The Apple Tablet Interface Must Be Like This

kylevh writes "On one side, there are the people who think that a traditional GUI—one built on windows, folders and the old desktop metaphor—is the only way to go for a tablet. In another camp, there are the ones who are dreaming about magic 3D interfaces and other experimental stuff, thinking that Apple would come up with a wondrous new interface that nobody can imagine now, one that will bring universal love, world peace and pancakes for everyone. Both camps are wrong: The iPhone started a UI revolution, and the tablet is just step two. Here's why." There are lots of cool UI ideas in there, even if it is entirely speculation. It's worth a read just to think about what the future could be like.

Comments

This is how it will all play out

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

The world is paved with astroturf

[Anonymous Coward]

I get that the idea of an Apple tablet is intriguing, but is it worth all the stories popping up in the tech world? I mean, there's speculation about it showing up on gaming blogs. Lots of these articles are genuine, but I'm starting to smell a little astroturf too.

Re:The world is paved with astroturf

[thesandtiger]

Tell me your address and I'll send the police over immediately - I know it's terrifying being forced to read these stories at gunpoint, but help is on the way!

Screw talking about some hypothetical gadget - what we should really be discussing is the huge number of people who are being forced to read and comment on articles they don't want to read. Why isn't the government doing something about this?!!

Files

[maxume]

It is okay for files to go away, right up until the point that I notice I can't access some data because it is stuck in some app.

And I don't mean that files should never go away, I just mean that each time I notice it, I get confirmation that they aren't done making whatever it was that they changed work correctly yet.

Mostly-receive devices

[Animats]

There's a difference between devices that are mostly for receiving information, and those that are for doing something with it. Music players, "e-book" readers, navigation devices, and entertainment devices in general are mostly-receive. They need a much simpler interface than a creation device. Try to cram a CAD application into the iPhone interface. It's possible, but it's not happy there.

This is a bigger distinction than the form factor. Mostly-receive devices can get along with a blunt interface of big buttons.

Re:Nice, sure, but revolutionary?

[radish]

As you say, it was the combination and the polish. There's no one thing (that I can think of) on the iPhone that you can't find on some previous device/software. But there's also no previous device with all (or even many) of those things, polished to such a high degree. From a feature list point of view it's certainly evolutionary - but I'd certainly say it was revolutionary from an overall user experience point of view.

As the Gizmodo article points out, the general UI idea of a page of icons which load full screen apps is just like Palm. And I was a big Palm fan back in the day - their problem was that although the UI was fine, it was hampered by the tech to the point where even if the concept worked it was so unattractive to use as to be very niche. Resistive touch screens required stylii, which suck. Early models were monochrome, even color models had nothing like the graphical fidelity of the iPhone. The graphics chips couldn't do things like full screen animations, fades, etc and of course there was no such thing as persistent wireless internet (and yes, I had the Palm III GSM modem, it blew chunks even then!). Apple waited until the tech existed to do what they knew would impress people, rather than try to make something they hoped would sell within the limits of the available tech. In the process they pretty much totally reinvented the highend cellphone market and IMHO brought the PDA concept back from the dead.

My personal story: I'm not an Apple fan. I do own a Mac, but it's my least used machine and I really don't like it very much. I grew up on Atari, DOS/Windows, Palm, Nokia and later Linux. When the iPhone came out I had no intention of buying one, until I happened to be by the Apple store in a mall on launch weekend and popped in to see what all the fuss was about. Within a couple of minutes of playing with it I was in line to buy one, and several upgrades later I have no regrets. I still detest iTunes, and am officially "meh" on OSX, but nothing is tempting me away from the iPhone. Android has potential, but it's not there yet.