In my last post I wrote about mobile application design and how form should disappear in the face of function.  The implementation of MobileSafari on the iPhone comes so very close to giving developers a toolkit to accomplish this with pizazz, but there are a couple issues holding it back from its full potential:

The "dev kit" that Apple offers doesn't allow access to the phone's features.
This was covered in my last post. Lack of access to the camera, microphone, speaker, alerts etc. hinder iPhone apps from being fully effective.

MobileSafari's support for Web standards is subpar.  The implementation of the Web standards that Apple touted as an application development platform are disappointing.  Javascript behavior is slow and unreliable, and even some CSS properties do not behave according to the Web standards that Apple touted as the future of the iPhone.

This may have come as a surprise to Apple.  As far as I know they have never said outright that the Safari browser and its Mobile counterpart can behave like two different animals, but as someone who spends a lot of time with both, I know it to be true.  This is something that I had considered worth overlooking for a while as the platform was improved on; but rather than fixing the current problems and bringing MobileSafari up to speed with JavaScript handling, iframe display, and the rest, Apple seems to be applying Band-Aid fixes instead, by using custom CSS and Javascript events that work around existing limitations.

At the VON conference this fall, I heard the claim that Apple never second-guesses themselves, that every move is planned well in advance.  While I don't doubt that this is true, this claim was accompanied by the assertion that Apple never makes a mistake.  That the 3rd-party SDK later release was intentional. That the sucky Safari SDK was never intended to be the "real" platform for the iPhone.  Even that the $100 early-adopter rebate was all planned from the beginning.

I don't really agree with this stance; I obsessively read everything iPhone-related that I could get my hands on for MONTHS, and I follow Apple pretty closely.  While it's true that they haven't taken many false steps since Jobs came back on board with the launch of the original iMac and the iPod, there have been a few recent products that weren't exactly flops, but I'm sure they didn't go the way Apple planned them to.

Part of the reason I would hate to think that Apple made no mistakes is this: if the whole Safari SDK - price drop/refund - 3rd-party app saga was all part of some grand scheme on Apple's part, that would qualify in my book as majorly planned obsolescence.  More than I'm comfortable with, in fact.  Especially as a Web developer - so what, was Apple just messing with my mind?  I don't my (imaginary) type of relationship with Steve Jobs is Walt Disney exactly, but I don't think it's Ike Turner either.

The idea that everything Mac is orchestrated perfectly from on high might work somehow...except for the fact that some things with the iPhone haven't gone as initially (publicly) planned.  And the planned obsolescence angle just doesn't fit the company's profile.  Sure, tech stuff (and especially gadgets) improves in leaps and bounds.  I spend thousands of dollars every year chasing the newest carrot that technology dangles in front of me; I'm a total sucker for that.  But I think this is just a little too off-track to be intentional.  Apple has been plenty cool about people hacking their iPhones, and I don't doubt that they are working as hard as possible to achieve maximum development AND maximum profit at the same time.  So I disagree that the whole thing was planned from the start; I'm chalking it up to "bumps in the road" that will one day lead us to the modern mobile Internet that I envision.

I am, of course, interested in your opinion.  Do YOU think the whole iPhone timeline has been completely engineered?  Let's talk about it in the comments of this post.

This is the second part of a series of posts, starting with the present and leading us into the future of the mobile Web. Stay tuned.
Next up: Integration of mobile app platforms...

Tags: iPhone, mobile, web apps, apple, colby+palmer, sdk, javascript, css, mobile+safari, safari

When I imagine a "digital lifestyle", it is long on "lifestyle" and short on "digital". I picture a level of integration between tech (iPhone, home computer, web applications and services), life (home, family, travel, friends) and the digital tracings of my life (photos, video, music, design, blog/microblog/ tumblelog) that allows me to enjoy what I'm doing without thinking about transferring from real life to digital.  It just happens, at least it does in my mind's eye.

The advent of the iPhone had made it seem like the "digital lifestyle" was ready to integrate in this way.  Unfortunately, the actual product and process has fallen short of this mark.

Apple's announcement that they are releasing a "real" iPhone SDK for native third-party applications is good news for the iPhone.  Applications so far, whether they were Safari Web apps or hacked native apps, have been restricted to a fairly primitive set of features. The main reason for this: no integration with the features that should make the iPhone a mobile wonder: camera, microphone, speaker, accelerometer on the hardware side, and Address Book, Calculator and Clock on the software side.

A good mobile app should be as transparent as possible while allowing you to complete the intended function.  They should take little energy and attention to operate. Save that for desktop apps - when I'm using my mobile the last thing I want is to be "that guy" who spends the entire time at a social event tapping away at his phone.

Here's an example: since I'm always Twittering from my iPhone, I often get people wanting to see pictures of something I'm doing, while it's happening.  So I will post to my tumblelog, or to my flickr account, and then direct them to that location via my iPhone's Twitter client.

It takes 15 button presses to shoot and email one of my photos. FIFTEEN!  I won't be tiresome and list each one, but that's what I came up with.  This could easily be streamlined by an app with access to the iPhone's camera AND the Web.

I can only share the photo's address via a general URL.  Since there is no copy/paste on the iPhone, once I've uploaded my photo and I want to share it, I might Twitter/text/etc. a link to the general location: "Check out my photo on Flickr, I'm colbyworld" or "Photo on my tumblelog at fun.colbypalmer.com".  This doesn't provide a link that people can save or share, once I've uploaded a new set of photos the one I'm trying to share will be buried.  I know there is a remarkable Flickr-to-Twitter service available...but what if I want my photo to go to Facebook or Tumblr? How about all four? Not to mention other sites like Radar, MobyPicture and the rest. There are methods of emailing photos to upload to these services, but no standardized method of tagging/titling/commenting.  This could be handled by an app that stored prefs and login/API information for the different services.

At this point, I'm fussing with the iPhone when I should be doing something fun. If I wasn't doing anything exciting I wouldn't want to share a picture, right? About the time I get to step 8 and I'm fumbling with tags and deleting my signature from the email so it doesn't appear in the Flickr comments, my fiancee is frowning, my baby is squirming, and my Twitterpals still have no picture.

A fully integrated app could slim this down to only four steps:

1. Open the app.
2. Take picture.
3. Select options: take more pics, review/tag/edit, upload to (flickr, tumblr, blog, select socnets you want), post to (twitter, jaiku, pownce, tumblr, facebook etc). Most of these will be pre-set as preferences, so no selection would be necessary.
4. Press "Done".

The app would perform basic enhancements (this is something else conspicuously missing from the iPhone), tag, upload the picture, then post a link to it on your Twitter/Flickr/Tumblr/Facebook/etc. account.  Unfortunately this just isn't possible yet with the tools that Apple has given us.  Cookies aren't stored reliably, there is no place or method for storing local data, and there are NO ways to access the cool features of the iPhone that could transform it from an Internet-capable device to a true multimedia wonder.  This keeps us coming up with workarounds and hacks, and expending more effort than we should have to in order to maintain the "digital lifestyle" that Apple has been selling us.

A primary goal for mobile apps should be TRANSPARENCY.  Hopefully with the release of a proper SDK, iPhone apps can help us slim down the button-pushing and get on with the fun.

This is the first part of a series of posts, starting with the present and leading us into the future of the mobile Web. Stay tuned.
Next up: Was the failure of the Safari SDK anticipated by Apple?

Technorati Tags: iPhone, twitter, mobile, web apps, apple, photos, colby palmer, sdk, digital lifestyle

The other day I was setting up my fiancee's laptop in our living room and plugged in my old "service-issue" Dell two-button mouse to do some casual Web surfing. I hadn't used that mouse in months, and right away I knew something was wrong. My first thought was "Hey, this thing is broken" but I realized I've just come to use my mouse a different way since I got my Logitech MX Revolution.

I have to admit that I was first drawn to this mouse because it looks flippin' sweet; it's like some kind of Batmouse. (Not a rodent that swoops down and eats itself, more like something that Batman would use. With his Mac, of course.) The sweeping flanges on its sides and black/gray glossy/matte materials with the chrome wheel buttons are downright cool-looking. But it's a different feature of the mouse - and you wouldn't guess it at first look - is what sets it apart.

The scroll wheel is a heavy piece of cast alloy that has two gears: a traditional "clicky" scroll-wheel gear and a free-spinning, smooth gear. The thing about the smooth gear is that the scroll wheel is heavy enough that you can really spin it; so getting to the bottom of that long email or scrolling down a zoomed-in Photoshop document is just a matter of a stout flick. Instead of the endless "scroll-scroll-scroll" fingerwork I'd been used to, the action is more like a "flick....aaand brake" maneuver. Clicking the scroll wheel shifts between gears, although in 9 months of using it I can say that I never use the "clicky" gear; the smooth one is way too useful across a span of applications, and it's very graceful and sensitive to use without being finicky.

This is the thing that I'm totally in love with; instead of a sticky, clunky wheel that you have to push and push on, you've got an intuitive, tactile way of scrolling through just about any document. The scroll wheel on other mice now just feels broken and wrong to me and I am convinced that there's no going back.

The software to set the mouse up lets you customize just about everything except for the scroll-wheel click movement, which is confined to "gearshift". Many people rely on this wheel-click as an "open in new tab/window" button for Firefox, so this might be a discouragement for some. I don't really use that too often so I never noticed.

The mouse also has a unique horizontal scroll wheel accessible with your thumb. I set mine to behave as an application-switcher most of the time (which I never use) and a super-handy zoom wheel in Photoshop/Illustrator (which I use all the time).

There are small back/forward thumb buttons on the left-side flange that can be set to work great moving between pages in a Web browser, between tracks in iTunes, or whatever you like per application. There is also a small button on top that instantly brings up a Google search (or Yahoo, or your choice of search engine) for whatever is selected. This is super-handy as well and I've come to use it all the time.

It charges via a dock that I have to remember to place it in at night; this has been annoying on a couple of occasions when I forgot to charge the mouse and couldn't just slap a new battery into it...but the mouse does charge fast, and disposable batteries are toxic garbage-generating, expense-adding annoyances that should be eliminated from all small devices IMHO so I like the rechargeable aspect. A handy LED meter on the mouse lets you know how your charge is holding up.

So there are my two cents...I am interested in other people's favorite mouse/trackball/tablet interfaces too...though this is my current favorite who know's what's out there that I haven't seen yet? So if you have a favorite input device that you'd like to share please leave a note and/or link in the comments!