Tag Archives: iPad
After a year of patience and a failed launch-day trek to the Apple Store on March 2, I’m finally the owner of a new Apple iPad 2.
The iPad is Apple’s flagship “post PC era” device, but I’m not sure we’re ready to ditch our laptop shackles just yet. The magical aura surrounding my unboxing of the product was cut short when I pressed the power button for the very first time. As the screen began to glow for the very first time, I was quickly met with the “must connect to iTunes” screen- no cosmic intro video or helpful setup assistant here. This might one day become a post-PC device, but not without a digital tether to the machines of today. I hope that future versions of iOS will allow some onboard functionality without the need to first connect to iTunes.
Once the iPad synced all my stuff- photos, podcasts and apps, it was time to see if this tablet could really fit in my digital life, or if it would live as the evil middle child between my Macbook and iPhone.
Flipboard originated as the result of a thought exercise: What if the web browser disappeared? What emerged was a nicely designed, interactive, real time and content rich digital magazine/aggregator.
But… will Flipboard be able stay focused on this or are they destined to become more and more distracted by how to monetize it? They have approx $10 million in VC money (one year worth) and they need to figure out how they are going to monetize it before they run out.
As much as I seemed concerned about this potential monetization problem leading to a major disruption of the experience that they set out to offer, they didn’t (or at least they didn’t talk about it much)…
Welcome to issue three of this weekly post. I’m hoping to develop the format a little further in the next couple posts.
The rise of Near Field Communication (NFC)
Some of the more exciting tech that was shown at the Mobile World Congress this year was in the vein of near field communication (NFC). The prospects of near field communication are quite profound – essentially the ability to use your phone to transfer data through near contact. Like RFID, NFC would allow you to pay at a point of sale, or transfer contact information for example. One of the large differences between RFID and NFC is security: NFC was built specifically to be more secure. Read more on CNET.
The new subscription model
Over the past week or so both Apple and Google released subscription models for their app stores, drawing a straight line from publisher and consumer. There are some key differences between the two:
Apple’s model allows publishers to set the price and recurrence, and all payment is handled by the iTunes store limiting those purchases to strictly Apple devices (surprise). The Google One Pass is a lot less limited – not only do they only take 10%, but they also allow their One Pass system to work across various platforms such as web, tablet, and smartphones. Google’s subscription system is smarter too allowing for metered billing and single content billings.
HP WEBOS
Introducing the Pre 3
What chances does yet another OS have in the evermore saturated world of mobile? Apple, Google, and RIM in the forefront, Microsoft training to win ground, and now HP rekindling the WebOS software it acquired with Palm. Is it worth it? I know one person in the CM Calgary building that might say yes. Anything can happen, there is no clear winner yet.
Palm may be dead, but their Pre is back, and so is WebOS. Personally I like the simplicity of WebOS. The ‘card’ based system makes it easy to multitask, and a simple flick will close an app. It’s clean and easy to understand. The obvious downside to WebOS are the apps available: a whopping 8000.
The hardware itself is said to be massive. The 3.6″ screen AND slide out keyboard make it a handfull, but for some they’ll be glad to still have the physical keyboard. Have a look at this hands-on video for a walkthrough.
Read More
If you’re anything like me, you enjoy a smart solution that keeps your data syncronized across everthings you own. I wish more was like this, but unforunately, it’s not. I like to sleep soundly knowing that if anything where to happen to my physical machines the important part would not be lost – the data.
I’m currently a heavy user of Evernote, I use it for everything, and with the premium account I know my data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. I even have it set so if I recieve a document via email, it is automatically stripped and moved to evernote for immediate cloud storage. The thing that has always bugged me about Evernote is it isn’t terribly smart. It stores everything how you like it and will perform full text searches within images – which is rad; however there is a whole internet out there you could potentially augment the data with.
The moderately quiet beast of Windows Phone 7 has suddenly made some noise – as do many beasts on their death bed, crying out into the night for help. Common speculation is that the Microsoft mobile solution is barely hanging on in the mobile market, but not before trying all the bandages on for size.
So in the spirit of windows having some of the bigger news this week, we’ll lead in with them.
WINDOWS PHONE 7
Microsoft goes Finnish
The biggest news hitting this week has been the adoption of Windows Phone 7 by the hardware giant Nokia. The announcement by Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop caused the 1500 person team responsible for the development of Symbian, Nokia’s own OS, to walk out of the building.
Ever since the announcement took place on February 11th, Nokia’s stock has dropped 18% draining 5.5 billion Euros*.
Elop is quoted in the Microsoft press release: “Today, developers, operators and consumers want compelling mobile products, which include not only the device, but the software, services, applications and customer support that make a great experience,” Stephen Elop, Nokia President and CEO, said at a joint news conference in London. “Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It’s now a three-horse race.”*
Perhaps the gravity of the situation is the clobbering both Microsoft and Nokia are getting from Android and Apple iOS, it may be natural that the two team up to really take this to market. Read More
Last month Richard Branson released the iPad only magazine Project. As one of the first in its class it has the potential to set the standards for magazine based interaction on the iPad. Although Wired, Popular Science, Oprah and many others have released iPad versions of their magazines. Project is the first iPad only magazine.
Project has a really informative ‘how to use’ screen, however, there are a lot of different interactive elements and it still runs the risk of being overlooked as it comes off a little too complex.
After sharing with a few friends, I noticed they were having some issues with the interactions. There are sections on the page that contain numbered screens which hold different content when the numbers are selected, and without reading the how to, I can see a lot people missing this really unique area. I also found that some of the galleries are not labeled as galleries, so it does take some exploring to get a feel for the magazines standards.
Once you get used to the interactions however, the magazine is quite amazing. You can fly through it easily and the interactive nature of the content is engaging and informative. This is the new way of viewing magazines. I’m confident that the interaction issues will be ironed out in future issues, and this is one iPad magazine I can’t wait for every month.
As the iPad is still a new medium, it is interesting to see the variety of interaction standards between apps and magazines and it will be fun to keep an eye on which ones develop the standard for interaction.
Darren is an Information Architect in our Calgary office.
