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IPhone Needs a New Home

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Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#61

Post by m0nastic »

hyperbovine wrote: post #55
tmgrhm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought this a while ago (a year?) and, although it's a great application, the developer seemingly abandoned it not long after.

I had the same thing happen to a loaf of bread I purchased recently. Never have understood why people in software equate dormancy with worthlessness.

Presumably the loaf of bread you bought did everything that it was supposed to when you bought it (and without bugs, or else hopefully you'd throw it away).

Software is almost never bug-free when released, and increasingly isn't feature-complete. I don't think it's crazy to be wary of using software which isn't being actively developed. It will certainly depend on what it does, and whether or not what it doesn't do (or what bugs it has) are livable.

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#62

Post by code_duck »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #30

Why are people obsessed with weather widgets? In that small an amount of space you can basically get today's weather which I can see by looking out of the window which generally makes it a bit useless really. Not saying that I wouldn't like a better notification screen on the iPhone - I really would - just that all weather widgets do to my mind is add a bit of graphical sugar but with no great purpose. Or am I missin…

For some reason, this is one of my favorite things about my phone! I had already moved to looking at wunderground.com instead of the thermometer on my back porch any time I wanted to know the temperature, and once I got a smartphone, it became the way I always check the weather.

I live somewhere that can be prone to extreme temperatures... looking outside doesn't tell me if it's wickedly cold, fairly cold, or surprisingly comfortable. If it's snowing, I want to know how much is expected and so on.

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#63

Post by metageek »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #37
jasongullickson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current temp is the key one, which can vary widely throughout the day, is hard to tell by looking out the window and has the most impact on what you put on before you head out the door :)

Which would be great if it were something resembling the current temp but on all the weather apps I've seen the best you'll get is a weather forecaster's prediction (nothing actual) and the best accuracy is three hours. Maybe that's just the UK and the US is getting something more accurate but I'm guessing not.

My Android phone's weather widget gives me the current temp, the daily high and low, and a general icon (sun, snow, freezing rain). Here in Massachusetts, it's accurate enough to be useful.

The spatial resolution on the weather data is pretty good; it distinguishes between my town and the next one over, and gives separate forecasts. The forecast is always a little different at home than at work (about 30 miles), but not too bad. Maybe it'd be a problem if I lived in the Bay Area, where the punchline of the "don't like the weather?" joke is not "wait 5 minutes" but "move 5 feet".

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#65

Post by highpass »

runjake wrote: post #39

I'd like to point out this blog post is from mid-2009. I initially thought the screenshot was a LockInfo theme. In any case, such an app already exists, and has for quite a while. There are also plugins for RSS, Things & Appigo tasks,iOS notifications etc.It's very themeable, as well. The only hitch? Your iOS device needs to be jailbroken, due to Apple's limitations. The author's LockInfo home page is pretty lacking…

I wondered what all the fuss was about... indeed it seemed like the guy copy/pasted the Gruppled Lockinfo theme and popped some text on the page to describe it all.

Lockinfo became too much useless info for me to have open all the time. Notified Pro with Statusbar plugin is the minimalistic approach I was looking for, although not perfect as yet.

Edit/ Unsure what year the post was created. Might've been before Lockinfo.

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#66

Post by evo_9 »

mrcharles wrote: post #14

It frustrates me that the iPhone's UI is stuck firmly in what can effectively be considered the smartphone's past. The UI was revolutionary at first, but that was years ago. Now it's archaic and limiting. I understand Apple's reasons for disallowing UI change, as it is a support nightmare, but I do wish they would allow some kind of opt-in system where you could enable UI replacements, without being forced to jailbre…

Where you see archaic and limiting, the market - aka normal folks like our mom's and dad's - see a friendly and consistent platform that doesn't change ever time they see a new Droid commercial.

People need to realize Apple is a consumer electronics company now more like Sony than Microsoft.

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#67

Post by tmgrhm »

hyperbovine wrote: post #55
tmgrhm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought this a while ago (a year?) and, although it's a great application, the developer seemingly abandoned it not long after.

I had the same thing happen to a loaf of bread I purchased recently. Never have understood why people in software equate dormancy with worthlessness.

I see your point, but — as already more eloquently explained by ecuzzillo and monastic — dormancy does eventually lead to worthlessness.

Already people are experiencing issues with features not working properly [1], and relatively simple (but non-vital) updates to add to functionality are not being made [2].

[1] I don't get RSS updates reliably any more, essentially making the app worthless to me, considering that was the main reason I bought it.

[2] E.g. the Twitter button opens m.twitter.com, not the official Twitter app. Same goes for Google Reader.

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#68

Post by mrcharles »

evo_9 wrote: post #66
mrcharles wrote: post #14

It frustrates me that the iPhone's UI is stuck firmly in what can effectively be considered the smartphone's past. The UI was revolutionary at first, but that was years ago. Now it's archaic and limiting. I understand Apple's reasons for disallowing UI change, as it is a support nightmare, but I do wish they would allow some kind of opt-in system where you could enable UI replacements, without being forced to jailbre…

Where you see archaic and limiting, the market - aka normal folks like our mom's and dad's - see a friendly and consistent platform that doesn't change ever time they see a new Droid commercial. People need to realize Apple is a consumer electronics company now more like Sony than Microsoft.

I don't think I've failed to realize that, in fact I specifically addressed it. But that doesn't mean that Apple can't enable power users in some fashion.

Plus, a lot of the iPhone's UI now is just ugly, usability aside. The settings menu is just painful to look at, compared to the slick menus and options in Android phones.

Re: IPhone Needs a New Home

#70

Post by aditya42 »

jarin wrote: post #28
kule wrote: post #13

Slightly unrelated but a really simple change I'd really love to see is the "swipe to unlock" moved to the top of the screen so it's easily answerable with one hand. This way you don't have to crane your thumb down or juggle the phone to a higher position in your hand.

How the heck do you hold your phone? I have to stretch to hit the top of the screen with my thumb. I'm with Apple's HIG that the commonly used controls should be at the bottom.

Where did you get that? In my search of Apple's iOS HIG, I came across the exact opposite: Think Top Down [1], where Apple states that important information should be placed at the top "where it is most visible and easy to reach."

Can we try and not make up stuff?

---

The location of the slide, I guess, is to allow people to see their lock screen wallpaper. That's my stab at it, but who knows.

[1]: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserEx...

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