Currently viewing the tag: "iOS"
That’s a detail. It takes one third of a second for a full opened folder to close, in iOS, yet these effects are there.
You never actually see what’s going on, you can only “feel” the smoothness of the transition. One of the causes of this smoothness is this:
I guess Apple did it for money.
In most comparative reviews between iPhone and, say, Samsung’s or HTC’s phones, there’s a small sophism that’s omni-present: Android is just “different” from iOS.
(On the other hand, the hardware comparative reviews are mostly clear: that device is better than the other (specs-wise). When it comes to software, boy, Android is simply different.)
Let’s put things straight: “something is different from something else” only means that the two things are not identical, which is a tautology. Anybody talking about two distinct things and saying the most important thing about them is that they are different – well, he is just trying to throw dust into your eyes; he’s not saying anything at all. He’s not just being polite, he’s plainly misleading.
It’s like saying the most important thing about “2″ and “3″ is that the two digits are different. No sir, “one is bigger than the other” is the most important, generic thing to say about them.
Android is different from iOS means “Android is not identical to iOS”. No shit?
The most important fact is that Android is not just “different” from iOS; Android, today, is a worse operating system than iOS, at least from two perspectives: customer experience and developing objectives.
Mafia message to its “business partners” was this: “You keep paying me until you’re stronger than me“.
The bad part of this story was nobody felt stronger than Mafia, therefore all the “partners” were paying up until their end.
The good part, though, was that for everybody it was clear they’d never be able to match Mafia resources, force, determination and so on. Being stronger or weaker than Mafia was a no-brainer, therefore there wasn’t much trouble for Mafia to rein. No blood, at least as long these “business partners” were not brain-washed.
Let’s leave the Mafia, but keep its message, with a twist. Let’s say Somebody tells you this “You keep paying me until you’re smarter than me“. What’s the dynamic in this case?
The results are the exact opposites of the Mafia case’s:
First, everybody would think they are smarter, so they all stop paying without a doubt.
Second, as everybody feels smarter and stops paying, there will be a bloodbath. Unless, there isn’t a bloodbath.
On the contrary, if you challenge this Somebody and prove to be really smarter, you’re free and happy; if you’re not that smart as you hoped, this Somebody will help you make a living with a share revenue and you’re also free and happy.
This Somebody is Apple and it says: unless you have a smarter solution to sell your stuff, you can use my premises, address my customers and still make 70% of the total revenue.
Now, ReadWriteWeb’s Richard MacManus, on Amazon’s cloud based Kindle:
Today Amazon launched an HTML5 browser version of its market leading eReader application, Kindle. Called Kindle Cloud Reader, it’s a direct response to the 30% cut of sales that Apple now takes from in-app purchases and subscriptions via iOS apps. The 30% Apple toll hits businesses like Amazon hard, because the margins on book sales are slim enough as it is. Should Apple be concerned about that? You bet. It’s a going to end up being a very large hole in its wall, caused by companies wielding HTML5 sledgehammers. Amazon has struck one of the first blows.
Why should Apple be concerned? Amazon decided they don’t need iOS to address their own customers and Apple’s, as they decided they have a smarter solution for delivering their books. Good for them! The proof that Richard is “writing it wrong” is Amazon actually being able to to leave iOS and still be free and happy!
The next stupid thing from RWW:
Apple’s App Store is a classic walled garden. Apple controls what apps are approved, just as AOL used to control what content its users could access on the Internet.
This couldn’t be more wrong. One is education, the other one was censorship; although these two might look alike for some unfortunate illiterates, “censorship” and “education” are opposites, at least for those who got a taste of one.
For some, it looks strange for Apple to keep 30% of all sales. I wonder why; maybe because people got used to be given stuff for free, already?
I’ve read twice these two paragraphs from asymco’s “The fate of mobile phone brands”:
Apple’s iOS will continue its attack on the mobile computing market, skimming (or carving as the case may be) profits from the phone business to sustain its ultimate target of reclaiming the computing universe.
By this thinking iOS lives only by improving more rapidly than anything else in dimensions that redefine the basis of performance. In other words, doing more of what the iPhone did in the first place to set off this disruption. – asymco.
I love how Horace Dediu draws; I think his charts are enlightening. There is something hiding, though, between the lines of the first paragraph, which doesn’t seem right. “Skimming profits from [the part] to sustain its ultimate target of reclaiming [the whole]“… Well, this is not Apple. It’s Google.
(I’m also not convinced the profit of a market should be seen as a finite amount that can be monopolized.)
The iPods were the first mass market spearheads (no app-enabled OS); second came the iPhones, third the iPads, now the Airs. Although the profit from the iPods might had been used to sustain the R&D, production, logistics and support for the iPhones, I am pretty sure the iPhones were built as standalone spearheads, which must not depend in any way on iPods. Not even a bit.
Nevertheless, Apple’s constellation of products is not built like a stair, each step sustaining the next one; I’d say it’s built more like a domino rows of tiles: once a product correctly “started”, the whole row will eventually fall, at an exact, specific speed. While the first row is falling to the ground, Apple is grafting just one single tile, which links to a distinct project – another domino branch. And so on. It’s like a domino Apple-tree whose saps are Apple OSes.
I don’t think it’s fighting a war Apple is doing. I think they are building such a bigger picture out of those dominoes, that can be understood only after all the tiles are down and it can be seen only from heights we never imagined. Cloud-like heights.
This fractal architecture is the key answer to the question “What if Jobs dies?”.
We all saw OS X Lion; it’s touch and gesture based, it resembles iOS big time.
Maybe this resemblance makes me see the mouse cursor as something that does not belong there anymore. Swiping, tapping, page-scrolling and so on are the enemies of the cursor. When migrating to a gesture based UI you lose the focus of a cursor and concentrate on areas, tabs and apps. The spot goes out, the zone comes in.
The only place a cursor is irreplaceable is in-app usage: when dealing with fonts, lines, dots, pixels and millimeters you cannot use zones, but spots.
I know Jobs is very found of his invention (the mouse), but migrating to a gesture interface should imply the cursor to be repositioned as precision instrument instead of a main interaction denominator.
You may be thinking the cursor could be dethroned by gestures and touch in iOS because in iOS you touch where and what you see. But having no better ideas never stopped Apple.
Using a touch pad instead of a touch screen can be much easier if correct markers are defined.
You may have heard Alaska Airlines replaced the paper manuals with iPads running GoodReader.
I guess they had to choose between an Android tablet and an iOS one; I see no other reason for them to choose iPad over, say, Xoom or Tab, but the lower price of the iPad. And maybe its weight.
Will be ready this summer, says Jon Virtes:
Jon Virtes (@FlipboardCM)
4/14/11 22:37
@UtestMe we’re working on iPhone, it’s due out this summer.
I can hardly wait!
Mashable hopes for Mobile Safari extensions
“Although Apple hasn’t made any announcements about the mobile extensibility of Safari Extensions, the fact that extensions are built in HTML and CSS means that it is at least conceivable that extension support could hit Mobile Safari.”
I hope for that too.
