http://watchingapple.com Thoughts about Apple and design Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:51:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en There's usually little sport in pointing out UI flaws in an OS, but Mac OS X is well-enough designed that it's actually fun, like catching an erudite friend confusing a tense or saying "kinda". Here are several examples. Good times! Terminology   Huh? Remapping record identifiers? What the heck? So, saving ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/mac-os-x-peccadillos/ The Seattle PI's Todd Bishop reports about Microsoft's multi-touch Surface Sphere, a spherical display with a lens at the bottom to project an image onto the internal surface of the sphere. What does the demo show? Interacting with photos  The presenter pushes, drags, and resizes photos, same as in the multi-touch and table-top ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/first-peek-at-microsofts-multi-touch-sphere/ Browsing through the App Store in iTunes. Whoa, Crash Bandicoot—what is this, the 90s? Pass. Pretty cool to be able to download it for my iPhone, though...Tetris, heh, 80s, yeah right...Enigmo, early 2000? Maybe get that one, yeah... Click. Air Hockey? Maybe, but ooohhh, look at Checkers Touch. Now ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/wondering-about-the-app-store-for-the-mac/ Mac OS X is so easy to use that, before you know it, you're running many applications simultaneously to perform different tasks, like uploading to your web site with Transmit and downloading the morning news with NetNewsWire. And you're probably surfing the web and checking e-mail at the same ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/growl-works-great-for-system-notifications/ In The Matrix, Agent Smith eloquently summarizes a key point about iPhone usability: In other words, what good is a feature...if you are unable to use it? That Agent Smith—scary, but wise. Seems obvious enough, but most smart-phone reviews don't simply overlook this point, they ignore it with complete abandon ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/usability-trumps-features-mr-anderson/ Mac OS X has always supported keyboard commands for taking screenshots, including the ability to select a rectangular region by pressing Command-Shift-4. In Leopard, you can now modify how you select that rectangular region in a few new ways. Once you've pressed Command-Shift-4 and you're resizing the selection ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/leopards-new-keyboard-shortcuts-for-taking-screenshots/ If you've ever tired of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling on your iPhone to get to the top of a long Web page in Safari, here's a handy shortcut: Tap the status bar to jump immediately to the page's top. (The status bar is the bar at the top of the screen.) http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/iphone-tip-tap-the-status-bar-to-jump-to-the-top-of-a-safari-page/ Looks like the iPhone is about to shake up the world of GPS software. In a Forbes article published today, some existing GPS developers sound a bit shrill when complaining about the iPhone. For instance, they dislike that you will be able to use your purchased iPhone applications on multiple ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/the-iphone-is-rocking-the-world-of-gps/ It's nice the way iChat occasionally inserts timestamp status messages to let you know when events happened within the conversation, but sometimes you want to know exactly when who said what. When you do, just hover over the speech bubble to see a handy display: http://watchingapple.com/2008/07/ichat-timestamps-are-more-exact-than-you-think/ While taking a first look at the Mac version of Avid Media Composer 3.0, HDFilmtools.com reveals among mostly positive comments a few glimpses of the Avid experience, leaving little doubt how Apple managed to grab pro-video marketshare: I backed up all my project data in the event of catastrophe. (I’m ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/06/more-on-apple-and-avid/ In a subscribers-only article posted yesterday entitled "Fade to Gray at Avid Technology", Barron's makes it clear how thoroughly Apple's pro-video tools have undercut Avid's market position: Avid's grip on the video-editing and post-production technology field has been loosened dramatically by Apple (AAPL), which swooped in with low-priced offerings that have ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/06/apples-pro-video-tools-are-killing-avid/ The Samsung Instinct, coming from Sprint on June 20, is modeled after the more obvious aspects of the iPhone's design. Like the iPhone, the Instinct is black with a rounded metal trim and offers a touchscreen instead of a keyboard. Both include a Home button bottom-center, a row of icons, ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/06/be-careful-what-you-ask-for/ In the last few days Apple has added iPhone carriers in two more countries: Movistar in Spain, and SoftBank in Japan. When I first compiled this list, 8 countries had iTunes stores but lacked iPhone carriers. Now, only Luxembourg and the Netherlands do. It's been remarkable to ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/06/the-iphones-tholian-web-of-coverage/ (Notes taken while watching multi-touch in Microsoft's next OS release, Windows 7, being demonstrated for the first time.) Don't perform the demo yourself. Bring someone else onstage to distract the audience while making the demo appear complicated enough to require a specialist. Wear distracting clothing. It's a small thing, but remember ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/how-to-botch-a-demo/ Apple's new agreement with Stockholm-based TeliaSonera will bring the iPhone to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland—which already have iTunes Stores—and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which don't. That takes care of half of the countries with iTunes Stores but which hadn't yet announced iPhone carriers, and raises the number of announced countries without ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/how-about-29-new-international-itunes-stores/ iChat in Leopard supports animated icons, but they're a bit quirky. First, make sure they're enabled: Next, find an animated icon like the sample one shown here. Notice how the constant motion is a little annoying? That's something you'll need to watch out for with your own animated icons. ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/using-animated-icons-in-ichat/ Apple's contextual menus violate every one of the Contextual Menu guidelines established in the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. You don't need to look far to find the violations, either: a glance at Safari and Mail is enough. Safari Safari displays PDFs in the browser window with a handy contextual menu to control ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/how-apples-contextual-menus-violate-the-human-interface-guidelines/ For a fee, Forrester Research will tell you their predictions of Apple's product strategy through 2013, including the kinds of products they believe Apple will create and how they tie together into a coherent vision. $279 U.S. buys you a PDF containing their analysis of Apple's drive to become "the ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/apple-in-2013-wont-be-sony/ iChat's conversation bubbles capture the back-and-forth of chatting nicely by positioning you on one side, and the person you're speaking with on the other side. The bubbles are different colors for the different parties. But the status messages shown centered in the window really help the conversational flow, too. ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/ichats-status-messages-are-nice/ You know those times when you go online to chat with Lois, and Jimmy says hey Clark, howsitgoin? You're not in the mood, but Jimmy's sensitive, so you politely chat for a moment, though you'd really rather chat with Lois. Next time, go invisible. Before you sign on, set ... http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/tip-go-invisible-in-ichat/