It seems pretty clear that the future of Apple (and general human interaction with computers) is touch based.

Apple's responsible for kickstarting the touch screen revolution with the iPhone, so why would they do anything other than push themselves as far as possible along the trajectory they've already begun? When you consider the possibility of Apple building a device that not only sits alongside your iPhone, but replaces your MacBook, the game changes. Whatever Apple's tablet finally shows up as, I'm pretty sure it'll be more "this is the end of keyboard and mouse computing as we know it" than "oh it's a big iPhone".

Many people seem to assume that the keyboard and mouse are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and one of the main reasons they cite is that you can gain pixel level accuracy with a mouse and cursor. The tablet, if it becomes the MacBook replacement many have suggested, will not rely on finger input alone. Sure you'll never need anything more than your fingers (on both hands) to use the device, but I think there are a number of scenarios where using a pen or stylus (or whatever you want to call it) could be incredibly useful.

The Tablet is to Production what the iPhone is to Consumption.

Artists may not be the core target audience for the Tablet (or at least that's what I thought until seeing the invite), but when you consider how many creatives purchase Wacom graphics tablets, and that Wacom can can be the size of company it is through selling graphics tablets alone, this market segment is not insignificant. Perhaps my opinions are swayed being the graphic designer I am, but having a 10" Tablet that I could draw directly on with a beautiful aluminium pen would make my life considerably better - I could save a fortune on Moleskines.

With regards to text input, I don't think I should even begin to pretend I have worked out what Apple has decided upon. After 4-10 years of development time, text input on the Tablet could be a completely new concept, or (more likely) a very smart implementation of text input that we're already at least slightly familiar with. My guess is that we will see handwriting recognition in some form, and if so, likely not see an onscreen keyboard. Just as Apple encouraged the use of the mouse over the keyboard with the first Mac, whatever they perceive as the best method of text input, we will likely end up being forced to use.

As many have already pointed out, text entry on a 10 inch display is not the same as text entry on an iPhone-size display. The iPhone is designed to be used with one hand free, and only rarely requires both hands for efficient use. The Tablet will likely require both hands for operation at most times - one to hold and one to touch the screen when in portrait mode.

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As what seems like the entire world knows, WWDC is tomorrow.

We are all looking forward to seeing what's in store for the final version of the 3.0 firmware for the iPhone - we all know it's going to contain more than what we've been shown, but we don't know what more.

Everyone also, with good reason, expects new iPhone hardware tomorrow. Some expect a new iPhone with a few updates over the existing 3G. Some expect a new iPhone which goes all out to be the best video taking device ever. Some expect a number of new iPhones, right from a tiny "nano" iPhone with 4GB of memory, all the way up to a "pro" iPhone with 32GB memory and every feature a power user could ever need for the next 3 years.

New Hardware

Personally, I think tomorrows announcements will follow Apple's style over the last 2 years - there will be one new iPhone, and it will introduce new hardware features that will be tempting, but not mind blowing. By this, I mean I think there will be the much rumoured digital compass - that allows, with GPS, for the iPhone to know exactly where you are, and what way you're facing; there will be a slightly upgraded camera, with a 3.2MP sensor, and (more important to image quality than the average consumer realises) an auto focus lens. I think the 3G will get faster, with AT&T and a number of other carriers upgrading their 3G networks to double their existing speeds.

Better Processor. Better RAM.

The much more noticeable changes to the iPhone hardware will be the core power of the device. If we see a doubling (or more likely, an increase of 50%) of CPU speed, and perhaps a doubling of RAM, the iPhone OS will suddenly feel incredibly fast. I would already argue that the 3.0 firmware, which we have been using for the last month at GoSquared, is far less sluggish than when we were all running 2.2, so these small optimisations, combined with dramatically increased CPU and RAM will pave the way towards improvements on an already very slick mobile OS. In fact, many complaints about the speed of internet access on the iPhone will be addressed by a faster CPU - web page rendering is where most of the bottlenecks occur, not as is a common misconception, at the data transfer point.

That Front Facing Camera

There has been a lot of talk about the next iPhone including a front facing video camera for video chat and for Photo Booth style self mockery. However, I can't see this happening this year. Apple has filed a ton of patents on video conferencing with the iPhone, between iPhones, and between Macs and iPhones. When Apple finally allow video chat on the iPhone, and they will, it will be fantastic. But I don't think they'll do this tomorrow, for a number of reasons. Considering Apple has not even mentioned video to developers, who are building apps for the 3.0 release, and considering not one developer, or any "reliable" source has even so much as hinted at the possibility of video chat capabilities, I have my doubts. Then take into consideration the already overloaded 3G networks of AT&T and others due to the amount of bandwidth-hungry iPhone owners out there, and imagine what an influx of thousands of 2 way video calling iPhone owners would do...

I really would love to be proven wrong on this one - I want video calling on my iPhone. The US market, in fact, doesn't always notice how commonplace it is in Europe and elsewhere - in the UK, the 2 phones I owned before my iPhone 2G both were capable of video calling. That was FOUR years ago. Yet, in the UK especially, video calling on phones has never taken off as it should have. It will be Apple who get the world speaking face to face on a phone. But to do that will take time. And my gut feeling is we'll see that next year. Not tomorrow.

Oh, and that "spy shot" above? Gimme a break. The Ui while you're in a video call will never be as cluttered as that. Expect something as minimal as the current audio call screen, without the large "merge, number keypad, mute, etc" icons overlaid.

A couple of Sketches

I decided to do a few quick sketches of what I reckon the new iPhone may look like based on the rumours that have been circulating. I sketched them on paper because 1) I didn't have enough time to do anything in Photoshop, 2) I can't use Maya to save my life, and 3) If I made them look at all realistic I would get at least 5 haters shouting FAKE - PHOTOSHOPPED. So, here are my honest, simple, quick sketches of how very similar the next iPhone may look.

And another, the Leopard style dock, in retrospect, won't happen.

One More Thing

I know Apple applied for a patent on this last year. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why - Microsoft (gasp) have had a start screen like this for years. Either way, I want Apple to implement the option for me to see what's happening today on my Unlock Screen. If not, I may consider jailbreaking.

Hope you like the suggestion, Apple. And I hope we're pleasantly surprised by the announcements tomorrow. Heck, I haven't even mentioned Snow Leopard. Although, then again, neither has Apple. Except one very nice banner.

Happy WWDC everyone.

Apple's latest version of Safari is out (in beta), with some evolutionary interface changes, and a dramatically faster javascript processing engine. The release of Safari 4 was not anticipated by any of the typical rumour sites, so it came as a surprise to just about everyone. As always, though, it was no surprise to see Apple's bright and simple marketing pages selling the browser as the best thing since sliced bread.

The Mac maker's marketing team appear to have had a field day promoting all 150 of the fantastic new features of their latest browser. But is everything they say completely true? Have they pushed the boundaries of honesty with their sensationalist slogans? Taking a look at the list of new features, I started to get a little suspicious. Just about none of the new features listed on Apple's website are original - most are already out there in other browsers, having already been invented by the likes of Google, Mozilla, and the open source community. Or they've actually been features in Safari already, but Apple are drawing more attention to them in this release.

The main new features list promoted by Apple:

• Top sites: suspiciously like Chrome's "most visited" section on opening a new tab. But of course it's all shiny and in 3D, which makes meel feel like I'm in the Matrix - so I like that bit.
• CoverFlow: OK, this isn't currently in any browser, but we got there first!
• Full History Search: this has been around in Opera for a rather long time (since the betas of version 9.5 back in September 2007), and was actually available to some extent in the previous version of Safari - they promoted it as a "new" feature back then.
• Tabs on top: Chrome - did we even need to say? But that said, Opera again had the idea of putting the tabs above the addressbar waaay back in the day. They could at least put the little favicons in the top corner to help easily identify different sites on different tabs - isn't that the point of a favicon?
• Nitro Engine (Squirrel Fish wasn't up to scratch for Apple's Marketing Department): notice how in the performance graphs they've subtlely left off Firefox 3.2 and Chrome 2.0 betas, both of which have amazingly fast javascript engines.
• Windows native look and feel: I could go on and on about this for ages, but I won't. The transparent tabs are really quite ugly (Chrome definitely had the better idea there) and the whole thing with darkening the inactive areas of the title bar really doesn't do it for me. Plus it's all misaligned in the Windows 7 beta. But all the same, even in vista, where it does work - I still much prefer chrome for simple native interface feel.


Good one Apple. However, both Safari 4 and Windows 7 are still in beta, so I'll let Apple off for this one.



Seriously, what's going on there? Which would you choose?

• Developer Tools: Is it just me, or hasn't this been in Safari for a while now? I use the developer tools in Safari 3 all the time (all the time I actually even use Safari that is - Firefox FTW!) I can see they've changed the icons from Safari 3 in the web inspector, but other than that can anyone point out to me what they've added?

Ok, I won't go into a huge wealth of detail about all the other features, but here's a couple more from the 150 features page that were tagged as new which really caught my attention:

• Full page zoom: Unbelievably, the first time I came across this was in IE. I don't know if it was around before then though.
• Phishing and malware protection: IE again unbelievably.
• Smart address field: Firefox Awesome Bar, and then the Chrome Omnibox.
• Inline Progress Indicator: Firstly, this isn't new, even for Safari, and more importantly, it looks to me suspiciously like this has been taken out rather than introduced.

Acid 3

And then there's Acid3. I don't like being too pedantic about this matter, but the Acid3 test isn't just about getting a pixel-perfect rendering. To pass the test, the animation has to be smooth as well. I've tested the beta on a couple of different platforms and while it produces an absolutely infallable rendering, the animation is by no means smooth. Test 69 continually takes more than 50 attempts to succeed. So when Apple are professing to be the "first browser to pass Acid3", they are actually wrong in that they're not the first (Opera betas have passed before this one), and they don't actually pass the test! What really puzzles me about this matter is that all the WebKit nightly builds for quite a long time now have passed perfectly with a perfectly smooth animation. So have Apple put a 6 month old version of WebKit into "the World's most innovative browser"? It would appear so.

Toolbar Troubles

The toolbar is only a gripe for the Windows version - it's slightly different in OS X because the menu bar is separated so a few buttons are differently arranged, but the issue can be summed up very well with a simple screenshot:

Spot the difference anyone?

See what I mean? Just for those of you who don't recognise it, the top one's the toolbar from Google Chrome, and the bottom one's the latest Safari. There's just the tiniest bit of a similarity there methinks.

The idea of compressing the main menu bar into a couple of dropdown buttons is quite established (first seen in IE7 I believe), but the simple fact that the two toolbars are so alike is what bothers me. Back and forward buttons at the beginning: a standard UI convention that makes perfect sense. Add bookmark button attached to the left side of the address bar: getting a little bit suspicious. Then the address bar is a bit different (as an aside, I think the refresh button is in the wrong place, but maybe that's aimed at users who have only just got used to the fact that IE decided to put it there too for no reason). The refresh button's new location is also a result of its placement within Mobile Safari on iPhone. But then there are the two dropdown buttons. Now I know these aren't there on the mac, but that's because the menu bar's already at the top of the screen so there's no need for them. Still - they're EXACTLY the same buttons effectively. Come on - they've even nicked one of the icons! OK so the actual content of the two dropdowns is slightly different, but the sheer fact that they are both essentially for the same purpose in both browsers shows unquestionable similarity to Chrome.

On the plus side, the installer for the latest beta FINALLY no longer insists on adding an icon to my quick launch, as per the latest Windows 7 guidelines. Many's the time I've got inordinately annoyed by icons appearing after every time I run an Apple Software Update. I appreciate that one Apple.

And of course I love the fact that the wording of their info pages implies that Safari has only 150 features. That's all. No more. Wouldn't be much of a browser if that were true.

I think that's just about enough ranting for now. The point is, these features may not all be entirely original, but I'll admit bringing them together in one browser makes a pretty good package overall (apart from the Windows interface I don't really like). Let us know what you think on the matter, especially those of you who, like me, aren't complete Macheads (like James.)

Update: June 9th 2009
Following yesterday's launch of the final version of Safari 4, some of my gripes have been fixed.

• Apple have obviously seen the light and put tabs back where they belong. Which is good, because I personally couldn't see the visual appeal of having them at the top. They basically just looked awful on both the mac and windows versions.
• Along with that, the Windows Native Look and Feel, as they call it, is therefore greatly improved. No more of those silly shadow effects along the title bar.
• The refresh button has now taken on its own special little "Loading" message in a blue box while the page is loading, much better than the pathetic little spinner they had in the beta.
• And a few other things that I can't quite put my finger on, but which do make the general experience better than it was in beta

However (and sorry for this), there are still a few things that really get up my nose...

• The toolbar's still the same, a Chrome ripoff. OK, I wasn't expecting Apple to go and drastically change it from the beta, so I won't go on. I did enough ranting about that earlier.
• Acid3. Aaahh, good old Acid3. Come on Apple, you've been going on about 100% compliance for a while now and you're just about getting there. But still, although the rendering's great, the speed still falls down in test 69. Now I know the speed is somewhat hardware-dependent, but I've run it on a couple of machines with pretty decent specs, and it still isn't up to scratch. I'll just take this opportunity to reiterate that old WebKit nightly builds were coping fine, ages ago. But there you go...
• And maybe I spoke too soon about the installer not putting icons everywhere. Apple Software Update still insists on shoving shortcuts in my desktop and quick launch. I don't need them! They just clutter everything up! If I wanted shortcuts there, I'd have put them there in the first place on the original install!

And I know this is advertised as a bit of a rant, and well I suppose it is. But in all honesty it is a bit harsh. Safari's a pretty damn decent browser, truth be told. But I'll stick with Firefox for now - FireBug just has the edge over Safari's developer tools for me, at the moment anyway.

So the financial markets are in an epic turmoil, and everyone's cutting back. Office equipment is an area where many firms could really make a saving. Here's a complete solution:

Credit: Unknown, if anyone knows the original source, please leave a comment below!

Being an iPhone owner for a few weeks over here in the UK, I am pretty much overwhelmed by how cool the device is. So is everyone that sees it.

Every time I use my iPhone for ANYTHING, someone asks a question about it. So here's a short list of the questions I get asked most, with answers.

If you, like me, keep getting asked these, just print this out and shove it in their face.

How Much?

The single most commonly asked question I get is "How much does that thing cost?"

Well, as I'm in the UK, it's a whopping £270 for the Phone [something us Brits aren't used to paying], and then an extra £35 each month for a fairly minimal contract. To make people envious, ensure you make it clear: UNLIMITED INTERNET (but don't mention internet speeds).

I heard the camera is really bad. What's it like?

The camera on the iPhone gained an unfair amount of criticism at launch in my opinion.

Sure, it's not up the LG Viewty's 5 mega pixels, or many Sony Ericssons, but the iPhone's 2MP snapper isn't that bad. It doesn't handle motion shots at all well, but in good light, and if the subject is pretty still, the pictures are perfectly acceptable. And that screen just makes everything look amazing.

What Games does it have?

Ammm. Well, none. "The best iPod we've ever made." But no games.

On the other hand, February, and the SDK will no doubt bring along some awesome games. At the moment, the only fun you can have is via Safari, and rather slow javascript powered games- not exactly the kind of gaming experience most would come to expect after seeing the animated interface of the rest of the phone.

How Slow is the internet?

The question is usually: "The internet?! On your phone?!! Wow let's go on it!!... ... ... ... Why's it taking so long?"

Apple know the internet is slow on the iPhone, there's only so fast a 2.5G data connection can be. All I can say is bring on the days of a nationwide WiFi network! This phone is almost perfect at home/Starbucks, when I am on a high speed WiFi network, but as soon as you venture away from civilisation be prepared for long delays.

Doesn't the Screen scratch really easily?

In a word, no. It's probably the most scratch resistant screen I have experienced on a mobile product. Much better than any previous iPods I have owned. I always carried my 'Pods around in a sock or case of some sort, but I have found there really is no need with the iPhone. In fact, some guys even went as far as to scratch keys down the screen to test its scratch resistance.

Touch Screen? I HATE Touch screens! Why would I want one on my phone?

Because it's the best touch screen you will have ever used. Seriously, the screen is astonishing. Every touch, every slide, every press, the interface responds instantly. Because of the completely flat surface, the screen flush with the fascia, it's very easy to touch every part of the screen, even right at the edges where on other devices it can be a struggle.

This touch screen interface is the product of years of work. It is truly changing the way people think about touch screen technology.

What's the Battery life like?

In fact it's not bad. On the first day of use, I stupidly had WiFi on, and was messing with the browser while listening to iTunes for several hours, and by the afternoon it was dead. Since then I have learnt how to conserve the battery, and it will last for over 2 days without a charge even after healthy usage each day.

Keep bluetooth and WiFi switched off where you can, and use it just as you did with your old phone and you will be pleasantly surprised with the battery life.

Does Google Maps know where I am?

No, not yet. There was a lot of talk just before launch of the iPhone gaining GPS as a secret feature. Sadly this isn't a reality in version 1.

However, Google have recently been beta testing a version of Google Maps for mobile that can gain an approximate location of your phone by finding the nearest 3 phone masts to you. This isn't as accurate as GPS, but it's no where near as battery consuming, or expensive (it's free!) One can only hope that this will make it into the iPhone version of Google Maps soon.

Can you send that song/photo to me over Bluetooth?

Afraid not. The iPhone's Bluetooth connection is only really used for talking to a Bluetooth headset. Nothing more. So all of your old school friends without WiFi or email on their phones can't really interact with your phone at all. Even MMS isn't available for sending photos!

I thought this would be a major problem at first because on my old phone I sent a lot of stuff over Bluetooth. On the other hand, when you have WiFi, and a pretty decent email app, Bluetooth just doesn't seem so important.

Can I have your iPhone?

Can you not cause a scene every time I get this thing out to simply text someone?

Any other common questions you get asked about your iPhone? Please tell!

Media Temple are great hosts. Well, most of the time. Yesterday they performed upgrades to almost all of their dedicated servers, including ours, and most went well, without a hitch. Not ours.

Due to a lot of the complexities behind Squares (that seemingly simple ad system), we use PHP 5 amongst other technologies that Media Temple hadn't remembered about. Upon updating, they managed to mess a few things up related to PHP, and with our site almost entirely built on the technology, we couldn't do much other than sit around and bark at (mt) to get them to fix it faster.

Eventually, after a good few hours, well, actually almost a whole day, we were back.

Let's hope the so-called updates aren't quite so damaging in future!

Thanks for your patience,

GoSquared

Here's an issue that's really bugged me as a web developer for so long. But not only me. You'll find numerous instances of where developers have ranted and criticised the diversity of rendering engines that are available. IE5, IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Netscape are the main ones that come to mind, and each one is uniquely different. Sure, that's fine when it comes to functionality and UI of the program, but does it also have to extend to the way Hyper Text Markup Language is rendered in each browser?

HTML, CSS and Javascript were introduced as a simple way to get web pages to look the same wherever you looked them up and whatever computer you were using. A universal standard. So why is this barely the case today? IE6 being one of the worst instances, each browser renders code and parses JavaScript differently, causing numerous frustrations to developers and designers when they are met with the intimidating challenge of seamless cross-compatibility of their webpage on all browsers. Whether it be the complete and ugly replacement of your carefully styled form input boxes and buttons by the stubborn Safari, or the inexplicably irritating render bugs that exist in The 'Soft's IE6 rendering engine that adds that little 3px margin here or sticks a float-level object on a new line there, breaking the boundaries of your page.

It is surprising that large corporations still insist on introducing varying rendering engines in their own browsers to become bundled by default with operating systems. Microsoft uses an engine called "Trident", Apple uses "WebCore" for Safari, and Opera uses "Presto". Everyone in this business knows that if you want a decent browser, you get Firefox, or a browser that utilises an unmodified version of the Gecko rendering engine (something that I'd like to see more of). I will eat my shoe when the day comes that Microsoft and Apple announce that Firefox will come packaged as the default browser on their operating systems, whilst choking on it in glee, as this will be the best news ever to developers around the world. This would mean no more hours wasted trying to get that damn rounded corner to fit onto that button in IE, or styling that "submit" button in Safari, for example.

The point is, everything should be one simple standard like its meant to be. Browsers that are supposed to display the page the same should display it the same! Is that too much to ask? It would also save corporations lots of time and money if they just developed their particular browser around one universal rendering engine, and a good one at that, such as Gecko, since I've rarely had any problems getting designs to work in it. No fuss, no mess, happy developers, and happy customers.

This isn't just a problem for insignificant developers. Google themselves don't support Safari with their Google Talk chat system built into a clever AJAX module in the Googlemail CP, because of the differences in the way Safari parses its code. In short, it doesn't work in Safari! Now if Google can't get it to work, then that suggests this is quite a complication.

The situation is, admittedly starting to improve; The Soft releases IE7 which is just about good enough to pass as a browser, Safari is not too bad and is getting better, and IE6's undeservedly massive market share is gradually getting stamped out by Microsoft's aggressive push to upgrade it to IE7, and in doing so removing the ability to use IE6 anymore (sore spot there, Microsoft?). This can be irritating, however, because as I use Vista, I am unable to test in IE6.

Even so, there will always be enough people using terrible browsers to force you to continue writing CSS and JavaScript hacks to get your layout to work properly. Time consuming as it is, I think there's little we can do about it for the moment. The only thing I can do is continue spreading the word about Firefox. Which reminds me:

Get Firefox now!

And no I don't work for them

Geoff

P.S. http://www.ie7.com/