apple utilizing a bigger screen in the next generation of the iPhone. Although there are different opinions, concerning the screen size of the iPhone 5, the 4 inch screen is considered by many as the most “probable” candidate. Instead of size, I would like to touch the topic of screen resolution of that possible display.
Read More »

Why wouldn’t Apple make an iPad mini?

While I already talked about a possible “iPad mini” in early 2012, a recent post at 9to5Mac pushes the topic a little bit further. This time the story is based on a rumor of LG Display becoming Apple’s supplier of 7.35 inch displays for the said iPad mini. While I’m not absolutely convinced that the said report is true, it boggles the mind why so many people automatically just disregard even the slightest possibility of Apple releasing an “iPad mini”.
Read More »

The Schmidt Bullshit

It certainly isn’t news that corporate people often lie or bend the truth their way, but it still strikes me how people put up with high-caliber bullshit from them. A recent example of this is Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive Chairman (and former CEO), answering a question about Android being a “stolen product” at a press conference in South Korea:

I would also point out that the Android efforts started before the iPhone efforts. And that’s all I have to say.

While Google did purchase Android (a project stared in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Apple’s former engineer) back in 2005, two years before Apple’s announcement of the original iPhone, back then it was nothing like the iPhone (and nobody then claimed that it was a stolen product)— it was developed for a blackberry-styled non-touchscreen smartphones with hardware keyboards, hence the early hardware prototypes.

Smartphones, that Android was initially developed for

However, since Schmidt was on Apple’s board of directors from 2006 to 2009 and had access to Apple’s pre-released products (including the iPhone), Google had more than enough time and opportunities to steer the development of Android into a more iPhone-like direction, using insider information from Schmidt. The result? In November 2007 (more than a half-year after the iPhone announcement) Google finally announced Android, even showing a touch-screen device side by side with the said blackberry-styled device.

Anyone can clearly see in the video above, that the said “touchscreen device” and most of it’s user-interface is almost exclusively operated with hardware buttons — a clear indication that Android was initially designed for non-touchscreen devices. Of course, a few years of development made Android into somethings that’s more suited for touchscreen smartphones, which had total domination in the Android ecosystem from day one.

Was the development of Android started before iPhone’s announcement? Obviously, it was. Did it’s development start earlier that the iPhone’s development? Unlikely (only people at Apple know this), but still possible. But lets not compare Apples to Oranges, ok? How about some objectivity? Was the announcement of Android made before iPhone’s announcement? Nope.

Ok, now lets look at the facts:

• The development of Android as a mobile operating system started before iPhone’s official announcement in January 2007;
• Back then, before the iPhone’s announcement, Android was developed for non-touchscreen devices;
• Google’s CEO was on Apple’s board of directors during the iPhone’s development and obviously saw the device months before it’s announcement;
• Android, having very rudimentary support for touchscreen devices, was announced after the iPhone;

The conclusion is rather obvious, isn’t it? So, while Schmidt’s answer can be considered true at least to some degree, you have to be very naive to believe his words. A goods sign of this is also in semantics of the response — notice that it doesn’t have any sign of complete denial in it, i.e. Schmidt simply doesn’t want to be caught lying and tries to bend the truth his way.

Skeumorphism in UI

Another great post by Christoffer Du Rietz touches the topic of a so-called skeumorphism trend in Apple’s UI. While the majority of tech blogosphere simply bashes skeumorphism, Christoffer Du Rietz tries to look at the reasons that made Apple utilize it.

Apple has built it’s iOS devices to be the perfect app consoles. Apple has created this perfect blank app canvas so the apps themselves can stand out and make impact. The clean hardware design creates extra leg-room for creative expressive design, not the other way around. And Apple is using that extra leg-room to its full extent. I see this as a perfectly coherent strategy.

Read More »

Why Android Hardware-Buttons Are “Broken”

In his recent post, Christoffer Du Rietz makes a great point on why hardware-buttons (as a part of the user-interface) in Android smartphones are fundamentally “broken”. The conclusion is mostly right:

The sad thing is about all this is that having made the decision to use these buttons from the start, Google has locked itself in a mess of a UI-model. All Android apps would have to be redesigned should they want to change it around and fix this. In short, they’re stuck with a UI that sucks and they can’t fix it because they didn’t think it through thoroughly before the first launch.

Early Android prototype hardware

Now, why did Google chose the said UI-model? Easy — because Android was originally developed to be more of a BlackBerry-style competitor for Windows Mobile (hence the early developer prototype hardware), which couldn’t rely on every handset having a touch-screen as the sole input device. While this was probably a good design decision for devices of that time, the developers clearly didn’t see even the near-term future, which would come in 2007 with the iPhone.

So, hardware-buttons on Android smartphone are essentially just a type of legacy burden, which any software project has at some point. It’s good to see that developers at Google see this problem themselves, hence the whole move to virtual onscreen-buttons made with Honeycomb in the form of tablets and Ice Cream Sandwich in form of the Galaxy Nexus. The real problem is that these onscreen-buttons aren’t really a good solutions, more like a hack to accommodate third-party software compatibility for all the other Android devices, that were already shipped or will be shipped in the near-term future.

Google’s control over Android

When discussing problems with Android devices, you can often find people who claim, that most (if not all) problems with Android devices are caused by the manufacturers of said devices and Google isn’t to blame. Geeks like to justify this by saying that Google has no control over Android and devices that are made with it, i.e. manufacturers have the freedom to do anything with it. While this does sound plausible with all the “open” bullshit that’s coming from Google, the reality is very different.
Read More »

Android update problems

The problem with updates in Android isn’t news, but usually geeks (or should I say “google fanboys”?) will try to defend Google by shifting the responsibility onto hardware manufacturers. They also like to make a point that if you really want to buy an Android smartphone that has zero problems with updates, than you should buy a “Nexus” device. Well, today is the day, when this Nexus crap is officially bullshit. As mentioned in a recent TechCrunch post by Jordan Crook:

Unfortunately for owners of the original Google phone, Google has confirmed that the Nexus One is just “too old” for the new software.

Now, consider that the Nexus One was first released in US on January 5, 2010 — less than two years ago, other countries got in even later. This situation is typical for Google’s products — they have no support what so ever, either it’s software, hardware or web-services. And while this may be suitable for free web-services or software, it’s absolutely unacceptable for consumer products. What’s worse, by doing this Google sets an example for other manufacturers, saying that they should not care about updates either (not that they particularly care now).

Meanwhile, the iPhone 3GS, that was released more than two years ago, is still alive and kicking getting updated to the newest version of iOS.