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The iPad’s Dirty Secret

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Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#51

Apple should come up with a gesture to switch between tabs. IMO, one of the big achievements of Fingerworks keyboard was it's vast array of gestures. Apple drastically watered down the gesture support in it's various products. Perhaps to make it simple for grandma?

the problem here is once you put two fingers on the surface it starts expanding/contracting the page

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#52
post #8

Instapaper solves your reading later problem nicely. I'd give it a try - a simple bookmarklet and you can read whenever, wherever you want.

Instapaper is nice and usable, but for this it is also a kludge.

It forces the user to pick ahead of time which things they will and won't want to read later, instead of the simpler possibility. That being, letting the user just stop at any point in the interaction, confident in the assumption that the machine will take care of whatever annoying details are necessary for the page to still be there when they come back to where they left it.

Having to pick ahead of time isn't all that onerous, so the work-around is a pretty good one. It also has the benefit that you can pull it up on another machine, so that is nice. However, that too could be done more simply by having all of the user's browsers sync the their histories.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#53
post #8

Instapaper solves your reading later problem nicely. I'd give it a try - a simple bookmarklet and you can read whenever, wherever you want.

Instapaper is nice and usable, but for this it is also a kludge. It forces the user to pick ahead of time which things they will and won't want to read later, instead of the simpler possibility. That being, letting the user just stop at any point in the interaction, confident in the assumption that the machine will take care of whatever annoying details are necessary for the page to still be there when they come back…

Well, in fairness, picking out which pages he wanted to read was one of the scenarios in the article, so even though your point is valid, Instapaper would solve that particular part of the problem.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#54
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing my point: the OS should be able to cache the (up to n ) pages that haven't been explicitly closed by the user in the HD, and when there's a page fault in main memory when a user tries to access the ones the 256MB can hold, the OS should go to the disk and grab that page, and swap out another page that's currently in RAM with the requested page. Bam, no re-downloading the page. Should be over in under a…

If they made an assumption on the usage pattern of the drive they could buy cheaper parts that were not expected to be used as often. If there is no wear leveling built into the drive then it could reduce the lifespan of the drive. I am all for swap but I think they chose to omit the swap space for some other reason that I cannot think of right now.

The entire device doesn't have to use swap for Safari to save the state of a particular "tab" to disk.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#55
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have to disagree. My Droid also has 256 mb of memory, and I can have more pages open at once without it having to flush pages. This is still true with Pandora running in the background. Overall I'm a fan of the iPad, it just falls short in this area.

What is the screen resolution of the droid? What is the screen resolution of the ipad? If there is a big difference then it may be because the software keeps bitmaps of rendered screens laying around for a quick switch.

The same thing is pretty much true on the iPhone as well. In theory, it keeps pages in memory, but in my experience it reloads the page way more often than I would prefer. It is definitely on my wish list for future Safari updates, once they have consolidated the iPhone OS to have the same version on both devices.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#56
post #12

On a side note: The author makes the assertion that anyone can be tossed an iPad and figure out the interface on their own... I challenge that assertion. I've taken a few relatives through the process of getting iPhones up and running, and I would claim that the interface is more difficult than the standard desktop metaphor. At some point an article floated through here suggesting that the iPhone interface isn't simp…

I am sure you're right, but I believe you're not taking the "learning how a mouse and keyboard works, what the difference between clicking and double-clicking is" into consideration, as most people have used computers enough to already know that. Give people the phone and help them with the basic gestures, and I'm sure they'll give someone who's never used a mouse/keyboard combo a run for their money.

I don't think the basic gain is that you don't have to learn anything to use the device, just that once you get the hang of the gestures, stuff works fairly intuitively.

I do believe, however, that once I show someone how to do a three-part call one time, they'll remember it the next time around... Which is the most important part. It's frustrating having to read the manual several times, just because the task you're trying to achieve just doesn't make sense.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#57

I remember that the iPod's dirty secret was that you had to pay big money for a battery replacement since it wasn't user serviceable. Other dirty secrets for popular consumer products include things like child labour being used to build sneakers or unsafe factory/dormitory combinations that kill hundreds of people when the factories catch fire. I get the sense that the phrase "dirty secret" is being watered down in t…

It was meant as a rebuttal to Steve Jobs proclaiming the iPad offers "the best browsing experience you've ever had" which is simply not true. While it's true that other "dirty secrets" (some of which you listed) are more important, it doesn't change the fact that is one of Apple's dirty secrets.

I don't think the iPad browser experience is going for the "leaning forward" kind of browsing. It's going for the "leaning back" approach to browsing you do while lounging in the couch. The tabs aren't as important there, although I would of course not mind if the leaning forward part of the equation worked better, too.

Then again, it's version 1.0 of the iPhone OS for iPad, and considering the strides of iPhone OS for the iPhone, I am sure we have plenty of UX refinements to look forward to.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#58
post #22

I actually love this limitation. My ADD has plummeted and I don't feel like I'm so much less effective.

Yeah, there may be ways to overcome RAM constraints but iPhone OS represents opinionated computing that apparently values single-tasking on the part of humans.

Of course, it will value human single-tasking until it no longer does, at which point Apple will go to great lengths to show how many more tabs iPhone OS can keep open than other mobile OSes.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make it a fair test - were they the same pages? iPhone at least does this same thing - but it does not reload every switch, only sometimes. For all I know the iPad may do that so it can shut down memory chips and save the power of refreshing them. Just because it doesn't do exactly what you wand doesn't mean it's handled badly - it still does what it does gracefully and without errors or slowdowns. It does after a…

Wow, that is some truly masterful backing away from the "the best web browsing experience you’ve ever had" claim without appearing to notice doing it. Humpty Dumpty skill level, at least, the word "best" means just what you want it to.

I've never said it's the best experience, or offered my support to that claim.

What position, that I used to hold, am I backing away from?

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is some truly masterful backing away from the "the best web browsing experience you’ve ever had" claim without appearing to notice doing it. Humpty Dumpty skill level, at least, the word "best" means just what you want it to.

I've never said it's the best experience, or offered my support to that claim. What position, that I used to hold , am I backing away from?

Perhaps I misread the dialectic somehow. I was taking the point back to the thesis of the article (that Jobs was quite wrong in his characterization of best browsing ever), a thesis which g0atbutt was supplying support for. Support which you seemed to be trying to counter or undermine in you comment with things like "Just because it doesn't do exactly what you want doesn't mean it's handled badly - it still does what it does gracefully and without errors or slowdowns" and "It does after all not claim to be able to hold pages open indefinitely...".

As you were countering the support being given for the thesis, I took it that you were attacking the article's thesis (thus defending Jobs' characterization). But then your comment moved the goal for what constituted "best" so far that it functionally proved the thesis of the article. I apologize that I was overly eager to point this oddness out and did so badly.

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