iPhone

Thoughts and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s iPad Event

Resolutionary

Apple is calling the Retina display the most advanced display you’ve ever seen. It has 3.1 million pixels — a million more than are in my HDTV.

I’ve had a Retina display iPhone since the 4 came out last summer and it is still amazing to me. I have no doubt the new iPad’s display will be absolutely stunning. My question though is if it will it be as stunning as the iPhone’s display? The iPad is a bigger display — 9.7 inches compared to the iPhone’s 3.5 — but also worth noting is that the new iPad’s display has less pixel density than the iPhone does. 264 PPI and compared to 326 PPI respectively.

Will a 66 PPI difference make a difference? I don’t know. And my guess is that it won’t. Ryan Block’s comments on the new iPad’s Retina display make it sound just as stunning as (if not more so) the iPhone 4/4S. Jim Dalrymple seems to agree.

I use my iPad for reading more than anything else. And so I’m greatly looking forward having a tablet device that sports a (nearly) print-resolution screen — as if reading Instapaper and Reeder, surfing the Web, and browsing Tweetbot on the current iPad wasn’t already great enough.

Moreover, for websites, breaking out of the standard Georgia and Verdana fonts means your site will look fabulous on an iPad.

4G LTE

My original iPad and my iPad 2 were both Wi-Fi-only models. In the two years I’ve been using my iPads I’ve never felt the need to have 3G connectivity. However, this time around I still chose to order the 4G version. I did so for two reasons:

  • In part because it’s a new technology for Apple — this is their first 4G LTE device — and I think 4G devices are a really big deal. Android phones with 4G LTE are a big deal but their battery life is abysmal. Apple touts that when using 4G data the battery life is only dinged by one 10-percent.

  • Secondly, I have a hunch that owning a 4G connected iPad will prove to be far more useful than I thought. But this is something I won’t know for sure until I’ve got it. Like Marco discovered when he went from his Wi-Fi-only original iPad to the 3G-enabled iPad 2:

I went Wi-Fi-only on my iPad 1 and regretted it, so I got 3G on my iPad 2. In practice, I found that I brought the iPad 2 more places and used it more because it was always internet-connected. This greatly improved the value of the iPad for me. If you see yourself bringing the iPad outside of your house very often, it’s definitely worth considering the 4G option.

Over the past two years, if and when I’m going somewhere to work and I have to pick between taking my Wi-Fi-only iPad or my MacBook Air then I take the Air. But if the iPad were guaranteed connected (with a speed that rivals broadband) then who knows if I’d take the iPad instead.

There is little left that I can’t do on my iPad that I can do on my Air. From my iPad I can read, browse the Web, answer email, check Twitter, even write and post articles and links to my website. But without an internet connection my iPad feels slightly less useful. It’s a device that is meant to be online.

When I went to San Francisco for Macworld I didn’t crack open my Air one time. I did very little writing on that trip, and nearly all the work I did do (reading, email, posting links to the site) I actually did from my iPhone. But if my iPad had been Internet connected then I would have done a lot more work from it instead. My next trip to San Francisco (for WWDC) it’s likely that I’ll leave the Air at home.

To sum up, though I’ve gone sans-3G on iPads for two years in a row, I bet that a few months from now I’ll be very glad I went with the 4G iPad.

Sans-Siri

Sadly the new iPad doesn’t have Siri. Though it does have voice dictation. This will making typing easier (I wonder how much you can dictate before maxing out the service?) I would love to see Siri come to the iPad.

On my iPhone I use Siri quite a bit (assuming it’s available), and it’s primarily to send text messages, and set reminders. As the iPad grows more and more into a work machine, it will be nice to have the ability to quickly create appointments, send an email, set up a reminder, create a note, search the web, etc. No doubt it is simply a matter of time until Siri does make its way to the iPad — if that will be with iOS 6 or with the 2013 model of the iPad I don’t know. Perhaps the only thing holding Siri back right now is that it’s a service with is still very much in beta, and Apple isn’t ready to expand to further devices.

The $399 iPad 2

This is a huge deal if only for the fact that now the entry-level price for an iPad is $100 less than it used to be. Apple is driving the prices down on a device that they don’t need to drive prices down on. As usual, they are going for mass market share. Could the iPad reach as large of a market-saturation point as the iPod has? Remember how iPod growth curve flatlined because pretty much everyone already owned one?

The Apple TV

In the Blanc house we have one of the current little black Apple TV boxes and we love it. We don’t have cable and so anything we watch is via Netflix or iTunes (or Redbox on occasion if we can get it on Blu-Ray).

But I ordered one of the new Apple TVs because to me it’s worth it get the upgrade to 1080p iTunes and Netflix content. For $99 I think anyone with a Mac and a television should own an Apple TV.

What I Ordered

Black, 16GB, with 4G via AT&T.

  • Black, because obviously.

(Though I do imagine the White iPad looks much better now with the new Retina display. Something I never quite liked about the white iPads was that the screen felt even further from the glass than on the black models.)

  • 16GB because I’ve always purchased the base model devices and have never once maxed out an iPhone or iPad. And I wanted to spend my extra money on 4G rather than getting the 32GB version.

  • 4G because of the reasons stated above. I went with AT&T because they have fantastic 4G and 3G data service in Kansas City and Denver (the two cities where I spend most of my time). Verizon has great 4G coverage here as well, but if and when the iPad doesn’t have 4G connectivity and it needs to fall back to 3G, AT&T’s network is much faster than Verizon’s.

Additional Miscellany

  • Apple is calling the new iPad the same thing everyone else is going to call it: “The new iPad”.

  • The new iPad has Wi-Fi, GSM, UMTS, GPS, CDMA, LTE, and Bluetooth connectivity. During the presentation yesterday Phil Schiller said, “This new iPad has the most wireless bands of any device that’s ever shipped.”

  • Being thicker and heavier is surely a direct result of the battery.

  • What is Condé Nast going to do with their magazine apps? Their current issues (which use images even for text) are going to look horrible on the Retina display and if they start making their files 4x bigger then the downloads will get even more ridiculous — growing into the ballpark of an 800 MB file. At that size, after few back issues of The New Yorker and Wired your iPad’s storage will be maxed out.

  • Since you can’t see the beauty of a Retina display if you’re looking at pictures of it on a non-Retina display, it seems the only real way to try and compare a non-Retina display against a Retina display is to pixelate the “non-Retina model” so it looks a bit blurry by design. This is what Apple is doing on their side-by-side comparison of the screens on the iPad 2 and the new iPad.

  • Phil Schiller said: “As you’ll remember, when the iPhone 4 went to the Retina Display developers didn’t have to do anything to make their applications run on the Retina Display. Everything will still look great, but if developers take a little time, as with the iPhone, they can do stuff that looks amazing and incredible on the new iPad.”

But that’s not true. Text will look sharp and native API elements will look sharp but the rest will look very grainy. Non-Retina optimized apps look worse on a Retina display.

  • In the presentation yesterday Tim cook called iOS, “the world’s most advanced operating system and the easiest to use.”

  • Also from Tim Cook: “Our post PC devices made up 76% of our revenues. We have our feet firmly planted in the post PC future.”

  • Yesterday’s was the first iPad event with no armchair on the stage.

  • It’s a bit hard to be surprised when you already knew something was coming. Yesterday’s announcement contained nearly everything we expected. We pretty much knew there’d be a new Apple TV, iPhoto for iOS, and all the main specs about the new iPad. However, being savvy to a spec sheet and feature list is much different than using a device.

If you’re like me, you too have yet to get used to the iPhone’s Retina display. And so, though it won’t be until next Friday that I am able to start using my new iPad, and it won’t be for another few months before I know how often I do (or don’t) use the 4G, I suspect this new iPad will be amazing for the long haul.

Could the new iPad end up being the finest device Apple has made yet? And it raises the question: what’s in store for the new iPhone?

Thoughts and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s iPad Event

Version Distribution: iOS vs. Android  →

Chris Sauve:

iOS devices have, on average, reached 10% version share 300 times faster than Android versions, 30% share 19 times faster, and 50% share 7 times faster.

It will be fascinating to see how these numbers change now that iOS features wireless updating.

Also:

In a way, I think that iOS buyers are paying to be on the cutting edge of software. Android OEMs have been one-upping each other on the hardware front (the Android spec race has reached almost ridiculous proportions), but this is a shallow, easily-duplicated strategy. An ecosystem that has been developed instead with a software focus affords many advantages that are not easily mimicked: ease of development, users being able to learn about apps and the OS from friends without the frustration of fragmented device capabilities, and more.

Version Distribution: iOS vs. Android

Why a New iOS Home Screen is a Big Deal

In his iOS 6 wish list, Federico Viticci wishes for a new iOS Home screen. Viticci has written about the problem of the iOS Home screen before, concluding that “Apple needs to tear apart the whole concept and rebuild it from the ground up.”

I agree. I think Apple does intend to rebuild the iOS Home screen from the ground up. I also think their intentions for the new Home screen are exciting, ambitious, and will prove to be a big deal.

Not until recently have we felt much of a need for a revamped home screen. Since 2007 iOS has evolved significantly in both its functionality (i.e. multitasking and Notification Center) and in the amount of available apps (thus folders, and multiple Home screens). After five years the Home screen is feeling cramped and outdated.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that the iOS Home screen as we know it today is not Apple’s long-term plan. My hunch is that the Home screen is still the way it is because the long-term ramifications of what it could be are huge.

A reimagined springboard is a prime opportunity for significant innovation. And significant innovation takes time.

Rebuilding the Home screen isn’t just about increasing usability. It is also about innovating at that “front-door interface” of how and where we get to the stuff on our devices (you can hardly do anything on your iPhone without going through the Home screen). Moreover, the ramifications of a reimagined Home screen go beyond iOS. As we are now learning via Lion and Mountain Lion, innovation on iOS is a setting of the stage for innovation on OS X.

During a recent episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber talked about how OS X is stuck with the “Desktop” whether they like it or not. Twenty years ago the Desktop as a folder for quick access to your files and your file system made sense. But that was when people predominantly interacted with files first before launching an app. Apple is now steering people away from the need to interact with the file system. With iCloud, automatic and in-app document saving, and versioning, we are seeing a shift in personal computing where people interact less with files first and more with apps first.

Khoi Vinh recently said:

Right now the most interesting [design] thing happening on the desktop, by far, is Apple’s iOS-ification of OS X. They’re clearly in the process of upending a decades-old paradigm for thinking about desktop software, and whether it’s successful or not is going to be very interesting.

A new iOS Home screen is Apple’s chance to get the “front-door interface” right. When they change the Home screen it’s going to be a big deal, and it will become a core part of iOS for the next decade.

Another reason why a new Home screen is such a big deal is because what Apple does to reimagine it on iOS will impact OS X and the Desktop and Dock (or perhaps the next evolution of Launchpad).

Put another way: I don’t see Apple just stealing ideas from Android and Windows Phone and implementing “live widgets” onto the iOS Home screen. When they update the Home screen they’ll have skated to where the puck is going to be.

Why a New iOS Home Screen is a Big Deal

Tweetbot 2.0  →

Tweetbot, the best Twitter app for the iPhone got a major update today.

The first thing you’ll notice in Tweetbot 2.0 is that the list scrolling is different and improved. At first scrolling feels slower, but it’s not. It just scrolls differently. I can’t explain it really, but I just know that it took me about 2 minutes to get used to it and it’s much more smooth and improved compared to version 1.x.

Also new in the timeline view are: (a) embedded images — you can see a tiny square thumbnail of a linked-to Instagram or twitter pic, etc; and (b) better tapability when tapping on a link or username.

To me, the best feature in Tweetbot 2.0 is the browser integration with Readability and Instapaper. The tap of that little dial allows you to toggle between a text-friendly mode and the regular view of the webpage you’re on:

Tweetbot and Readability

Finally, is an improved view for direct messages. It’s more like the SMS view now.

In short, Tweetbot 2.0 is a fantastic update. Here’s the iTunes App Store link.

Tweetbot 2.0

Social Apps

A quick survey of my iPhone’s first two Home screen reveals 47 apps. Nineteen of them have a social component, a social network or their own, and/or are connected to a pre-existing social network:

  • Stamped: Has its own mini-social network where you “stamp” things you like and see what others are stamping.

  • Instagram: Has its own mini-social network, and it connects to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, where you take pictures of things and apply cheesy filters to them.

  • Tweetbot: A fantastic app for Twitter.

  • Flipboard: Connects with Twitter and Facebook to show you incoming articles and to allow you to share articles you find.

  • Twitter for iPhone: I use Tweetbot as my Twitter app, but I do like the Connect tab in Twitter that shows all interactions and not just mentions.

  • Path: Has its own mini-social network where you can share all sorts of things.

  • Words with Friends: The name says it all.

  • Gowalla (R.I.P.): Had It’s own mini-social network and connected to Twitter and Facebook; it allowed you to “check in” at locations and see where other people were checking in.

  • Ego: Tells me my Twitter stats, etc.

  • Rdio: Has its own mini-social network where you can share what music you are listening to and have collaborative playlists.

  • UP: The Jawbone UP app has its own mini-social network of “teammates”.

  • Decaf Sucks: Ties in with Twitter and allows you to post reviews of local coffee shops and find local coffee shops near you.

  • Goodfoot: Connects with Gowalla (R.I.P.) to suggest places to eat that are nearby.

  • Birdhouse: A notepad for Twitter.

  • Reeder: Connects with Twitter so I can tweet about an article I read that I liked.

  • Instapaper: Has it’s own mini-social network so I can see what articles my Instapaper friends have liked, and it also connects with Twitter so I can tweet about articles I read.

The iPhone has some native apps with have a social, sharing component:

  • The iPhone Camera app: Using the Twitter integration of iOS 5, you can post your photos to Twitter.

  • Email: Allows me to send notes and letters and pictures and movies to my friends and family members who also have an email address.

  • Messages: Allows me to send a text or multi-media message to my friends and family members who have a cell phone.

Apps like Rdio, Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Instagram are not social networking apps at their core. They primarily serve another purpose, such as listening to music, reading, or taking pictures. But in many ways these apps are enhanced by their social elements because people like me enjoy sharing ideas and moments of our lives with our friends and network of peers. And we enjoy seeing what others are sharing.

Social Apps

Regarding the Condition of a 17-Month Old, Well-Used, iPhone 4

Yesterday on Twitter, Thomas Wong asked me about the state of the glass on my iPhone 4. After using the phone for so long, how did it hold up?

I thought this was a great question and worth mentioning briefly.

After using my iPhone 4 every single day for nearly a year and a half, the glass on the front and the back was still in near-mint condition. The only physical blemishes to the glass were some minor nicks that were only noticeable when all fingerprints had been wiped off and you were holding the phone at just the proper angle.

For some, accidents do happen, and I was lucky enough to have never accidentally dropped my iPhone off the roof of a tall building and onto a concrete sidewalk. In fact, I have never catastrophically dropped any of my iPhones.

Moreover, I refuse to put any sort of case or even a clear screen protector on my iPhone.

I’ve owned a cell phone of some sort for 13 years. My iPhone 4 probably got used more than any cell phone I’ve owned previously. And, what’s remarkable, is that after the 18 months of daily usage, none of my phones were in as good of a condition as the iPhone 4 was:

  • The exterior glass was still in near-mint condition.
  • The battery still held a good, full charge and would last me two days of normal usage.
  • In fact, even the usefulness of the iPhone 4 actually increased thanks to software updates and the App Store.

Would it be stretching it to say that the iPhone 4 (and now, 4S) is like fine wine?

Regarding the Condition of a 17-Month Old, Well-Used, iPhone 4