May Contain Nuts

Apple made some upgrades to MobileMe’s web services last night. While I don’t use them terribly often (since I have a Mac at home and at work, plus an iPod Touch and now an iPad), I do still find myself dropping into them occasionally. With that in mind, I took a look at the new site to see what’s what.

Overall

Apple has replaced the gray color scheme with a somewhat higher-contrast blue one, extending all the way into the login page, which has also gotten a facelift. I don’t recall if it was there before, but there’s now a quite prominent link to sign up for a 60-day trial right next to the news block. I like the new color scheme, as it feels a bit more engaging and interesting than the previous austere gray. Oddly (though perhaps intentionally, to illustrate the importance of the task), the gray scheme is retained on the re-authorization dialogs used to access Find My iPhone and the Account settings page.

What I don’t particularly care for is the new app switching method. Prior to today, switching from Mail to the Gallery was a one-click process. Now, probably because of the new design of the header toolbar and the way it ties into the various applications on the site, all of the applications are hidden behind a MobileMe cloud button, which brings up a patently oversized OS X-style task switcher display. Switching apps now requires two clicks and a considerably larger amount of mouse movement.

The new MobileMe Task Switcher

I would much rather have preferred that the original switching method was retained, since it provides more immediate discoverability of features. Since the new design precludes that, however, I think a better approach would have been to tie the MobileMe cloud icon to a pop-out menu, similar to the one used in the account drop-down on the right side of the header. The design could even be kept similar to the current design (either horizontal or adjusted to vertical), but by making it a fancy drop-down menu and ideally resizing the images, it would have greatly reduced the amount of travel time and distance required to perform such a simple and frequent operation.

Mail

The New MobileMe Mail

I don’t intend to touch on every app individually, but I do want to talk about Mail in particular, because it’s seen the largest amount of improvement and alteration over the old design. Apple launched this as a beta about a month ago, and has now made it available to all with the web services upgrade. It’s frankly miles above the old web app, and much more pleasant to use. The service loads data much more quickly, and the new widescreen viewer mode is really nice. It retains a number of desktop-y features like multiple (and discontinuous) item selection, as well as drag-and-drop message moving (and adding drag-and-drop folder reorganizing, yay!), while adding more web-ish things as well, like the Move icon in the toolbar, which functions similarly to the move command in iOS.

Perplexingly, Apple has decided to roll their own scrollbars in Mail, something it has not done for any of its other web apps. This has the net effect of overriding my preferred scrollbar behavior of having the up/down buttons split instead of joined at the bottom of the scroll area, and makes the UI inconsistent with both the rest of MobileMe and the rest of the scrollbars on my machine. I can understand the condensed scrollbar overlay for the folders listing, but the redundant full-sized custom scrollbars in the message list and preview pane are kind of annoying.

They’ve also added an Archive feature, pretty much pulled straight from Gmail as far as I can tell. It will be interesting to see if this feature manages to migrate out of the web application and into Apple’s other mail clients in the future.

Other new features include push mail in the web client, some composition window improvements (including some slick auto-completion and a nice “add contact” dialog with live filtering and To/CC/BCC checkboxes for all contacts, but lacking the self-contained pill items on recognized contacts from the desktop Mail client), fetching of mail from an external address, the ability to send an email from an alias (or said external address), support for vacation auto-response setup, server-side mail rules, and a long-overdue implementation of https communication.

Overall, a very nice upgrade to the Mail app that brings it on par in many ways to the web apps offered by other mail services. It also still retains some of the desktop application feel that Apple seems intent on maintaining on the web, and brings some iPhone/iPad-like additions into the fold as well. Very solid, though obviously more evolutionary than revolutionary. This feels like what MobileMe should have been from the beginning, but I’m glad Apple has been busy putting effort into polish since the original launch 2 years ago.

Other Apps

As a whole, the entire set of web services feels much faster than it did yesterday. I have no idea if this has anything to do with Apple’s new data center in North Carolina, or if they’ve just gotten better at query optimization, but in any case, it’s welcome and appreciated. Pretty much the only service that’s still sluggish is the Find my iPhone page, but that has some external limitations that I don’t think are nearly as easy to overcome. The UI is much improved though, and features a really nice custom Google Maps integration with some slick pushpin annotation stuff for device location features.

As an interesting side note, the Gallery icon has changed from the iPhone’s “Photos” icon to the iPhone’s “MobileMe Gallery App” icon. While this provides some consistent branding, I think I’d much rather have the MobileMe Gallery functionality built into the iPhone/iPad Photos app than tucked away in a separate location on my device. Considering that the Photos app already allows you to upload files to MobileMe, it seems like it would make more sense to keep those files all accessible and manageable in one spot. This is more of an iOS rant than a MobileMe rant though, so I’ll leave it at that.

Summary

As a whole, the upgrade isn’t a huge change from what was previously available, but it’s a solid evolution of the service (Mail in particular seems to have been the focus of this update), and I hope that this is a sign of more good things to come.

In my opinion, the two most useful features that have been added to Safari 5 are the extensions API and Safari Reader. For those who may not know, Safari Reader is basically an Instapaper-like reformatting of page content to remove extraneous elements and focus on presenting the actual meat of the page: the article. It also merges multi-page articles into a single extended view so that navigating from page to page is no longer necessary.

At least one staffer at Ars Technica has gone out of his gourd over this feature. He complains that Apple is being hypocritical by providing users a means of blocking ads on the web while building an unblockable ad framework into their mobile OS. However, I feel that the author, his like-minded co-workers at Ars, and the innumerable knee-jerk anti-Apple commenters are missing several key points that distinguish what Apple has done in Safari 5 from what they’re doing with iAds in such a way as to make the two situations incomparable.

First, Apple is not blocking ads with Safari Reader. They’re still loading the page in its entirety and serving that to the user with the option of then going into what is basically a super-accessible “printer friendly” view to read the content of the page. Considering how piss-poor some website layouts are when it comes to presenting content over irrelevant material (multiple navigation sidebars, inline and sidebar ads, overlay ads, intellitext bubble ads) from a reader’s perspective, this is a welcome addition to the web.

Ars argues that since Safari Reader auto-loads every page of a multi-page article in rapid succession, ad providers are likely to discount impressions on later pages as robo-loads designed to artificially inflate a site’s ad usage statistics. This is where Ars has a semi-valid point, but ultimately the widespread implementation of multipage articles on the web trumps whatever altruistic pro-advertising stance they may wish to take. While Ars argues that somehow, by definition, multipage articles are only those articles that are more expensive to produce (using their 24-page Snow Leopard review as an example), the simple fact of the matter is that many websites are already artificially inflating their site’s ad usage statistics by breaking even modestly-sized articles up across multiple pages, to the point where it has become a pain for users to actually read the content they came to see (how many “top 10 X” articles have you seen that are needlessly split into 10 one-paragraph pages loaded down with multiple ad placements?).

I do not fault Ars for breaking their Snow Leopard review up into 24 different pages. In fact, I tend not to fault Ars much for any of their multi-page articles, because they are well-implemented. Each page has a generous amount of content on it, a comparatively small number of ads, and the splits are done in such a way as to improve the readability of the article as a whole by reducing page size into manageable chunks. I would certainly not want to see a single-page article the length of their Snow Leopard review (and entertainingly, I just checked… Reader won’t be offered when viewing that review in the first place!). That’s just mentally and visually daunting. Still, the side effect of this decision to be intelligent about how they serve their content means I’m less likely to use Safari Reader when viewing an Ars article. In the end, Ars wins more ad revenue from me by doing the right thing with its content, while people who are already doing their best to game the system by making their content hard to access are going to be the losers because people will essentially be voting with their wallets by activating Safari Reader to get the whole Top 10 Most Awesome LOLcats of 2009 article on one freaking page.

Secondly, Ars is making a false equivalency argument when it comes to the nature of what ads Apple is willing to support and what it’s willing to “block”. Setting aside the fact that Apple is not blocking any ads with Reader, and that ad impressions on multipage articles are being discounted by the ad provider based on past abusive behavior, there is a fundamental difference between web ads and ads in applications that the author seems to be missing, either unintentionally or willfully.

Ads in applications have always been unblockable (at least by the average user… people who know how to use the hosts file and configure their router to block requests to specific domains are the exception to the rule here), whether they’re on the desktop or the mobile device, but have also been comparatively tame and tolerable for most users. If you want to get rid of them, you generally have to pay for that ability, and that ability is (usually) provided. Ads on the web – by their very nature – are much easier to block, and due to the abusive extremes web advertising has been taken to, people tend to be much more inclined to block them first and ask questions never.

Thus, asking Apple to provide an opt-out switch for iAds is inconsistent with years of general ad practices in applications. Beyond that, it would put Apple at a competitive disadvantage on their own platform, as other ad networks already provide unblockable ads in iOS applications which Apple would get absolutely reamed for if they tried to allow users to block against the wishes of the developers or ad networks.

Honestly, I just don’t see anything intellectually dishonest or hypocritical in Apple’s actions on both Safari and the iOS when it comes to ads. Apple is driven by a desire to give users the best possible user experience. In their opinion, existing ad platforms “suck”, not just for users, but for developers as well, who aren’t getting as much value out of existing advertising as maybe they could. So, to improve the user experience on their mobile devices, they’re offering their own ad platform. In the opinion not just of Apple but also of many web users, reading stuff on the web “sucks” too, depending on where you go to read it. So, to improve the user experience on the web, Apple provides Safari Reader as a way to get around efforts made by obtuse web developers and content producers to make actually viewing their content as odious as possible in a desperate (and in my opinion, self-defeating) attempt to drive up ad revenue.

To be clear, I don’t think Apple is in any way trying to be altruistic towards web users by building Safari Reader. It is, however, an entirely intended consequence of selfishly trying to make something they themselves enjoy using, and then sharing it. At the end of the day, stuff like this improves their profits by providing a better user experience than their competitors, which is all that really matters, corporately speaking. However, I don’t think Apple is being intentionally antagonistic towards advertisers or the people who use them on their websites as a whole, nor do I think they’re being hypocritical in their behavior. They’re just being incidentally antagonistic towards ad networks and websites that are already being antagonistic toward their readers, and even then only in one small metric (multipage articles) whose real-world use in no way matches up to Ars Technica’s altruistic “multipage articles cost more to produce, and so require more ad revenue” argument. While this may be true (and entirely acceptable) for their multipage content, the web as a whole has an entirely different reason for creating such content: it artificially drives up page views on content that’s no more expensive to produce than Ars’ “etc” posts, and that’s just fsking annoying.

In the end, Safari Reader continues the fine browser tradition of empowering users, and will likely have even less of an impact on actual ad revenues than the invention of the pop-up blocker. Bringing iAds into the argument is nothing but a non sequitur which ignores the differences in advertising usage and history across two very different platforms. It also ignores the present realities of mobile advertising, and the proposed solution would put Apple at a competitive disadvantage at best (by only blocking iAds), and draw the ire of its competitors and developers at worst (by allowing users to block all ad platforms). Pretending that Google isn’t up to the same practice with Android, and not tearing them a new one as a result, is just downright disingenuous.

So it looks like the idiots in Microsoft’s marketing department responsible for the laughably inaccurate “IE9 is more awesome than Firefox” list that I deconstructed last year is at it again, this time comparing Windows Live Essentials to iLife ‘09.

I’d first like to put aside the absurdity of Microsoft comparing and contrasting the two creativity suites in the first place. The simple fact that this chart exists demonstrates how prevalent the “Macs are better creativity machines” meme is in the marketplace. You just don’t do stuff like this when you’re in a confident leadership position. And you especially do do such a piss-poor job of fact-checking your claims.

Second, this is being written in advance of the WWDC keynote, which could change some of these arguments depending on what Apple decides to announce. This most heavily applies to MobileMe’s pricing, which is rumored to be getting a serious overhaul today. Still, I’ll be going to battle with the facts I have, not the facts I want.

Ultimately though, there is a degree of apples-to-oranges comparing going on, largely because Microsoft considers Apple’s lack of support for Microsoft’s services as dings against Apple, but frequently fails to ding themselves for failing to support MobileMe (ah fairness, wherefore art thou?), but also because Microsoft keeps having to drag other OS X applications into the chart to fully compare the two suites since Essentials includes stuff like an IM client, mail client, and (bizarrely, IMO) parental controls which are built into Mac OS X. But bizarre comparisons aside, how accurate are they? Well… not very, I’m sad (but not surprised) to say. I’ll be tackling this section-by-section, so hang on for a lengthy bitch-fest .

Application Suites

Cost & Multitouch Support

What a bizarre (I know, I keep using that word) category heading. Whatever. I don’t think either of the “cost” columns really accurately portrays the cost of purchasing these two offerings. First, iLife comes free on every new Mac, so the effective cost of the suite itself is effectively nothing for those reading this chart from the Windows side of the fence. However, new Macs start at $599, so on the other hand there’s a hidden cost to be factored in there. From the other side of the fence, buying a new Windows 7 machine (or at least a new Windows 7 license) to run Live Essentials is between $100 and $250, depending on which version you buy and whether you skirt legality with OEM or system-builder licensing (unless you’re a student, in which case you may be able to get it for right cheap).

Ultimately this pricing thing feels like a huge gimmick spun up by marketing to intentionally misrepresent the facts of the situation as they pertain to their target audience. People interested in actually comparing the capabilities of these two suites for the purposes of buying a new computer are likely to be taken in by Microsoft’s implicit claim that in addition to getting that new $600+ machine, they’ll need to spend $79 to do anything “useful” with it, which makes Apple’s offering look even worse in comparison to getting a new Windows machine (which may or may not be cheaper, depending on the user’s needs) and getting a free software bundle on top of it.

Further, Microsoft seems intent on wrapping MobileMe into the iLife suite as well, which is by no means necessary for taking advantage of the capabilities of any of the iLife software. Sure, it allows you to take advantage of additional outlets for sharing, but it’s not like you’re locked into Apple’s platform end-to-end if you go with iLife. But sure, whatever, point to Microsoft for offering their cloud services for free. We’ll see how long this advantage lasts though.

Finally, the multitouch thing just kills me. How many people are going to take this bullet point seriously? First off, Apple doesn’t sell touchscreen devices that will run iLife, so the point of being able to use screen-based multitouch in their software is moot. More importantly though, who the hell cares about this feature in the first place? Are there really that many people with touchscreen computers aching to be able to rotate their photos with their fingers? Ugh. Points for the feature sprawl, Microsoft, but nothing else.

Chat/IM Apps

Instant Messaging

From here out, we get into the nitty-gritty stupid. Let’s leave Adium out as a free downloadable alternative multi-chat client and just stick with Microsoft’s decision to put MSN Messenger and iChat head-to-head.

Okay, MSN Messenger (from here out, MSMM) supports YIM, iChat doesn’t. Fair enough. And shock of shocks, iChat also doesn’t support the arguably arcane and proprietary “Office Communications Server”. Shocking.

Personalization (Scenes/Themes). Wow. Because I always thought MSMM was way more beautiful to look at than iChat. Why is this always such a huge bullet point when all it ever seems to do is make your application even uglier than it is by default? And seriously, games? This is an IM client, not a full-on replacement for fucking Facebook.

And now, the first of many actual inaccuracies (rather than pointless marketing fluff): iChat does indeed support tabbed chat. It’s had it since Leopard came out in 2007. It’s even on Apple’s feature sheet for iChat! I found this in 5 seconds by googling for “ichat tabs” images. Maybe Bing just doesn’t find that result… (oh my god, it really doesn’t!)

Social Networking

Beyond the falsehood of the initial claim that iChat can’t connect to Facebook Chat (yes it can, Facebook Chat uses Jabber, which iChat supports), I’m guessing that the rest of this is accurate, if irrelevant in my opinion. MSNM is a bloated pig of an application (as evidenced by the fact that it has games built into it) that tries desperately to be a social media hub by taking on huge swaths of functionality that are poorly designed (again, in my opinion) and make the application less capable for its original purpose: instant messaging.

A couple of final notes on this section, though… first, is anyone actually using this impossibly vague “Web Activities” feature? And is it just me, or is Microsoft actually working hard to make sure that you’re less productive at your computer by incessantly telling you about what all of your hundreds of Facebook friends are doing right this very instant?

Finally, what the hell kind of email integration is MSMM capable of that iChat isn’t? iChat ties into your address book to pull contacts into your buddy list (which I guess is technically Address Book integration on the Mac)… beyond that, what other aspects of my email would I even need to have integrated? Explain, Microsoft! Vague, unexplained bullet points in a vast sea of feature lists do not a convincing argument make!

Access Anywhere

Does Microsoft have an MSMM client in the App Store, or are they just proclaiming that since apps in the App Store support MSMM, they have an iPhone client? A search for “MSN Messenger”, “Windows Live”, and a review of apps published by Microsoft in the App Store revealed no first-party Messenger clients, so I’m not sure why they get a check mark here when iChat – which uses chat protocols equally well-supported in the App Store – doesn’t. The rest is fairly tech-y… IM on the web I can see as being marginally useful in out-and-about situations, but “IM Developer Platform”? You’re really pushing that as a client-relevant feature? Also, iChat may not specifically support SMS and mobile chat, but AIM – which iChat integrates with – does. Just because Apple hasn’t poured unnecessary resources into duplicating others’ work in creating mobile AIM clients doesn’t mean you can’t use them.

This whole category feels improperly targeted, to be honest. Microsoft is running their own social network through MSN Messenger on top of the MSN Messenger (sorry, Windows Live Messenger) client application, so they get to claim a ton of ecosystem benefits that iChat can’t, because Apple isn’t running the AIM network. That doesn’t mean iChat is less capable, as is implied, it just means that if you’re tied into the AIM network, you need to use other pieces of software when taking advantage of non-desktop-specific use cases.

Photo Gallery/iPhoto

Here we go…

Organize/Find

Top People: I’m assuming this lists the people who appear most frequently in your photos. In that case, I can’t easily find a way to replicate this feature in iPhoto. Fair enough.

Photo Finder Filters: For quick searches using the search bar, yes, iPhoto only allows one type of filter at a time (name/rating/tags/etc.). However, I’m not above creating a quick, disposable Smart Folder to do a search on multiple criteria. This seems to be something of an Apple-ism: want to find something quickly? Use a general search. Want to find something a bit more involved? Use a Smart Folder.

Batch Face Detection Confirm: Um… iPhoto does this. I’m not at home with my library of face-tagged photos, but I’ve done it before. It’s not hard. I think it’s a tied to a button in the bottom toolbar actually. Fail again, Microsoft.

Touch Up

Microsoft wins this category fair and square with some more advanced photo editing capabilities, especially the content aware fill-like Photo Fuse (which I think is just kinda creepy) and panorama stitching. I’m amused that it took them until Wave 4 to add a retouch feature though.

Publishing & Sharing

Flickr Sharing: It’s like Microsoft doesn’t even bother opening these applications before comparing them to their Windows Live counterparts. Flickr sharing is indeed supported in iPhoto. In fact, again, this is even called out by a huge “Flickr” button in the bottom toolbar!

Share to Windows Live: “for MobileMe”. What? If anything, I guess I should give Microsoft credit for giving iPhoto a check mark here, but I guess the alternative was to add another row for “Share to MobileMe” which Photo Gallery would have failed at.

Plugins: Not really a huge deal for me, and I can’t imaging it being one for many others, but whatever. Point.

Native Sign-in: Again, vague feature is vague. iPhoto features integrated, native sign-in with MobileMe (I just opened iPhoto for the first time on my work machine and all of my MobileMe albums were already accessible), but not Flickr or Facebook. Of course, “publishing partners” under Photo Gallery’s check mark is equally vague, so I can’t say for sure if Photo Gallery automatically signs you into Flickr or Facebook either. In any case, fail for not mentioning the integrated MobileMe sign-in when touting your own product’s Windows Live sign-in.

Video & DVD Apps

Editing

A lot of the reasons Movie Maker wins in these feature comparisons is because Apple completely rebooted iMovie a couple of years ago, and has yet to rebuild the feature list in the new product. And to be fair, comparing your release to your competitor’s current release is pretty standard. Still, for those looking for more capabilities without springing for Final Cut Express, iMovie HD is still floating around the Interwebs.

AutoMovie from movies, photos, music: iMovie does a limited version of this, but I don’t have the media at work to test the extent to which this is still true. iMovie HD did a lot better in this arena.

Auto-preview effects, transitions, & animations: Again, the new iMovie doesn’t live preview against your own content, but the non-rebooted version did. I can’t imagine this disparity persisting for many more versions, but Apple does have a bad habit of pushing people into the more expensive solution sometimes unnecessarily, so we’ll have to wait and see. If we’re lucky, Apple getting some competition in the “free” media editing software space should help spur faster development.

Publishing & Sharing

So remember in the Photo Gallery/iPhoto comparison when I said it was a wonder Microsoft gave iPhoto a pass on publishing to Windows Live? Yeah, they reversed course here for no readily apparent reason and split out Windows Live and MobileMe into their own rows. Also, Microsoft continues their Facebook hard-on. Was Facebook video publishing even available when iLife ‘09 was released? I expect that if not, it’s something that will be remedied in the next release of iMovie. Apple’s getting better about social networking outside of their own services.

Output Support

I need to check at home to verify the output resolution claim, but I also don’t really have any 1080p video to work with, so… yeah. Also, I’d much rather have h264 video than WMV. Seriously. Finally, video mail? How important is that to people, or are we just padding the feature list again? Besides, I can do video mail… it’s called a private YouTube video with the link sent via email, or a video uploaded to MobileMe with the link sent via email. Way more efficient, and way less likely to consume the recipient’s entire email quota.

Mail Apps

I can’t believe Microsoft is actually tooting Apple’s horn here by promoting Mail.app’s Exchange support. But hey, I did make the point at the beginning of this post that these guys are idiots .

Why is Mail listed as having an attachment file size limit? I’ve never run into an attachment size problem in Mail.app. If that’s a mail provider limitation, then be specific about that, MS. People can use Mail.app with Hotmail, which I’m guessing is where your claim of unlimited file size for photo attachments is coming from. I’d still much rather cloud-source the files than potentially destroy the recipient’s ability to receive more mail by stuffing their inbox… not everyone uses your services, Microsoft!

Point for irrelevant “Slim Cal” feature… can’t say I’ve ever needed or missed the integrated calendar from Outlook after moving to my Mac at work, where I use the calendar a lot more than I do at home.

Conversation threading: again, Microsoft fails at actually knowing what they’re talking about. Mail’s supported threaded conversations since at least Leopard, if not Tiger or before (I came in on Tiger and don’t really use the feature, so I can’t say for certain when it showed up).

I have no idea what “integration with cloud storage” Microsoft is talking about here that Mail doesn’t support. Mail.app can access any web-based mail service that Live Mail can, plus a few more that may support Exchange ActiveSync, which Live Mail doesn’t.

Publishing Apps

Here again, Microsoft is going for an apples-to-oranges comparison between Writer and iWeb. They serve different purposes and different audiences, but they tried to shoehorn them into a single feature comparison chart. The end result is that neither really looks exceptional in all categories (as would be expected when comparing to products with wildly different aims). Bullet points like “Familiarity with Microsoft Office” just make it look like they’re trying too hard to come up with downsides to ding iWeb for. This whole section doesn’t even deserve a more drawn-out review.

Security Apps

Once more I’m puzzled as to why Microsoft is offloading parental controls into a separate, non-bundled product, but whatever. I’m betting they’re using Family Security to trojan the rest of the Live Essentials platform into the computer by promoting that Live Essentials (through Family Security) can give you more control over how your kids use the machine.

I’m not even sure why most of these check marks are in this list, since they pretty much exclusively apply to Windows Live and Family Safety themselves. About the only thing you could possibly give them credit for is the live website filtering. Everything else is either totally irrelevant to a Mac user, or OS X supports out-of-the-box.

Music Creation Apps

I’m entertained that Microsoft is even choosing to promote the fact that this is something you can’t do with Live Essentials. Aside from that, I’m not sure why they aren’t using the GarageBand icon, or why GarageBand isn’t spelled correctly (there’s no space in “GarageBand”).

Wrap-up

To be fair, this list is a bit better than the IE9 vs. Firefox/Chrome/Safari chart they came up with last year. However, there are some pretty incredible and glaring inaccuracies that even a brief usage of the apps in question would reveal. Plus, the majority of the pro-Essentials check marks are relatively obscure features that seem to be there mostly to give Microsoft something to brag about, rather than something that would provide actual utility to the user (particularly in the MSMM/iChat comparison). Between that and the obscure FUD-ness of the pricing at the beginning of the chart, it seems like this was hastily thrown together to meet some new demand from management that they counter the “Macs are better at creative stuff” meme in advance of whatever Steve might say at WWDC today. D-, Microsoft.

Engadget has rumors of a new Apple TV product refresh that seems to play into a few of the ideas I had for the device after the iPhone OS 4 announcement.

Possibly the most interesting thing is that the report indicates Apple is ditching the Apple TV-specific branch of OS X for the iPhone OS. This is indisputably a good move. Apple TV’s software is still built on 10.4 Tiger, while the Mac has advanced to 10.6 and the iPhone OS branch of OS X is nearly 4 revisions along now. It always struck me as odd that Apple would put so much effort into maintaining a major product on such a legacy platform (by Apple’s standards, anyway) when the newer releases of both OS X and the iPhone OS are so much more capable.

Also interesting (and a point of pride given that I freaking called it! ) is that the Apple TV is moving to Apple’s A4 processor, away from the tremendously underpowered mobile Pentium-era chipset in the current model. Again, this makes considerable sense, because it reduces development expenses and complexity across Apple’s product line. Apple’s done a good job at demonstrating the power and efficiency of their custom silicon through the iPad (and presumably the new iPhone), and leveraging that hardware in another product seems like a given. Apple TV’s form factor and performance needs are much more suited to an ARM chipset than anything from Intel. Hopefully this will also bring the device’s power consumption down to more “environmental checklist”-friendly levels.

Given the paucity of onboard storage space (only 16GB SSD), I think this rumor also dovetails nicely with the rumors of an upcoming cloud-based iTunes service that have been floating around since Apple started building their new North Carolina data center, and which intensified after they bought Lala earlier this year. It’ll be interesting to see how this service ends up working, and whether it will allow users to upload their existing non-iTunes content into the cloud for universal access.

The thing that interests me most about this rumor, though, is the possibility that Apple could open up the Apple TV as a new platform for applications. Depending on how they approach this, it could be as simple as allowing services like Netflix and Hulu to stream their content onto the device through custom apps, or it could be as advanced as a full-on gaming console-type device. I think the “standard” approach would be to limit the device to audio and video playback, with the basic Apple remote for navigation, since that’s what most people would likely be buying one for. However, provided it had a Bluetooth radio in it (and why not?), it wouldn’t be difficult to expand support to more complex inputs such as dedicated controllers – or even iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad inputs – for gaming.

As I mentioned in my iPhone OS 4 post-mortem, Apple has a significant amount of support on their mobile platform for gaming (and now with Steam on the Mac, growing support for gaming on their desktop platform as well, hooray!). Major companies like EA and UbiSoft are developing major titles for the iPhone and iPad. Why not build on that support by expanding from the mobile space into the living room? With additions to the iPhone OS like Game Center, a robust platform for development, high-powered and highly-efficient hardware drawn from the mobile space, and serious support from major publishers, I think Apple could easily leverage their success with the iPhone OS into a major play for the living room by providing a familiar and broadly-supported platform to the masses who have already bought into Apple’s media ecosystem through iTunes.

The one potential sticking point in the gaming arena is the paucity of onboard storage. 16GB isn’t a lot for games designed for the TV, presumably complete with major-platform price points and gameplay length. I sort of hope that Apple differentiates the line-up with larger-capacity devices (up to 64 or 128GB) and supports cloud storage of apps and app data so you can swap out titles as you play them without having to worry about losing your games or your progress.

Will all of this happen? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, the potential is there for Apple to swing straight from their success in mobile computing into a play against Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and now Google for control of the living room, using their experience with the “hobby” of Apple TV as a springboard. If nothing else, ideally the promise of third-party streaming services like Netflix and Hulu will come to pass. Given the rumored $99 price point, that may not happen as Apple may seek to make money off of this device through services rather than the actual hardware, but one never knows. I kind of hope this ends up being the “One More Thing” for the WWDC keynote despite Engadget’s assertion that it won’t be mentioned, because with the next iPhone essentially being a known entity already, it’d be nice if there were something like this to announce and flesh out to retain a certain level of interest and surprise. Assuming Apple plans to open this platform up to developers, WWDC seems like as good a place as any to get the word out – even if it doesn’t ship the product until later this year – so that the device can hit the ground running with a broad range of applications already available for it. I don’t think the iPad approach of scaling existing apps up to fit TV screens is going to work at all for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that TVs aren’t multitouch-compatible. There’s going to need to be a longer lead time on 3rd-party development to build apps that are Apple TV-compatible; existing apps simply won’t translate despite the commonality of the underlying architecture.

Hey, this tech pundit stuff is easy! Why can’t I get paid for it?

I think I need to work on my witty titles…

As I alluded to on Twitter earlier, I’m trial-running an app called Delibar for OS X that syncs with Delicious for bookmark management. The problem I’ve had with Delicious in the past is that there’s no really really good solution for Delicious that integrates with Safari, on account of Safari’s lack of an official plug-in architecture. There’s a handful of 3rd party apps and a couple of SIMBL “plug-ins” that support Delicious in various ways, but nothing that ties directly into Safari’s bookmarks system to sync it with Delicious directly, and give me access to those bookmarks from Safari’s bookmark bar (yeah, I’m annoyingly picky). I’ve also tried to switch to Firefox on the Mac, but it seems slower than Safari, and it’s always just different enough from the rest of OS X to annoy the hell out of me whenever I try to use it long-term (again, picky…).

Ultimately, I took some time to reflect on how I use my bookmarks in an effort to figure out how best to approach the issue of keeping them organized and accessible in as many places as possible with as little fuss as possible. What helped the most was when I stopped thinking about my bookmarks in such a monolithic, all-or-nothing manner, and approached them on a more purpose-driven basis. To make my point, a little bit of informative explanation is probably in order.

Upon reflection, I use my bookmarks for three things: first, I use them for regular, everyday sites like comics that don’t have RSS feeds, forum links, and some work-related items. These tend to sit towards the right side of my bookmark bar in Safari, and get used with relative frequency (once a day or more).

Second are the bookmarks I create to be sure I “get back to” a certain site, because I want to spend more time reviewing the content, or because I want to show it to someone else who is unavailable while I’m looking at it, or because I think it’s neat, but don’t want to clutter my bookmarks folder with something I’ll probably look at once or twice a year at most when I’m looking for something to spark my creativity (or whatever). These tend to pile onto the left side of my bookmark bar, and thus have an annoying habit of shoving the frequently-used bookmarks into the “>>” chevron menu. I also have an annoying habit of ignoring them despite their prominence, because they’re more often just in the way.

Finally, there are the bookmarks I create to make sure I have the content available for future reference. These include things like troubleshooting articles, interesting (but not immediately useful) jQuery or WordPress plugins, application websites, and articles on subjects I’m interested in learning more about (or that I think are awesome). These are rarely-used but important for me to keep around in case I need them in the future, but tend to end up poorly-categorized because of the rigidity of Safari’s folder-based bookmark system.

I’ve also noticed that I tend not to use bookmarks on my iPod all that much. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re effectively hidden all the time and thus out of sight, out of mind, or if it’s because my mobile browsing habits are just different from my desktop ones, and I tend not to visit the sites I’ve bookmarked as much. Either way, cutting down on bookmark cruft in MobileSafari will be nothing but helpful in keeping only the stuff I access most frequently at my fingertips; everything else will still be accessible, but through different means, as explained below.

What I’ve decided upon is a system that puts each type of bookmark into a system that best supports what I’m using those bookmarks for. Thus, I have a more complex – but easier to mind-space – three-pronged system that I’m trialing starting today.

First, for my frequently-used bookmarks, I will continue to rely on MobileMe’s bookmark sync to keep everything consistent from device to device (including my iPod). There are a few bookmarklets on my bookmark bar now for MobileSafari-specific actions (such as a tool for displaying the title text of an image, which is useful for things like XKCD), and then my commonly-accessed bookmarks, which tend to break down into folders much more cleanly than my other two types of bookmarks.

Second, for bookmarks that I make just so I can check out a site’s content at a later date, I’ve started to use Read It Later, which should help cut down on the number of tabs I have floating open between Safari and Gruml (my desktop RSS reader) from day to day. I’ve also downloaded the service’s free iPhone app, so that I can, for instance, poke at stuff while I’m on the couch, rather than at my computer.

Finally, I’ve decided to start using Delicious again as a way to house all of my “type-3″ bookmarks that I make largely for reference purposes. By splitting these bookmarks away from my main bookmark content, I’m less averse to using a separate app in OS X to access/maintain them because I won’t be losing toolbar-level access to all of my important/frequent bookmarks as a result.

Not the fun part will be getting everything re-organized, because having just started, everything’s sort of all over the place at the moment. It’ll probably take a day or two of concerted effort to get it all cleaned up and properly categorized, but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run. Once I’m done, I’ll have a concise collection of bookmarklets and frequently-used  bookmarks in Safari, a consolidated collection of “things to get back to” on Read It Later that I can check regularly, and a nice tagged archive of “stuff” reference links in Delicious.

Now I’m off to work on my organization. Wish me luck!

So it looks like I was both close and far off on my predictions for the new iPhone OS that Apple previewed today. I wanted to post some thoughts on how well I did, as well as a general collection of thoughts on Apple’s presentation itself. So first, how well I did on my predictions.

Multitasking

I don’t think this was a huge surprise for anyone, but it was still very nice to see it actually happen. I was mostly wrong about the UX for it though, and to be fair the rumors weren’t entirely correct either. The Dashboard widget toolbar interface (as opposed to the rumored Exposé interface or my conceptual Safari web pages interface) is an interesting decision on Apple’s part. The design details are perhaps the most interesting thing to me, actually. The iPhone OS dock now reflects the desktop OS X dock across all platforms. I find this interesting mostly because the original iPod Touch firmware had a similar dock UI, but changed to match the iPhone in a later update. Now with the iPad and the new iPhone OS, everything is switching over to the glass Mac dock.

I like the spread of features being made available to developers to create backgrounded applications, and totally understand the way that multitasking is being handled on the iPhone for battery life reasons… tying into services that the OS offers is way less intensive than everybody writing their own services to do whatever they want whenever they want, and with the possible exception of RSS feed fetching in the background (something which can technically be done with push notifications when the app is tied to a service), this handles pretty much every use case people have been griping about on the iPhone.

I was of two minds regarding the multitasking behavior after the presentation was over, but the hands-on stuff from Engadget and others has given me a pretty good glimpse into how everything works, and I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m still not sure if apps will continue to spawn into the multitasking dock until the system runs out of memory, and how it will remove them from that dock at that point (presumably on a least-recently-used-first basis), but other questions like how apps get into the app switcher (by default) and how to remove apps from the app switcher (press and hold to bring up a minus symbol) have been answered to my satisfaction. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the implementation, even if it’s nothing completely ground-breaking.

Unified Inbox

Something else that was pretty much a given, though the additional Mail improvements are also nice, especially the “open attachments in 3rd party apps” feature. I’m looking forward to seeing the video of the presentation that Apple will inevitably release tonight so that I can see stuff like mailbox switching and threaded conversations “first-hand”.

Home Screen Contacts

This one didn’t seem terribly likely to me, but I included it due to the rumor mill’s general enthusiasm for the idea. Not really surprised it isn’t there, but then Apple also didn’t show off all of the new features in OS 4.0, so it might be tucked away for devs to discover while they tinker with the beta. Combined with the new Springboard folders, that might be a relatively useful speed dial feature.

Springboard Wallpaper & API Enhancements

I’m somewhat surprised that there wasn’t more of a focus on the developer side of the new OS, but everyone does love new shiny features they can brag about, so I’ll take what we got for what it is. That said, I’m glad to see the iPad Springboard improvements making their way into the iPhone/iPod Touch release, and look forward to finding out if the other API improvements like embedded video content have made their way in as well. Guess we’ll have to wait for the developers to get their hands dirty.

File Store/Sync

Nothing mentioned on this front. This may be another wait-and-see thing, but it may just not be in Apple’s plans for the iPhone builds of the OS since Apple doesn’t treat the iPhone as a work productivity device the way they do the iPad. They may just not feel that file store/sync is as important on the smaller-screened devices.

New Lock Screen

I’m also honestly not all that surprised by this one not showing up, but I don’t think the final nail can be quite put into the coffin yet. During the Q&A Engadget asked about it, at least as far as the iPad is concerned, and the response from Apple was somewhat cat-and-mouse-y, with Jobs saying that they had just released the iPad on Saturday, and on Sunday they rested. Given that the iPad release of iPhone OS 4.0 won’t be until the fall, it’s possible they have a few bonus features planned for it which they’re holing close to the vest right now.

New Push Notifications UX

This is the one I’m perhaps least surprised and most frustrated about not happening. I do like that apps can now generate notifications locally though, and hope that developers do so in a mostly unobtrusive manner by using icon badges and sound alerts more than the annoying modal pop-up dialogs. This should be a big hit with to-do list apps and such, so that they can update their application icons with new badges without having to be launched first.

Home Screen Organization Improvements

As may be obvious based on the fact that I only gave this a 5% chance of happening, I’m very surprised by the addition of folders to the OS, but also greet it warmly, because it’s something that’s become more and more necessary as the App Store continues to overflow with new apps.

Thoughts on Apple’s Event, by Tent Pole

First off, before I get to the feature focuses, I’m excited by the possibilities of Apple opening up 1,500 new APIs for developers to get their hands on, and can’t wait to see what comes of it as a result. I’m also looking forward to seeing what secrets Apple has slipped into the SDK for developers to discover and take advantage of that weren’t mentioned during today’s presentation. Now then, on to the big top!

Multitasking

Again, I’m glad this is finally coming, and it’s nice to see that Apple will once again be out ahead of Microsoft in the mobile arena by the end of the year in pretty much every respect when compared to the Windows Phone 7 OS. I’m not at all surprised that only the iPhone 3GS, the Gen3 iPod Touch, and the iPad will be getting all of the new hotness including multitasking, but am a bit saddened (though not entirely surprised) by the fact that original iPhone and iPod Touch owners are out in the cold entirely. Oh well, the mobile space has grown and shifted dramatically since the iPhone came out in 2007, so it’s not entirely unexpected that these platforms would need to be cut loose eventually when the software is now doing WAY more than it was ever originally designed or intended to do. The fact that we’ve gotten the 3.0 OS is no small wonder.

I very much like the fact that third-party apps are being given access to the iPod controls on the lock screen, the “return to call” double-height information bar (for stuff like Skype), and the headphone hardware controls. This again provides for a better framework and a consistent UI that users don’t need to re-adjust to when using third-party apps instead of first-party ones.

Folders & Wallpaper

I like these. I even like their implementation, because it’s pretty much as drop-dead simple as you can get. The auto-naming feature based on the category of the app in the App Store is pretty clever too. Being able to keep folders in the dock is double nice, and the UI is very slick (and even slicker after having watched the Engadget hands-on video), even if the folders are limited to 12 apps each.

The wallpaper on the Home Screen is also a nice touch, though obviously both of these are nothing revolutionary (or even new, for jailbreakers).

Enhanced Mail

Huzzah!

So, unified inbox, multiple Exchange accounts, and threaded conversations. IIRC from the Ars coverage, you can even save searches. No word on content searching though, which is something of a bummer. Anybody with a dev account want to give it a spin? In any case, this pretty much matches all of the major selling points of Windows Phone 7’s mail client.

Third party app support for attachments is also great to see. Very pleased about that one in particular (though unified inbox is still #1 for me).

iBooks

Um, yay? I’m not entirely sure why this is a tent pole feature for Apple, but kudos to them for back-porting it from the iPad I guess. The wireless bookmark and position sync is interesting… based on this and a couple of other things it seems like Apple is starting to get closer to a fully wireless sync process with iTunes, which would be nice to see.

Enterprise Support

This isn’t really something I’m particularly interested in, but again, kudos to Apple for improving their position in the marketplace. The wireless application roll-out and device management features are perhaps the most interesting things here for me, because as I mentioned in my iBooks comments, it look like Apple is sort of building a wireless sync process piecemeal. It’d be nice to see more expansion and consolidation of these concepts further down the road.

Game Center

This is just incredible. Apple effectively building their own mobile (and free!) X-box Live service for developers and tying it straight into the OS is a fantastic move, especially for a company that has historically eschewed games as a platform of interest. It’s a really powerful answer to Microsoft’s X-box Live integration in WinPhone 7, and I’d be interested to see if this is something that eventually makes the jump over to the desktop OS in the next major release. If Apple can get as serious about building a quality gaming platform on the desktop as they are in the mobile space, Microsoft will have some serious competition on their hands, because let’s face it: Games for Windows Live still sucks rocks through a straw.

As unlikely as it may be, I think this also opens the door for Apple to get into the console gaming business, and seriously expand the Apple TV market by tying it into the Game Center. Obviously this will require some new hardware, but with Apple having an in-house chip designer (or two), and the obvious power available behind their existing mobile devices, I think it’s much more doable today than it ever has been before. Apple’s already got all of the big gaming studios on-board with the iPhone and iPad… leveraging their existing expertise with Apple’s mobile platform by hooking it into a TV is almost a no-brainer.

I think this was the biggest news to come out of the event, because I don’t think anyone saw it coming, and it has the potential to completely redefine the mobile gaming space (again) before Microsoft ever gets their first WinPhone 7 device out into the public’s hands. If they move fast enough, Apple could very easily put out a console device tied into the iTunes Store by the end of the year and start some very serious competition with Microsoft for the living room.

iAd

Terrible, terrible name. I liked the “AdKit” name that was floated earlier, though that may also be in use as the developer-side term for the mobile marketing toolkit itself.

I’m actually quite positive on this framework, because to be honest, Steve’s right: I rarely click on ads in apps, even ones I’m actually interested in, because I know it’s going to pull me out of the app I’m using, and I Have Things To Do Right Now. Giving devs a framework for providing ads that they don’t have to think about, while giving users a better experience with the ads they decide to click on that isn’t disruptive to their usage of an app is a win-win as far as I’m concerned.

The thing that annoys me, honestly, are the idiots who are intentionally misunderstanding Apple’s ad framework and using it to knock the OS as being ad-driven, even for paid apps, simply because they can’t bitch about multitasking anymore. Anyone who says anything along the lines of “why is the iPhone OS serving me ads in paid applications?!” is deliberately misstating the facts of the situation. This is a framework for developers to use instead of services like AdMob, to serve you ads where they were already planning on serving them anyway. Paid applications will only have ads in them if the developer wants to put them there, and the OS itself isn’t going to just start throwing ads at you.

I also want to give Apple kudos for showing up Adobe yet again by making incredibly rich, dynamic ads using nothing but HTML5, and for deliberately making a point of that during the presentation. Just one more nail in Flash’s coffin at this rate. It’s weird to see a company push so strenuously for an platform over which it has no control in an effort to ostracize a closed platform it also doesn’t control, rather than making its own closed platform (*cough*Silverlight*cough*), but ditching Flash for an open standard is to everyone’s benefit, not just Apple’s, and it’s nice to see them dragging Microsoft kicking and screaming into the future of the web in the process.

Versus Windows Phone 7

I don’t really think Microsoft has much going for it now with Windows Phone 7 beyond the X-box Live service integration. The WinPhone 7 Home Screen’s big claim to fame is the live-updating tiles, almost all of which can also be done now using the iPhone’s combination of local and push notifications, and I personally prefer the icon-based home screen UI of the iPhone to the sea of solid color and text that is the WinPhone 7 home screen UI. While theoretically the live tiles can be used to push stuff like weather info, the only thing I’ve seen demoed that the iPhone can’t do is photo pushing, which isn’t that huge of a thing to me. I’d love to see Apple live-update the Weather app icon the way it does the Calendar app though. Also, I find the constant movement of the live tiles incredibly distracting, like I’m looking at a web page full of Flash ads. Ugh.

I’m entertained that the iPhone will have better mulitasking support than WinPhone 7 will at launch, because Microsoft has confirmed that apps like Pandora won’t be allowed to continue running in the background in a way that actually matters (i.e. playing music). It’s still not full multitasking like what you get on the desktop (or WebOS [whose multitasking seems possible largely because so much of its application base is WebKit-driven], or possibly Android), but it’ll do the job for 99.9% of the usage cases people have been grumping about over the past 3 years, and the multitasking behavior is otherwise on par with Microsoft’s “suspend and resume” architecture. I’m also entertained that the iPhone will have copy and paste this winter, while WinPhone 7 will not. And for some reason the pundits aren’t nearly as apoplectic over Microsoft not having this feature at launch as they were over Apple leaving it out.

I also think WinPhone 7’s “hubs” are slightly overblown when it comes to their level of importance and game-changery. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see someone build iPhone applications that replicate the functionality of the People and Photos hubs, pulling in information and updates from multiple sources and sending updates to various networks as well (in fact, I’m pretty sure these already exist), and with the new APIs for photos and such in version 4, it should be even easier to build stuff like that.

Again, Microsoft’s biggest built-in advantage over the iPhone is X-box Live. If they can spend the next 7 months getting developers to build high-quality games with multi-system support (desktop, X-box, and WinPhone), I think they’ll easily hold onto their place as a gaming king-pin. Apple’s nipping at their heels now in the mobile department, and has been for some time. The new Game Center services which Apple is building around their iTunes empire (based on the Engadget walkthrough, you log in with your iTunes user account) are sure to cause Microsoft some stress, and as I mentioned earlier, this positions Apple well to launch into the console arena using what they’ve learned from their mobile ventures to build something really awesome and bring a more serious device to the war for the living room than the Apple TV has been.

Wrap-up

Overall, this was a pretty sizable, quality update. Not everything in it is revolutionary – or even new to those who have already jailbroken their devices – but for those of us who don’t want to futz with breaking out of the walled garden, it’s nice to see these improvements come to the general populace. It’s frustrating that the first-generation touch devices are excluded from this upgrade entirely, but it’s understandable, given that Apple’s mobile devices have changed so much in the past 3 years. My Gen1 iPod Touch is starting to get noticeably sluggish running 3.1.3, so I don’t think 4.0 would be a terribly good idea anyway. I’m also a little frustrated that the iPad won’t get 4.0 until this fall, but like I said before, there’s probably additional work to be done getting it ready for the iPad, and some extra bonus features may squeeze their way in as well, so I’m OK with that. I’m also much more enthused about getting an iPad now (like I wasn’t already, haha), knowing what’s in the pipeline for it with the 4.0 upgrade.

Engadget got an invitation today from Apple to join them for an iPhone OS 4.0 “sneak peek” on the 8th. This isn’t exactly a typical move from Apple from what I can tell. They tend to prefer to spread news about their products out relatively evenly throughout the year to be sure that each one gets its due time in the press cycle, and this press event comes less than a week after the launch of the iPad.

Granted, Apple’s running out of time before the typical June/July release window for the next iPhone, so they may not really have a choice on timing if they want to talk about it publicly and still give developers time to start building new apps to take advantage of whatever is new in the OS this time around before the new hardware rolls out this summer.

It will be interesting to see how this event is presented now that the iPhone OS supports two different classes of devices: the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad. I’m curious to see if any of the new stuff in the iPad-specific iPhone OS 3.2 update will be rolled back into the iPhone-compatible version, like the wallpaper persisting onto the Home Screen, or if that’s intended to remain an iPad-only feature. I’m also curious if they’ll be breaking the presentation up into 2 pieces for the different hardware platforms, or if it’ll be more of a general 20,000-foot overview.

So, what do I think is going to be announced? Well, the rumors have an Exposé-style multitasking implementation, a unified email inbox, and the ability to add contacts to the Home Screen. I’d guess that multitasking is pretty much a lock, and the inbox seems like a probability as well given that Jobs personally indicated that it was coming down the pipe. Contacts on the home screen maybe, but I won’t hold my breath for it.

It would be interesting to see how MS responds to 3rd party multitasking on the iPhone since Windows Phone 7 won’t support it any more than iPhone OS 3.x does right now. I’m also curious about the implementation details… the icon-based Exposé idea is nice given the screen real-estate (and may feature full-sized window previews on the larger iPad), but something about it strikes me as off. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to delineate on the user-end which apps you want to close and which you want to leave running using this approach, without adding a Multitasking pane to the Settings app, and that seems decidedly un-Apple-like. The rumor also claims that task switching would be triggered by a double-click of the Home button. Given that the Home button already does up to 2 different things when double-clicked already (iPod controls and Search or Home Screen), using this behavior for a system-wide task-switching trigger seems ill-advised. A long-press of the Home button seems like it would make more sense since no existing behavior is tied to that action and it remains fairly simple to execute.

Additionally, since I don’t think multitasking is going to support more than 2 or 3 apps at a time, an approach more akin to Safari’s page-switching implementation would be more intuitive to users since the metaphor is already built into the OS via the web browser. In this implementation, a click of the Home button would still close an app, as usual. A long-press would toggle the task-switching UI, with any currently-open apps and the Home Screen display available to select from. To keep an app running, you’d need to long-press to task-switch back to Springboard and launch another app. From there, you can long-press to switch between open apps just like you switch between pages in Safari.

I wouldn’t be surprised if multitasking is only available on the iPad, iPhone 3GS, and Gen3 iPod Touch, because I think those are the only platforms with the power to support it. I’d be a bit more surprised if multitasking were restricted to only the iPad and this year’s upcoming iteration of the iPhone hardware, but not horribly shocked. I’m also not going to rule out the possibility that apps will need to explicitly opt into being able to multitask, or that they can explicitly opt out of it (opt out makes more sense, since only heavy apps like games would need to set this flag, rather than everything else needing to set one for opt-in).

On top of all this, I think the embedded video controller and local file store/sync will get ported over from the iPad SDK (though they may not make a deal out of that at the event). I also think/hope something is going to be done to improve the push notifications behavior to be more robust, since the pop-up implementation starts to kind of fall apart in terms of usability after more than a couple of apps start tying into it at once. Exactly what that something is, I’m not sure, but I think something will happen on that front (not a lock, but close). On the subject of locks, a more information-laden lock screen is also a possibility, but given Apple’s minimalist design tendencies, I’m not exactly counting on it coming to pass. Also, the very unlikely but perennial favorite: better Home Screen organization with folder support etc.

tl;dr predictions:

• Multitasking, but not with the UX indicated by the rumors. 75% chance of 2G, 3G, Gen1 & 2 iPod Touch locked out. 10% chance of 3GS & Gen3 iPod Touch locked out.
• Unified email inbox.
• 50% chance of Home Screen Contact icons.
• 25% chance of some back-ported iPad features: wallpaper staying on the Springboard after unlocking and the ability to embed video in a larger window.
• 50% chance of iPad’s file store/sync features getting back-ported to the iPhone.
• 50% chance of richer, more information-dense Lock Screen.
• 25% chance of new Push Notifications UX.
• 5% chance of Home Screen organization improvements.

(Seriously, who names these products? Microsoft even lampooned themselves on their ludicrously overwrought names with their “Microsoft designs the iPod packaging” video, and yet they keep doing it!)

So, Windows Phone 7 Series. Phones. Yeah. I’ma just call it WP7 for short.

I have to give MS some serious kudos on this, actually. Despite the completely atrocious design-by-committee branding in the name of the product, they’ve taken a pretty damn bold step with WP7. Zero backwards compatibility with Windows Mobile 6.5 and earlier, strong emphasis on the retail consumer (to the point of tying media sync to the Zune software platform… will be interesting to see how this device plays out in corporate IT, given the holy hell that was raised about iTunes), minimal multitasking, and a complete and utter departure from the UI of not only Windows Mobile, but pretty much every other smartphone out there.

Conceptually, there is a great deal about WP7 to like, and I think Microsoft can easily position themselves to become a serious contender again in the mobile market that’s basically left them behind over the last 2.5 years (3.5 by the time Wp7 comes out, actually) since the release of the iPhone. Things like the live-updating, rich-content home screen tiles, the broad and deep integration with social networks like Facebook, and the concept- or task-oriented nature of the device’s software, rather than a strictly application-based usage model are things that are very interesting to me, and it’s good to see Microsoft intentionally differentiate itself from the rest of the market in such substantive ways. I think Windows Phone will live or die on this differentiation, rather than its branding as a Windows device (though as always, such branding is probably more beneficial than not).

I’m more ambivalent about the actual execution of the concepts put forth in the WP7 user experience though. The entire platform is built on the Zune HD interface model, and there’s no possibility of carriers overriding this interface as there was in the past with Windows Mobile (something I’m sure HTC is less than 100% pleased about), so I really, really hope you like the way the Zune HD behaves. I, personally, don’t.

Maybe it’s because I get a little OCD with my digital interfaces (having an uneven number of apps on one screen of my iPod is enough to annoy me until I “fix it”, even at the expense of my application grouping methodology… and don’t even get me started on the elaborate and complex maze of folders I use on the Mac to store everything), but the Zune HD’s UI just strikes me as lazily executed because of all the overflowing text and wasted space in many of the screens. I know large, thin, sans-serif type and bold, flat colors are “in vogue” right now, and they do make the device look very stylish, but I don’t think “hip” and “useful” necessarily converge all that often (I mean, have you seen Lady Gaga’s wardrobe?), and I kind of worry that MS is painting themselves into a corner with this UI being so closely tied to the branding of the platform. Chucker argued back at me that Apple’s Aqua interface has made considerable evolutions since its introduction in 2001 2000 with super-glossy buttons and translucent pinstripes, and I agree that Apple has done a very good job with keeping their OS’s interface fairly fresh and in-line with current trends. However, I think the changes Apple has made to Aqua in the past decade are largely superficial: tweaking gradients and transparencies more than anything else. At its core, Aqua is still very much the same as it was 10 years ago in terms of its appearance and behavior. The Zune UI, I think, faces a larger uphill battle against trendiness because so much of its UI is fundamentally not just trendy-looking, but trendy-feeling (again, overflowing text, large monochromatic iconography, whizzy spinny animations). Revamping that UI to keep up with the times without seriously altering the behavioral characteristics of the UI on a fairly fundamental level will probably be much more difficult for Microsoft than it has been for Apple, though I do wish them the best of luck.

My other gripe is related to the first, and it’s got to do with the design of the “hub” applications. I’m not personally a huge fan of the broad two-dimensional navigation in apps like Windows Media Center, because half the time a number of my options are invisible and inaccessible. Similarly, with the Zune UI, it can be hard to tell what all can be done in an application hub without first exploring it fully, which can take some time. This secretive UI concept also requires the user to maintain a much larger conceptual map of the application, as well as the navigational requirements needed to reach various far-flung regions, which strikes me as far more complex than the model which Apple has adopted for the iPhone. It’s bound to be a great interface for chic geeks, because Microsoft is pretty good at building interfaces that geeks and tech enthusiasts feel very comfortable with. I just wonder if the breadth of the navigational capabilities (and requirements) for some of the task hubs in WP7 will be off-putting to people who are less comfortable with digital devices.

As a furtherance to this point, I think Microsoft has misunderstood the utility of animation in a user interface. The WP7 animations are very slick, very intricate, and very dimensional, but they do very little to aid the user in visually navigating through the device’s software. Tapping a tile on the home screen causes the tile to angle away from your finger (which is a nice touch, assuming it actually responds contextually to where you’re pushing on it), but then everything spins off-screen and new content whizzes in seemingly from nowhere. There’s no real “physical” connection between these two layers of the interface the way there is when navigating through the iPhone. Tapping an application icon causes the program to “float up” to the surface, with the home screen UI proceeding out of the field of view. Movement within the application itself is generally very physical, both vertically (with inertial scrolling) and horizontally (with sliding displays). Exiting an application causes it to recede into the background, and the home screen UI falls back into place. These animations are very basic compared to those in WP7, but they also give the device a more physical and connected feel, whereas the WP7 animations just seem to be there because “everybody likes animation in their UI these days”.

I realize I’m doing a lot of complaining about a device which I said at the beginning of this post was a very good idea. The reason is, I think that it is a very good idea, just that the execution of that idea doesn’t fit my personal tastes.

I would love to see some of the more dynamic capabilities of WP7 come to the iPhone, and I think Apple should focus more on providing platforms for developers to build into, rather than just an operating system to build on top of. For example, the Photos application on the iPhone is very basic, and if you want to get photos from Facebook, Flickr, or MobileMe, you have to go into different applications to access them. Even the Apple TV does this better, with a Photos “category” where you can move between services with comparative ease. Better than even that model, though, is WP7’s, where photos just show up from wherever they’re posted, all collected in one place.

Similarly, the People hub is another great idea, which ideally third parties can build into to expand its functionality without adding full-blown applications to the system. Consolidating Contacts, Twitter, Facebook, etc. into one place is a really cool concept. I don’t think it would work quite as well for geeky folks who have multiple Twitter accounts (unless the UI got really creative and potentially overly-complex), but for the average Joe who may have only just figured out what Twitter even is, it’s a very slick implementation.

I also like the ability to pin pretty much anything to the home screen, from hubs to applications to individual items in a hub (like a person or an album). It gives the home screen much more utility for people than a collection of icons with numeric badges on them.

I think a lot of the initial development for WP7 is going to be oriented towards expanding the functionality of these hubs through plugin-style programs, rather than strictly fully-fledged application-based development. Given that the platform will also run whatever new applications developers create, it will be interesting to see how these two branches of functionality compliment or conflict with each other going forward. I suspect WP7 apps will be held to an even higher standard than iPhone apps because of the increased capacity for integration with the various content hubs, as well as the obviously unique and distinctive Zune-like UI. I just hope Windows Mobile developers are up to the considerable challenge after the past decade-plus reign of Windows Mobile’s often atrociously-designed and now-archaic-looking UI.

I’d also be interested in seeing what exactly Microsoft decides to do with the Zune from here out. Given that the Zune and WP7 share a pretty obvious commonality in their UI department, I wonder if they’re both running the same basic OS, with considerable efforts being made to expand its capabilities for the phone. If that’s the case, I wonder if Microsoft will attempt to do with the Zune HD what Apple has done with the iPod Touch: create a gateway product with a lower barrier-to-entry that people can use and get used to without the risk or expense of a phone contract or data plan. If they do, it will definitely be worth keeping an eye on, because Microsoft always plays to win, and while their efforts thus far in the MP3 player market have been pretty dismal at gaining any traction, coupling the Zune HD with a completely overhauled Windows Mobile Phone 7 to create a new Microsoft-controlled mobile computing platform could start driving greater adoption of both devices.

One last thing that wasn’t discussed at the reveal, is whether updates for the OS will be pushed to all users, either free or for a minor fee. This is something that the iPhone platform does pretty consistently better than anyone else, so hopefully Microsoft is learning a lesson from Apple and pressuring carriers and handset makers to allow OS upgrades without making people buy a new phone or resort to tech-nerd solutions like custom boot ROMs.

It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes from here. Unfortunately, I think the biggest problem Microsoft has now is that they’ve tipped their hand a full 8-10 months before their first product will hit store shelves, which gives the competition (especially the whenever-we-feel-like-updating-it Android platform) a considerable head start on getting their copy machines running.

Update: Chucker tells me I’m wrong about the intro date for Aqua being 2001. While I was going off of OS X’s general availability, it was demoed much earlier.

So Microsoft announced yet another critical IE security vulnerability (shocker, I know…) that enables an attacker to access and view your computer’s entire filesystem. While the vulnerability is mitigated by IE’s Protected Mode in Vista and Win7, 66% of the Internet is still using Windows XP, and 20% of those people are still running IE6. That’s a huge attack surface.

While this once again provides an excellent argument against tying your HTML rendering engine so deeply into the operating system that such attacks are even possible in the first place, Microsoft’s proposed workaround illustrates an even WORSE idea (from the Ars piece):

… enable Internet Explorer Network Protocol Lockdown for Windows XP. It requires editing the Windows registry, but thankfully Microsoft has created a “Fix it for me” for this workaround, available at KB 980088. Just click the “Fix this problem” link and you’re good to go. The Fix It automates Network Protocol Lockdown and can be run on individual systems and deployed by enterprises through their automated systems.

Really, you’re going to let an application with open access to the Internet modify the registry because a very possibly untrusted web page told it to?! What the hell, MS?!

Also, anyone who says “well if the link triggers a security warning that’s okay then” is an idiot. The users who would most benefit from this automated resolution method are the ones least likely to either understand or care about the security implications of such an action, and because of Windows’ tedious tendency to ask the user to approve damn near everything they do, those users are going to be trained to click “OK” just to make the dialog go away. It boggles my mind that such low-level OS-impacting capabilities are exposed to such completely un-trustable resources like remote web content.

It seems like IE6 (and Windows XP in general) is becoming an ever-increasing risk to individual and corporate data security on an almost weekly basis now. I wonder how much longer it will take companies to realize that the cost of overhauling their IE6-only internal web applications is far cheaper than the cost of losing enormous piles of sensitive or even classified information to a hacker in China…

I’ve been ruminating a lot on the approach that various companies, like Microsoft and Apple, have taken to the mobile computing space, and have a few random thoughts that are way too long for Twitter, but not exactly coherent enough to be considered an article or anything, since I don’t really have an ultimate point here. Anyway, I’ll just ramble endlessly as usual and see if anyone cares .

Microsoft’s approach has been very similar to their hugely successful approach to the desktop (and laptop) computer market: provide a powerful, extensible operating system that can run on damn near anything, and set few or no minimum requirements for hardware. This gives hardware partners an enormous amount of flexibility in how they design their phones and other devices, which they love, and it gives the market considerable differentiation between products, which both consumers and manufacturers love.

On the desktop, this approach’s greatest strength is a developer’s ability to write an application and be assured that it will, generally speaking, work everywhere (or at least, on every machine that meets the minimum requirements). In the mobile space, this is perhaps its greatest weakness instead. Because phone manufacturers are very closeted when it comes to hardware specifications, it’s much more difficult to tell if you’ll be able to run a given application. The smaller display space and variable dimensions of the screen make it difficult for developers to build truly effective and intuitive interfaces for their applications, because unlike the desktop’s relatively spacious screen real estate, a phone has very little, and building to the wrong display size can make your app feel either over-crowded on smaller screens or vacant and featureless on larger ones.

Further frustrating Microsoft’s approach has been the reluctance from carriers and/or hardware manufacturers to allow users to upgrade the OS when new releases become available (I’m also aware of tech-oriented work-arounds to this problem, but the average user isn’t going to want to futz with custom boot ROMs). Often the only way to get the new OS is to buy a new phone, and this often comes with a re-extension of the carrier’s contract, which is an unpalatable option for many people. This makes it much more difficult to ensure that users are on a new version of your OS, so developers are hesitant to start using any new features that these new OS releases make available to them. As a result, those users who do manage to upgrade or get a new device see very little difference in the user experience, and this further demotivates people from getting new devices.

Google’s Andriod platform seems to be succumbing to the same pitfall, in that there are no clear rules to manufactureres for implementation or hardware usage, the application market is already starting to fragment because not every app will run on every device, and once again carriers and/or hardware manufacturers are reluctant to offer the latest version of the OS to existing customers. It will be interesting to see if Google’s Nexus One phone can serve as a good example to other manufacturers on how to build a first-class Andriod device, and if the platform can resist or overcome the fragmentation and poor application device compatibility issues that Windows Mobile has presently.

By contrast, Apple’s approach, while also very similar to their own desktop strategy, has been far more effective in gaining market share and mind share. Apple treats their desktop line-up like a consumer electronics line-up rather than an a-la carte buffet as most computer manufacturers do. As a result, they have easy-to-understand delineations between each product category, and it’s fairly easy to chart their machines in a straight line from least to most capable all the way up the price range. While this does make buying a new Mac easier for first-time buyers than staring at the (admittedly improved of late) sea of complementary options on a site like Dell’s, the lack of cheap, low-end computing devices does limit the reach of this strategy for many consumers.

Apple extended this approach into the mobile space with the iPhone, creating a single, simple product line-up of identical devices differentiated only by storage capacity, and varying in price along a single axis. The hardware line-up has fragmented slightly with the latest iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch devices because of the improved graphics performance, but generally speaking, the target market for an application built on the iPhone OS is “every iPhone OS device ever sold”. This makes things much easier for developers, because they don’t have to worry about market fragmentation and reduced sales as a result. It also makes things much simpler for consumers, because they can buy applications with considerably more confidence, and know that their device will be able to run them. The fact that the iPhone platform provides a built-in place for users to look for 3rd-party applications also simplifies the purchasing process and undoubtedly increases sales, which may explain why Apple’s app store model is being replicated on every other platform under the sun.

A lot of what this boils down to, I think, is the simple fact that people want different things from a mobile device than they do from a desktop or desktop-class computer. With the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad, Apple seems to understand this difference in usage. On the other hand, Microsoft and – to a much lesser extent – Google seem to be pressing onward with their “desktop in your pocket” usage model, which fits awkwardly into such small devices and creates considerable usability issues. A phone is – first and foremost – a phone, not something to write Word documents or build 3D models with. By and large it’s something that people use incidentally for short periods of time, as opposed to the desktop’s “sit down and stay a while” usage model. The iPhone OS seems much more suited to this sort of interaction than Windows Mobile, though with WM finally getting support for capacitive touch-screens, Microsoft is at least trying to move to a more incidental use-friendly input model.

I will be interested to see whether Windows Mobile 7 turns the ship around and starts pushing into more user-friendly waters, but I think that despite the comparatively paltry collection of offerings in Apple’s mobile product line-up, they are better served by their sales approach when it comes to the average user who just wants something with which they can make phone calls, check the weather, and play a game of checkers. Choice is good (as is competition, which is why I’d rather see MS get their mobile OS into the current millennium than tell them to quit while they’re still [slightly] ahead), but sometimes giving people choices they don’t need to make within a platform just creates problems.

(As an aside, I think it’s interesting that it wasn’t until the iPhone SDK was released that gaming on mobile phones really became a big, profitable deal… Nokia tried entering that market at least twice but their devices never seemed to get any traction, and I could probably count on one hand the number of games that exist on Windows Mobile.)