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Fertile Ground

marco.org

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Re: Fertile Ground

#211

Post by myko »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #95
btipling wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for all those not so old iPhones that are stuck on iOS 6 forever.

> those not so old iPhones that are stuck on iOS 6 forever. Of all the devices supported by iOS 6, only the iPhone 3G S and the 4th gen iPod touch won’t get the upgrade. The iPads that could run iOS 6 will also be able to run iOS 7. The iPhone 4 has been out for 3 years and will be able to run iOS 7 when it is released later this year. How many 3 year old Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone models do you know of th…

This is mostly a good point, but is missing an important difference. A lot of important Android APIs are provided as part of Google Play services and made available back to Android 2.3, whereas an iPhone 4 running iOS 7 still will be unable to use Siri.

Re: Fertile Ground

#212

Post by jimmaswell »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #163
jimmaswell wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics effects? Momentum, acceleration, doing work, wave-particle duality? What's that supposed to mean?

Youre probably just being obtuse, but: he just means the principle of things coming from somewhere or going to somewhere, as someone once put it. Reinforcing conceptual relationships via physical movement and manipulation that mirrors how things may behave in the physical world, to some degree. See zoom-in/swim-into interfaces, or the way screens transition rather than just blink into view, etc.

I much prefer my screens to just blink into view.

Re: Fertile Ground

#213

Post by untog »

rimantas wrote: post #188
untog wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(and as an extra thought) you do not need to go far to imagine what apps with these new functionalities will be like - Android had them for a long time and Android apps are basically very similar to iOS ones.

There is a lot more new than just background downloads. And it will change how developers think about their applications. Dynamic text, UIKit Dynamics, UIMotionEffect will change a lot as will new navigation/transition schemes.

Right. Incremental improvements to the APIs available. That is in no way a "complete re-think of how applications work".

Re: Fertile Ground

#214

Post by Samuel_Michon »

myko wrote: post #211
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those not so old iPhones that are stuck on iOS 6 forever. Of all the devices supported by iOS 6, only the iPhone 3G S and the 4th gen iPod touch won’t get the upgrade. The iPads that could run iOS 6 will also be able to run iOS 7. The iPhone 4 has been out for 3 years and will be able to run iOS 7 when it is released later this year. How many 3 year old Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone models do you know of th…

This is mostly a good point, but is missing an important difference. A lot of important Android APIs are provided as part of Google Play services and made available back to Android 2.3, whereas an iPhone 4 running iOS 7 still will be unable to use Siri.

I understand your point, and it’s a good one, but iPhone 4 isn’t allowed to run Siri because of hardware reasons, not API support. The noise reduction in newer models is a lot better than on iPhone 4. Hackers have managed to get Siri running on iPhone 4, it just doesn’t work as well.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/05/apple_iphone_4s_a5...

Re: Fertile Ground

#215

Post by lloeki »

tolmasky wrote: post #34

Yay change for change's sake. This is exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? Is it really something to be proud of? That for the next year we'll be working on replacing existing utilities so that they feel "right" and "fresh" instead of doing what we should be doing: thinking of actual new software that is worthwhile to write. I've been saying…

> How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient?

It helps users in that the "new design" is an improvement over the "old design".

A case study, the Windows file picker dialog:

Win3.1 dialogs felt foreign to 95, while XP-style apps feel foreign to Vista-style apps. There is no debate that from win3 to win7 the file picker dialog got improved each time. Easier item selection, easier reading, easier tree traversal, quicker arrival to favorites...

What is true for this dialog is true for the whole system. rundll32 tabbed preference panes survive in Win8 to this day. They felt like they came from the future back then on win95, while today they're old and crufty, alien and inscrutable.

This is not change for the sake of change. Design is how it works. Good design is thorough and holistic. If you only improve part of the system, you end up with a hodgepodge of UI versions with no conventions across the board and only results in an overall bad usability and maintainability.

Re: Fertile Ground

#216

Post by KC8ZKF »

kybernetyk wrote: post #152
jmduke wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the idea that four years is a prohibitively long time for a device that I spend hundreds of dollars on.

It's not like your device will stop working the day iOS 7 is released. Your phone won't have any features taken away and you can keep it using until the hardware fails. (I'm still using my Nokia N900).

A lot of iOS 6 features rely on Apple infrastructure, e.g. iCloud, which will probably become even less reliable on iOS 6 as the months roll by. So no, the device becomes less useful. Try using iTunes on Lion if you don't believe me.

Re: Fertile Ground

#217

Post by wahnfrieden »

jimmaswell wrote: post #212
wahnfrieden wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youre probably just being obtuse, but: he just means the principle of things coming from somewhere or going to somewhere, as someone once put it. Reinforcing conceptual relationships via physical movement and manipulation that mirrors how things may behave in the physical world, to some degree. See zoom-in/swim-into interfaces, or the way screens transition rather than just blink into view, etc.

I much prefer my screens to just blink into view.

That's cool.

Re: Fertile Ground

#218

Post by resu_nimda »

ghshephard wrote: post #195
LowKarmaAccount wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

droopyEyelids was correct in saying that I was talking about software innovation from a CS standpoint, so I didn't respond to the first reply to my comment. After reading your comment, I realized that I should make it clear that I'm using David A. Wheeler's definition of software innovation [1]. It was linked to on HN a few years ago[2]; it has an excellent listing of important innovations. The list was made to show…

I wonder, if even with this incredibly strict definition of "Software Innovation" whether anything on a smartphone might still rise to the level of innovation? I'm thinking of the GeoLocation Applications - that just never existed before, ever, like runkeeper. Or the BodyTelemtry apps, like FitBit. I'm still trying to think if it's possible to categorize Dark Sky as innovation. Or the always-available voice-recogniti…

By LowKarmaAccount/David Wheeler's definition, no. If you browse the list in Wheeler's article, the only things that jump out at the "application feature" level are word processing and the spreadsheet. Clearly, Runkeeper, Dark Sky, and the like are not going to make that list. It really is focused on the "pure CS/EE" side of things, and since smartphone app development is mostly business as usual with a few different quirks, none of it is likely to qualify.

I'm thinking that something like "robust speech recognition and parsing" might fit on there (though it's tough to determine when such a system would be considered mature enough, and simultaneously differentiated from full strong AI). But that's not a smartphone innovation, it just happens to be a good use case.

It really comes down to the definition/interpretation of "innovation," and I think many people (myself included) would feel a slight when certain things are excluded, but I can see how "taking things that already exist and putting them together in new ways or usefully extrapolating on them" (which is what any "innovative" app has done) doesn't really fit. As he explained about the smartphone, something can be world-changing in a very real way, without necessarily being innovative.

Re: Fertile Ground

#219

Post by SwellJoe »

egypturnash wrote: post #173
SwellJoe wrote: post #18

I don't think this is going to play out this way. Look to other operating systems that evolved their UI in similar fashion and a few of their dominant software players over the years: Windows-Office, Quickbooks, Quicken, IE/Chrome/Firefox/Netscape (which have shifted favor over years, but not because of UI changes in the OS) Mac OS (X and classic)-Adobe PS, Illustrator, ProTools, Office UI changes, even major ones, h…

There were some notable changes in the Classic-to-X change. Quark XPress replaced by InDesign, BBEdit replaced by TextMate. Probably a few others, too. Adobe's tools stood unchanged in the X switch, in no small part because they got X versions out pretty quickly that felt relatively at home. Quark, IIRC, took forever to make an X version, so Adobe was able to bring out an X page layout app and eat their lunch. Of cou…

While I agree there were some shakeups, I think it also proves my "major technological change" point. Mac OS to OS X was a major technological change. Went from a pretty, but clunky, single-tasking, OS to a quite advanced UNIX-based multi-tasking OS. UI was the smallest of the changes that happened there. There was also a major processor and architecture change in that story line. Big differences. Having a native app was mandatory to take advantage of a huge jump in capability.
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