I’ve tried a number of color palettes and tools and Palettes currently takes the top spot. Its ability to pull the colors from URL’s and photos is excellent as is the reporting/exporting of color palette data. It also creates .clr files which are used by OSX’s color picker tool and thus available to any Mac program (not just Adobe).
The inclusion of pantone would be a welcome addition!
The AppStore is the only interface available for managing iPhone applications and as it is currently implemented suffers from an overly simplified interface. When applications first became available, the interface had the feeling of a minimal implementation in order to get something up and running.
But now there are over 26,000 applications in the AppStore, a number of them compelling to most iPhone owners. Clearly the user experience of the AppStore was never considered in the context of its success and the high volume of apps that have been produced.
iTunes suffers from two major problem areas. The first is with the App Store’s browse and buy cycle and the second with iTunes and its management of apps that one has purchased.
Problem 1 : The App Store
The Applications Library feels like a separate application that was shoved into iTunes and is almost stripped of functionality. This is a perplexing problem since much of the missing functionality is already available for almost everything else in iTunes.
Beginning with browsing apps, the problems begin to emerge.
It is way to easy to accidentally purchase an application you had no intention of buying, in particular in the result pages which place 20 or more “Buy Now” buttons on a slow loading page. Yet there is no support for the Shopping Basket that is available for almost all other iTunes content.
The lack of the ability to use the shopping basket is particularly curious. The capability is already built into iTunes, so why doesn’t the AppStore support it?
There should also be easier ways to manage the search results, to manage programs that one is interested in.
For example, why not implement a “buy later” checkbox that allows me to collects apps I’m interested in yet but not ready to buy?
A “compare” feature would also be a welcome addition. With more apps that perform similar functions, I may be trying to comparison shop. Take guitar or instrument tuners. There are a number of these available. If you want to try to figure out which one you want to buy, the user is forced to undergo unnecessary complexity to track something and be able to jump back to it later.
The Applications part of iTunes also is feature poor. The only view provided is the relatively large icon view. There is no grid view – I would expect that at a minimum the grid view would be provided, so that applications can be sorted differently.
In a glaring oversite, there is no simple link to take you to the AppStore page for an application you have already purchased. You can’t right click, you cant get to the URL from the application info panel. What if the user purchases an app, uses it for a few days and now wants to write a review? There is no easy way to jump to that application.
Much of this functionality is already built into iTunes for managing music and video. Why should the AppStore be completely different and inconsistent with the rest of iTunes?
Problem 2 : Springboard
Springboard is the iPhone application that shows you the apps you have installed. It is restricted to a max of 9 pages of 16 apps plus the 4 in the dock. Currently you can install 128 apps on the phone. That may seem like a lot, but the truth is you can quickly fill the available space.
There is also no way to effectively manage the applications. It would be great if the user can create folders or have some way to navigate apps using categories.
The lack of effective organization of apps presents another problem. While the user can move apps on or off the iPhone, doing so can result in apps becoming rearranging themselves in Springboard, making them more difficult to find.
The limitations with the number apps that one can install and the difficulty managing the apps lead to another problem. Users will stop purchasing applications when they cant put any more on their phone.
Since iTunes is the only way to install apps on the iPhone, I would like to see the ability to organize apps in iTunes as well. There is no reason why the management of the apps can’t take place there. The user can instantly see what pages have what apps, and move apps on/off the iPhone that way.
iPhone OS 3.0 is coming soon and we can only hope that the limitations of the Springboard will be overcome.
Google is reporting that the iPhone accounts for 50 times more search requests that any other mobile device. That’s an amazing number! The number is so huge that Google thought they made a mistake and had to redo their traffic analysis.
I’ll be interested in seeing how this number holds once Android devices start to ship. Welcome to the new Mobile.
See the story on AppleInsider.
Without question the iPhone is the best mobile device I’ve ever owned or used. I’ve had Treo’s and Blackberry’s in the past, but nothing comes close.
I receive an awful lot of email on a daily basis and for the past 2 or so years, I’ve never had an inbox that had no unread messages. Since I’ve been on the iPhone (since they come out), my email situation has changed and I’m now almost always caught up with my email. That alone makes it very valuable to me.
However, it’s also clear that the engineers at Apple don’t live in cities and drive around in cars all day long.
The most annoying thing about the iPhone for me is that it has all kinds of problems when you ride the subway. In New York City, the subways do not have cell coverage, but do from time to time have spots in the system where a single can be received and transmitted. However, the iPhone becomes “stupid” in the situation.
When one is sending an SMS message from someplace with a very weak or no signal, the SMS message will sit in the window. You will get an error message that it could not be sent. Every other phone I’ve ever had always queued outgoing messages and that’s what the iPhone should be doing, sending it when a signal does become available.
The same thing more or less happens with the iPhone Mail client. While it does allow you to “send” the message, it’s usually followed up by multiple alerts on the phone about how it can’t send the message. This becomes rather irritating, as it interrupts whatever you are doing with a dumb notification that shouldn’t even appear (unless maybe when the message can’t be sent after a couple of hours.
It really dumb when you get these alerts when you are on an airplane, with the Airplane mode turned on (meaning that the radio(s) are turned off. Of course it can’t send the message! Why bother me with such redundant dribble continuously until I land and it sends the message?
Another, very annoying behavior is when you type a message, hit send and press the button on the top to turn the screen off. Guess what happens – the email message will not be sent until you tap the home button and wake the phone! Even when it was in the middle of sending it – the connection to our SMTP server will be dropped. To add insult to the injury, it often doesn’t even send it when it checks the email (every 15 minutes in my case).
I suspect that the coming release of Leopard will bring a number of new features to the iPhone. Some of them are obvious, such as the Leopard Mail client which supports iPhone Memos & Tasks Syncing. But I believe that Apple also has something else up it’s sleeve which has been part of the iPhone plan since the start.
Dashcode, a Dashboard widget development application, supports the ability to create applications from a widget in Leopard.
This same functionality lends itself very nicely to providing “native” applications that run in a more or less protected environment on the iPhone, satisfying Steve Jobs comments regarding 3rd Party Apps taking down the entire West Coast wireless infrastructure.
When the iPhone was introduced, Leopard was supposed to have been shipping. Since Leopard was now delayed, a number of features had to be scaled back out of the iPhone. It was probably always on the drawing board to have a means for users to develop applications, even if they are only Dashcode Widgets.
Apple has released a “preview” version of Dashcode to developers and the tool shows lots of potential. It will enable more people to create Dashboard widgets, and these widgets should be installable on the iPhone when Leopard ships.
This will address some of the issues with the lack of 3rd Party applications for the iPhone. However, many programs that require closer access to the OS will not be possible unless Apple provides the means for the widgets to access all or parts of the OS.
I only hope that Apple doesn’t make you pay a fee to upload your own widget on your phone.
Apple’s actions in the past 3 days are pretty spectacular mistakes.
The seemingly deliberate disabling of many people’s iPhones who installed 3rd party applications will come back to haunt the company in ways that Job’s can’t even visualize yet.
There is absolutely no reason that Apple couldn’t have made the update restore the iPhone back to a factory fresh state. Hiding behind whatever thin veil they are throwing up saying it’s not possible is a lame excuse.
Apple has shown a vindictive streak towards the iPhone owners who dared to experiment with this amazing hand held computer. If Apple wants to own this product from end to end, then they should be giving the phones away.
However, Job’s arrogance aside, the biggest threat here is to Apple and the future of the iPhone. These actions on Apple’s part will forever tarnish the iPhone’s reputation. The negative publicity that will result from thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of bricked phones could stop iPhone sales cold. When the public perception is that many people’s pricey iPhones become iBricks in less then a couple of months of ownership, well nobody will be iLining up to iBuy and iPhone.
I also believe that Apple has invited itself to a very expensive Class Action lawsuit and the scrutiny of a number of government agencies. It’s likely that Apple will end up facing fines and other charges as a result of this.
The PR fallout of these actions on Apple’s part are going to Job’s biggest challenge since he came back to Apple. All the good will, all the good press and more importantly the magical relationship Apple has with it’s customers could be wiped out.
It’s a slippery slope that Apple is embarking on and I’m sad to see that they haven’t been able to Think Different. Jobs has gone from God to Greedy Corporate CEO in less then a week.
I think the comparison of Jobs to failing stars sums it up… Leave Steve Alone! (YouTube)
