Apple tonight posted two new television spots for the iPad and the iPad mini on its YouTube page. The two ads, titled ‘Alive’ and ‘Together’, highlight some of the 300,000 apps made specifically for the iPad, using a variety of words to describe them.
I can’t find a source for the music behind these ads, so I’m assuming it has been custom made for this campaign. Unfortunately, I think the flaw in these ads is the sound.
The visuals are great, and the pace is quicker and more engaging than Apple’s previous ads of this ilk, but the sound is very cheesy. The backing track is okay; it’s the voices, which have blatantly been synthesised to emulate a large crowd, that kill it for me. “DEEP!”. “LOUD!”.
In my view, the magic of Apple’s commercials originates from their subtlety. The incumbent strength of Apple’s brand means they can ignore the tacky ploys that most companies use. The faked cheering in these two ads go directly against this; there is an implied idea that Apple thinks people aren’t intelligent enough to read. It’s cheap marketing reminiscent of infomercials, albeit to a much lesser extent.
I think if you got rid of the voices, these ads would be a lot better.
My biggest struggle with using the iPad for “work” is the awkwardness of switching between apps. Not fluid enough.
…
Even if just 2 apps, say Evernote and Safari, switching takes a moment because they both lag for a second before they respond. Not on Mac.
This. The lag is minimal, less than a second, but it is extremely agitating. If you try and use the app immediately, your first string of touch input will most likely be ignored. From then on, it is as responsive as ever. The first second, though, is an infuriating user experience.
The reason for this delay is linked to how iOS ‘freezes’ background applications; the period of inactivity experienced is relative to the time it takes to unfreeze the desired application. For the Settings app, the time necessary to become active is negligible, so it feels instantaneous, but for more complicated apps (like Mail) the thawing process takes longer and becomes noticeable in use. Until that point, touches do nothing because you are effectively looking at a screenshot of the application when you were last open — the app doesn’t receive any touch events at this stage.
This delay isn’t normally an issue when using the multitasking tray, as iOS can start to transition the app into the foreground as soon as you tap on its icon, with the ‘carousel’ animation making it feel like there is never a moment of unresponsiveness. This trick isn’t possible when using the gesture navigation, though. iOS doesn’t start the unfreeze until the swiping animation ends, just in case you gesture to go back at the last instant.
As the iPad becomes increasingly powerful, this lag will minimise automatically. However, I don’t expect this problem to go away that soon, because the unfreezing process will often rely on slow disk IO as well as CPU. The increasing complexity of iOS applications prolongs the attainment of this goal, too.
Therefore, it may be time to consider a change to the multitasking manager in iOS. Multitasking in iOS was introduced with iOS 4, designed with the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 in mind. It was built with the assumption of severe RAM constraints.
Nowadays, iOS devices have much more RAM; the latest generation of iPad and iPhone have 1 GB in their SoC’s. Hence, I think Apple should consider taming the aggressiveness of iOS’ multitasking policies — the devices can handle it now. At the moment, the OS backgrounds any app that isn’t the one currently being used. If instead the OS kept the last-used app alive in addition to the foreground app, the delay when swiping would be eliminated as the unfreezing step would no longer be necessary.
Obviously, going back further would still require unfreezing to occur, but the user experience for the most common scenario — returning to the last used app — would be much improved. It’s not a revolutionary change, it doesn’t require any “relearning” from users. It’s just a small evolutionary advancement to utilise some of the power of Apple’s latest devices.
On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit.
The original incarnation of this blog resided on Posterous for nearly two years. This blog was a product of their acquisition by Twitter. At the time, they said that “Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption”. Myself, and practically everyone else, didn’t believe them and — although it took longer than I had estimated — the inevitable is happened. Spaces are now down and running with permanent disruption.
An extremely reliable source has confirmed to us that Google is in the process of building stand-alone retail stores in the U.S. and hopes to have the first flagship Google Stores open for the holidays in major metropolitan areas.
I expect a souring of relations between Samsung and Google. A presence in retail will give Google an opportunity to instate the “Nexus” brand into the minds of normal people. I don’t think Samsung will want to let that happen.
The Briton who left Dixons for a short stint as head of Apple’s global retail stores is returning to the UK high street as the new chief executive of Monsoon Accessorize.
Browett was awful at Apple, but excelled in his previous role at Tesco. There’s a chance, albeit slim, that he might fit in to retail fashion.
I won’t be taking bets though on how long he lasts at Monsoon Accessorize, as I have zero knowledge about the fashion market. Moreover, I have near-negligible levels of interest for what Browett does going forward. All I care about is that he is no longer at Apple.
Currently Tweetbot lets you show the name of a Tweet’s author one of two ways: their full name (Mike Beasley) or their username (==@MikeBeas==). The iPad and Mac versions also include a third option that shows both in the form of “Mike Beasley @MikeBeas“. Only third option is allowed by Twitter in the new Display Guidelines. The other two will need to be removed.
The whole article is a comprehensive — and thus — saddening look into the future of Twitter clients. What’s odd about the design guidelines is that most are completely arbitrary and seem to have no impact on helping Twitter maintain control of its brand. They just seem to be purposefully annoying. The quoted rule is a perfect example. To Twitter, why does it matter if you only show their username? What possible benefit arises from that?
It’s like a war of attrition: Twitter doesn’t want the bad PR from openly killing third-party clients, so instead they are making developers’ lives harder and harder to make them give up and quit.
As noted by Mac4Ever, Adobe has recently updated its end-user license agreement for Adobe Director 12 requesting developers publishing paid iOS apps provide Adobe with 10% of earnings above $20,000. The recently released Adobe Director 12 introduced the ability to publish games directly to iOS, but developers in Adobe’s forums are not too pleased with the company’s decision to take 10% of earnings from iOS apps published to the App Store. At least one game published with the software is already available on App Store: Rally Point 3 by Xform Games.
Adobe can do whatever they want, but I can’t wait to see how they police this. Are Adobe employees really going to be able to find all the iOS apps in the store made using Director, ask developers how much money they make, and then — if more than $20,000 — chase said developers for payment?
Channel checks indicate Apple has a product event in March that is Apple-TV related (possibly an iTV SDK introduction). We think a Sep/Oct iTV launch is being targeted.
“Channel checks”? What on earth? You can’t manufacture an event at a Foxconn factory.
Aside from that anomaly, I have a problem with the idea that Apple is going to announce an SDK for the iTV without announcing the iTV at the same time. If they do announce an SDK in March, for the current Apple TV, then you are forging an ecosystem of apps around that device. You are limiting developer imagination to the constraints of the cheap-and-not-particularly-powerful $99 set-top box that exists today.
The biggest issue is with the remote. I’m assuming that the iTV will not use the same basic D-Pad remote that the Apple TV uses. Using Misek’s theory, though, the apps developed in the time between March and the iTV announcement will be based on the existence of a D-Pad. It doesn’t make sense.
Unlike the Vertus of old, the Ti runs Android, but although it comes with the addition of the company’s 24-hour concierge service, it’s still the 16-month old Android 4.0. The Ti also has dated specs: for around $10,000 (and that’s just the starting price), you’ll get a 3.7-inch WVGA display and a dual-core SnapDragon S4 processor.
… and I thought paying $1000 for the Blackberry Z10 was ridiculous.
The handset will be available Monday through Solavei’s retail partner GSM Nation for $999. Orders can be placed starting at 8am EST and if ordered tomorrow Solavei tells Mashable the handset will arrive in customer’s hands on Wednesday.
That is pricey, but apparently Solavei thinks people will pay a premium to get the phone now, rather than in “mid-March” — the timeframe quoted for availability at carriers you’ve actually heard of.
Personally, I don’t think anyone will be buying the Z10 in March at normal prices, let alone today at a ridiculous markup on a tiny carrier.
I’m a big fan of Temple Run; I played the original avidly for almost a year and ended up recording a high score of 27 million. Temple Run was a ridiculously good success for Imangi Studios — Angry Birds successful — so I had assumed that a sequel would arrive at some point. It finally hit the App Store in the middle of last month.
My feelings on it have varied. Initially, I was definitely on the “terrible” side of the fence. The mechanics have strayed considerably away from what I was accustomed to with the first game. I remarked that all I wanted was a Temple Run 1.5 (the same core game but with updated graphics and some new abilities here and there). That is not what Temple Run 2 is — it is different enough to be disorientating.
In particular, the way the path moves put me off. They bend so much visually the instinctive reaction is that the game is expecting you to react with a gesture. It’s a hard reflex to overcome, being so accustomed to the original game’s rigidity for so long. My frustration level due to swiping my finger in response to a bend only to realise too late that it didn’t require a gesture was very high.
It certainly didn’t help that the game launched with some serious bugs. Inherent lag that I found to be consistent every time I played on the iPad. As you might expect from a game that requires twitch reactions in the later stages, the number of deaths I experienced caused by frame drops was not insignificant. There were countless other issues too, such as mediocre hit-detection on the ends of ledges and a glitch that meant I had to force-quit the app to be able to play another game.
In fact, the only reason I kept playing at all was peer pressure; I was competing against a friend for first place in the friends leader-board in Game Center. I was devoting hours to the game, but it would require an elephantine stretching of the truth to call the time I dedicated “enjoyable”. Put simply, death-by-arbitrarily-unbalanced-minecart followed by death-by-lagging-gameplay followed by death-by-getting-two-speed-boosts-causing-an-extreme-increase-to-the-player-movement-but-no-invincibility is not fun.
Anyway, fast forward a few days and the 1.0.1 update was released. Most of the frame rate problems were resolved (albeit many App Store reviews still say that they are experiencing frequent lag spikes) and I realised that my previous grumblings were overly harsh. The performance problems were hiding a really great revision to the franchise. The graphical improvements uncover a beautiful layer of charm (note the increased detail in the path, like the spattered stones, the non-rectangular obstacles, and the shadows refracting from the trees) that was absent in Temple Run. I now have a high score of 17 million and am proud that I haven’t caved and simply bought 500 gems through In-App Purchase.
There are still some gameplay bugs that need addressing, and are detailed thoroughly in the App Store reviews. Personally, my criticisms of the sequel have been distilled down to — essentially — small nitpicks. The following complaints have no meaningful effect on gameplay, but they are nevertheless annoying …
Have Imangi not heard of padding? The score (“333”) is off-centre in its box: there is a margin at the bottom but padding at the top is non-existent. Similarly, the “Restart” text awkwardly touches the left and right bounds of its button.
The same spacing issues can be found in the character selection screen. There is no space to inset the coin count from the coin icon. Notice, too, how the number in the red badge is hanging towards the bottom of the circle. The font isn’t kerned either; the slanting “A” leaves big gaps in text across the entire app.
Also, note the visual inconsistency of the lower-left button. When compared with the previous screenshot, the trailing spacing is wildly different. The “Menu” text is given a reasonable margin, but the “B” in “Back” is practically hugging the edge of the screen. At first, I thought it was the font screwing up the text metrics …
… nope! Look at this screen grab and observe that the left spacing is different again, even though the text matches exactly (“Back”). In a world where scripting libraries encourage code reusability to ensure consistency, Temple Run falls down.
Another big failing of this screen is the gem power-up gauge. Unlike the previous niggles, the ambiguities present in this UI will directly affect user’s enjoyment. Before interacting with the component, it looks like the upgrade lasts forever, because it looks like the other power-ups, which are all permanent. As you can probably fathom from my tone, the actual behaviour contradicts this implication. Every time the magnet is used, one gem of the gauge is consumed.
Losing a gem is not a big deal per se … but imagine how this escalates into a real concern. A normal user will not bother to test the app to determine the actual functionality; the majority of people will just assume the game depleted their gem bank erroneously[3]. As a result, the level of trust the user has with the game will undoubtedly erode. They may avoid this particular feature or, worse, suppress engagement with the game overall — fearing uncertainty.
I could continue describing miscellaneous problems with Temple Run’s UI, but I won’t. The point is made. Relative to the polish of the main game, the menu design is terrible and reeks of negligence. It would only have taken a few hours of QA resources to find and resolve these problems.
Whilst this does not prevent Temple Run 2 from being a great game, it does stop it from being perfect. For ultimate satisfaction, perfection should always be the goal.
The third week of Apple’s “Get Stuff Done” Mac App Store promotion began today, dropping prices on a new set of apps. During the first week of the promotion Apple discounted several task management apps, and last week, several organizational apps went on sale.
I hope Apple is planning on doing more promotions like this. As the data is structured around one category of applications, it is much more useful to App Store customers than the seemingly random “App of the Week” and “Editors’ Choice” picks.
Eventually, it would be helpful if these curated repositories can be can be surfaced somewhere in the interface, enabling future users to also benefit from this added layer of curation. For example, searching the Mac App Store for “to-do list apps” could link to this collection, with the assumption that human input will return better results than the store’s search algorithm could.
And we may be getting closer, as Apple has listed a job posting looking for a Siri UI Engineer with a few hints at OS X integration.
Yet, no where in the job posting is there mention of iOS specifically. There is, however, mention of Mac OS X. Under key requirements, Apple asks for knowledge of all of Apple’s development APIs (both iOS and Mac OS X), as well as “familiarity with Unix, especially Mac OS X.”
Well, the application also specifically mentions Android, so obviously Siri is coming to Android as well.
After checking with a couple of App Store developers and sources inside Apple, it sounds like the new vanity URLs will not be able to be configured to whatever the developer wants them to read, but will rather be provided by Apple on the developers’ behalf. This conflicts CNET’s and our original reports on the matter. It’s confusing because of the way the developer documentation reads at present (see excerpt above, for example).
The documentation is only confusing to people who care about being first to the submit button, rather than performing actual research.
In the background, the Ask toolbar installer continues to run, but it delays execution for 10 minutes. If you are a sophisticated Windows user and you missed the initial checkbox, your natural instinct at this point would be to open Control Panel and check Programs and Features. When you do, you will see that only the Java update has been installed. You might also check your browser settings to confirm that no changes have been made to your settings. You might conclude that you dodged a bullet and that the unwanted software wasn’t installed.
But you would be wrong. The Ask installer is still running, and after waiting 10 minutes, it drops two programs on the target system.
It’s bad enough that the Oracle updater toolbar is installed by default. Bott discovered that when it does, it does it deceptively.
There is no reason for the install to be delayed by ten minutes other than an attempt to mislead users further. In fact, the presence of the delay is really an admission that the instigator knew that coercing bloatware onto people alongside a security update is dishonest.
I don’t care who instigated this behaviour — it is disgraceful.
