iPad devsugar: Letting go of iPhone visual design patterns

Out of the 128 apps on my iPhone, here are the top 10 Apps that I REALLY want for iPad:

- Labyrinth 2
- Photoshop
- Geared
- ReelDirector (+1)
- Quickoffice
- eBay
- Craigspro+
- Words with Friends (+1)
- Chopper
- Charadium (Pictionary app +1)

i'm still feeling bummed about my future ipad. my current thoughts, on this most poetic of circumstances - http://web-poet.com/2010/02/01/ipad/

I hate to bite on the troll bait, but that eros tablet isn't what I'd show someone in defense of a Win > Mac argument. It didn't present a usable interface until almost 1:05 after it was turned on. Once it did come on, the UI elements were ridiculously, painfully small. In lieu of continuing I'll just say I couldn't stomach more than 4:00 of that video... it's just dumb. garysturn, if you honestly think that tablet is doing "everything that Steve Jobs did on the iPad", then please, for the sake of the safety of others around you, do not ever operate a motor-vehicle or a microwave oven. If you DO think it's "great", then I'd recommend finding a different (better) example of a Win7 device to show off. There are plenty.

It's still recommended to have different UIs based on orientation, case example being Mail:
* When in landscape I can view my mail and scroll the list of messages at the same time
* When in portrait I'm more focussed, everything else just goes away (although still available via pop-ups), and I just have the email with no distractions

This was a selling point in the keynote, and I agree that it's still important to allow this.

"When every way is up, every interface must be the same. Sure, you can still use Cover Flow but it's time to switch to that view by introducing a button or gesture rather than by reorienting the device."

I beg to disagree. You saw an example of why your view is incorrect in the keynote presentation iself. Steve Jobs was demonstrating the mail application, and when he rotated from portrait to landscape, the view of the mail app changed, from displaying a list of mail items, to viewing the content of a specific item. Effective, and appropriate.

Having said that, there many be many cases where a layout show simply re-flow when you change orientation, in the same way that a document reflows when you pinch or zoom.

I think it would be wise to create Apps that would take advantage of any screen size regardless what you do with portrait or landscape views. I don't think this will be the only Apple device running on this operating system and programming to a specific screen size would mean rewriting your app every time Apple upgrades the screen or adds a new product. I would not be surprised if the next iPhone has a higher resolution screen than the current model. It should come out this summer. And there are several articles stating that Apple is working on a 22" touch screen computer. Don't you think it will also be iPhone OS compatible if it is a touch screen. People would love to get a iMac which runs MAC OS and iPhone OS both on the same machine.

Doesn't Mail's display change when viewed vertically? (Change to a vertical orientation to focus on a single message). I understand that the approach of "one interface regardless of orientation" frequently makes sense with this much real-estate, but I'm not convinced that that was intended to be a take-away message from the presentation.

There is a great video of a Windows 7 tablet doing everything that Steve Jobs did on the iPad over at Egadget. Its the eros tablet.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/01/eros-tablet-video-is-a-lesson-in-why-windows-7-isnt-strictly-me/

I like that "Cover Flow Mentality". The ability to alter the function of the device by reorienting it was one of the breakthroughs of the iPhone interface, and it would be shame to jettison it just because Steve was spinning Safari around on stage the other day (to compensate for the lack of Flash animation? ;) ).

For a web browser, rotating and resizing/reflowing the page to fit the new orientation makes sense. But for a video-playing app, rotating and scaling a widescreen movie to fit a vertical iPad would just be stupid; that app should have a fixed orientation (except maybe flipping over if it's upside-down). For other apps, the ability to instantly switch modes back and forth by turning the device (e.g. from HTML code view to browser preview, from street view to map view, or yes: from list to cover-flow), can be very handy, especially when on-screen gestures are already dedicated to other functions.

The size of the iPad makes some of iPhone UI innovations unnecessary, but "you don't need to do it that way" is no reason to remove a useful UI option from the toolkit. I encourage developers to use it if it suits their project, and let their users decide whether they like it, not Steve.

Damn. The more I see that thing the more I wanna go buy one on launch day. I'll likely wait until the summer though, it will be my birthday present to myself.