And it's fast. Everyone complains it doesn't have multitasking, but is there really a better way to switch apps that would be any faster than that even with multitasking?
The card interface used on the new Palms works pretty well for that. You can basically see it in the way MobileSafari handles tabs, which is about as close to multitasking as you can get on an i$Device.
It is great on WebOS. The full swipe on the gesture area to flip through the cards is as easy as it gets.
I don't see why they couldn't do it on the apple products, they have the bezel for it.
Now try giving that 2.5 year old a violin and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old a graphing calculator and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old a drum kit and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old canvas with a palette of oil paints and see how well that works.
Those are great examples. Regular PCs are like giving people drum kits because it satisfies all the "requirements". The iPad is like giving you maracas, a tambourine, or bongo drums. Same functionality? No. Vastly more fun for beginners? Yes.
No, the iPad are maracas, that can transform themselves in a tambourine, or bongo drums, or in a scientific calculator, or in document editor, or in 500,000 other things.
Now try giving that 2.5 year old a violin and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old a graphing calculator and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old a drum kit and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old canvas with a palette of oil paints and see how well that works.
You had me thinking there for a few minutes. Why exactly do I appreciate the ease of use of a iPad but would most certainly not appreciate the ease of use of a violin where you just tap a few times on a touchscreen and which then plays for you? I think it has something to do with abstractions. There are no abstractions when playing a violin. You move the bow which causes strings to vibrate and that’s it. User Interfa…
It might also have something to do with the pride you take in (or the appreciation you have of) the skill required to paly the the violin. Plenty of people appreciate guitar hero, for instance, which is far easier to play than a guitar (has a higher layer of abstraction in the terms above, if I understand them correctly). On the other hand, true "masters" of gh love it also because anybody can do something with it, but few can do what they do.
As a father of a 1.5 year-old who loves the iPhone, this looks very familiar. But toddlers pick up on all kinds of new things incredibly fast, so I'm not sure this tells us much about the learnability of the iPad for computing novices of any other age group. It seems easier than the typical desktop/laptop, but there are many subtle interactions that have to be learned and practiced to use the iPad. I would like to se…
My 1.5 year-old knows how to use the mouse (he grasps the interaction between what's in his hand and what happens on screen), spinning the wheel while the mouse is over a window makes that window move up and down, and that the "media" button on my keyboard launches Foobar 2000.
Kids are wicked smart, and learn shockingly fast. Needless to say, it's impossible to work with him in my lap.
It's amazing how fast she grasps the concept of the UI. Either she has some experience with an iPhone, or we have gotten to a point where interface design has become so intuitive that 3-year olds grasp software immediately. I think the first is the case, but impressive nonetheless ;-)
A friend told me his kids now try to use iphone hand motions on other screens they encounter and are surprised when they don't work. Same age group.
Almost everyone that picks up my kindle for the first time touches the screen before anything else. When I say it isn't touch screen they just kind of shrug and mumble.
The card interface used on the new Palms works pretty well for that. You can basically see it in the way MobileSafari handles tabs, which is about as close to multitasking as you can get on an i$Device.
It is great on WebOS. The full swipe on the gesture area to flip through the cards is as easy as it gets. I don't see why they couldn't do it on the apple products, they have the bezel for it.
I was about to comment on point 2, when I saw you covered it in point 5. I imagine that the resting touch problem could be solved with software, the iPhone keyboard for exams supports resting a finger on one key while you touch the next. I was surprised that it didn't work on the home screen, eg, ignore the touches from a resting hand.
The glib answer is this: You have a problem. You solve it with heuristics. Now you have two problems. If I had to guess why Apple designed it this way? Here goes: Apple can't determine what a resting hand is as an abstraction, because sometimes a resting hand should do something (e.g. the pinch gesture; one static touch + one moving finger). So app developers would each have to implement their own heuristics to decid…
A good number of laptops I've tried have palm detection on their touch pads, if the contact patch too big to be a finger, then it it is not a finger and it is not a touch.
Probably wouldn't help in the case of a toddler's hands, but, as mentioned, the hand-on-edge is something many have trouble with.
Now try giving that 2.5 year old a Netbook with Windows on it and see how well that works.
That 2.5 yr old can spell already which many kinder-gardeners twice the age can't, and same toddler is _clearly_ already familiar with the interface as in swiping to scroll and hitting the home button to go back to the app menu. It was not a "new" toy, just a bigger version of a toy (s)he's already very familiar with
Spell, not so sure. Matching letter shapes - she's got that down pat.