This is a sexy start page
This is not a sexy icon
I have a teeny weenie bone to pick about iWork for iPad and it goes beyond the convoluted workflow that Apple has imposed.
The base graphic for the Pages icon is not bad at all (it’s the exact same icon for Pages for Mac), but a little pan and zoom treatment would have resulted to a much better iPad icon.
I’m not a web designer or a UI/UX specialist by any stretch but slapping the same icon to a pale blue background + that ever-so-toolbag-gloss-treatment just screams LAZY to me.
Where anyone who has ever menstruated would not have named a product that
I’ll preface this by saying I am very much underwhelmed and I’m not the only one. I do not think it’s because of unmet expectations over the hype machine around this device; but that this thing is really just a bigger iPhone (no, I don’t buy the “it’s not just just an iPhone because third party developers will augment where Apple has fallen short” argument - the iPhone already has that down by spades). After two iPod touches and an iPhone 3G, I cannot justify the need for it, nor find any reason for its existence.
(the title above, by the way - I quoted from @hchamp on Twitter)
According to Engadget, Apple set out to make a tablet as far as 2002, but somewhere along the way, digressed and birthed a more pocketable device in the form of the iPhone. From a business perspective I imagine it’s easier to make a marketing case for a mobile phone, a product with an already-established consumer base, than one that flies in the face of excess baggage from past failed attempts and $300 netbooks in the middle of a recession.
I’ll back up a bit and just point out that both the iPhone and this newfangled device are really just “software in gorgeous hardware” (words of Steve Jobs from one of his past keynotes, I forget which one exactly). Keep this in mind as you read the next section:
My contention is that I’m sure more people would have been blown away if Apple released this derivative of Mac OS (which I’ll now refer to as “OS X iPhone” moving forward) in the tablet form factor before they did on a handheld device. OS X iPhone is, by far, the best implementation of what a “tablet PC” should be.
Imagine then three years later, Apple introduces the same OS X derivative in a form factor that could fit in the palm of your hand - and BAM! You get a second wave of excitement over what’s essentially the same product (i.e., OS X iPhone). Your third salvo (or second, as would be more likely) would be the App Store (and we all know how well that worked out for the OS X iPhone ecosystem).
But history has it already: Apple had sprung up for the smaller device first and we find ourselves in the extreme opposite ends of the argument.
Still, had Apple released this thing first and iPhone second, I’m sure I’d still gravitate towards the latter.
One more thing: this awkward situation that we have right now where iPhone apps run on the bigger screen by blasting the pixels 300% will just be a fleeting moment and soon enough we should see custom-designed applications that should look better than 8-bit Mario. Because all apps are be distributed through the same App Store that’s currently on the iPhone, the next wave of applications (with their additional bitmaps suited for the larger form factor) will almost definitely blow up the size of application binaries, which translates to longer download times (I wish Apple just got rid of the 10-megabyte cap on what can and can’t be downloaded over 3G and/or WiFi), with zero benefit to iPhone-only users such as myself.
Right now, the only thing I’m excited about is the release of Bioshock 2.
