Jobs: “No one will be using Flash. The world moves to HTML5″
At a recent Town Hall meeting with Apple employees Steve Jobs made it clear that Flash is not coming to iPhone or iPad. Read More
UI Design & Web Usability Blog
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Jan 31st, 2010
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Jan 29th, 2010
Apple’s iPad Cons and Pros
This is what we make of Apples iPad presentation — a new beautifully and smartly designed new device, which is clearly oriented towards education market and execs on the go. Read More
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Jan 21st, 2010
Apple Tablet Confirmed by The Wall Street Journal
It is almost certain a new device is going to be unveiled next week. We’ve heard many name variations such as iSlate and iPad –both are Apple’s registered trademarks– Apple Tablet, etc. It seems like Apple’s plans are big this time; they aim to re-shape the publishing industry (which is in an apparent crisis) as they once re-shaped the digital music industry with iTunes and iPod. Making it easier for people to access media content for an affordable price has proved to be successful. Here is a short recap of what we know so far:
- Apple has been discussing with book, magazine and newspaper publishers possible ways of cooperation.
- NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger, when asked about the new devices, said “stay tuned”.
- Orange Chief confirms Apple Tablet With Built-In Webcam
- Apple has been negotiating with TV networks CBS, Walt Disney and ABC for a monthly subscription service.
- There have been rumors that Apple is going to work with Electronic Arts to position the new device as a gaming platform.
- The device will have a web camera and be capable of live web streaming
- Apple has been promoting an idea of backing-up users music online and accessing it on an connected device. This also supports the recent Lava acquisition. Its technology may very well find its way to iTunes 10.
- Apple’s new $1 billion data centre in North Carolina is under construction. MobileMe will most probably have a major upgrade, possibly the “Mobile iTunes” version, and as the name suggests, possibly other things related to “Me”.
Nowhereelse.fr has obtained what it says may be a video of the long-rumored Apple tablet. Whatever it is, it looks pretty cool already:
Last year, Apple’s focus shifted from computer production to content delivery. The turning point was dropping “Computers” from the company name. Since then their devices are just one unified platform that makes it easy to delivery content to end user. And, this strategy pays off very well.
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Jan 20th, 2010
Bing May Become a Default Search Option for iPhone OS 4.0
Business Week reports that Apple and Microsoft have been discussing making Bing the default search engine on the iPhone. In light of accelerating rivalry between Apple and Google over the mobile market it does make sense. Some sources suggest that Apple is working on its own search solution and the Bing deal might be just a move that buys Apple some time. It doesn’t look like any deal between any of these three companies will live long. Each has its own Mobile OS, Mobile Ad agency, and two of them have their own devices.
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Jan 15th, 2010
LG Turns to Android UI
LG has announced it will run Android in more than half of its smartphones in 2010. It is a significant change from the company’s current strategy. In 2009, only one LG smartphone ran Android and the rest were running Windows Mobile. It is a big hit for Microsoft as other companies such as Motorola, Samsung and HTC move away from Windows Mobile as well.
About a year ago Balmer dismissed Google as a player on the mobile market. And in 2007 he dismissed iPhone as a threat to Windows Mobile. Now MS obviously is losing its once-dominating market position and doing it very quickly. Both iPhone and Android will likely to dominate mobile markets for the next decade.
Besides the Google business model, which is definitely more appealing to the mobile service providers than MicroSoft’s, user satisfaction is another very important factor. Both iPhone and Android have very well designed, user-centered User Interfaces.
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Jan 5th, 2010
Apple’s Rumoured Tablet to Have 3D Interface?
Apple has filed a patent that describes an interface for manipulating “three-dimensional virtual objects” on a touch screen. The technology may be used in future releases of iPhone or in the rumoured Apple tablet (iSlate?). I doubt that simply porting existed OS to a 10” touch screen may take “you-know-who’s considerable undivided attention”. Having an entire event dedicated to the mobile market Apple will most probably try to set a new standard. 3D User Interface may become just the thing to mark a new step in evolution of UX. Apple has been working on various 3D systems for quite some time now: 3D Projection System, 3D Desktop, 3D Displays, etc.
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Jan 5th, 2010
Apple to Buy Mobile Advertising Company
Apple is about to announce the acquisition of Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Apple tried to bid on AdMob acquired by Google not so long ago. With Google’s Nexus launch tomorrow both companies become direct competitors in the smartphone market. From a UI prospective, it is interesting to see how Apple’s User Experience dedication and strict App Store approval rules will stand against Google’s users-know-better-what-they-need approach.
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Dec 17th, 2009
Android Market and Apple’s App Store
As Android Market has grown to about the 20,000 apps mark, it is interesting to compare two different approaches to User Experience. While Apple sets up very strict approval rules in effort to assure only well done and polished apps get through to an end-user, Google doesn’t set any approval process at all. Aesthetics have never been Google’s concern although it’s nothing-gets-in-the-users-way approach has became a signature style on its own. And it does work very well on the web, but for mobile apps it may not.
In many cases visual aspects of apps and UI become the very corners that are being cut in order to minimize product-to-market time and expenses. As a result, we see less-than-inspiring graphics, confusing User Interfaces and an overall lack of consistency. One of iPhones’s strong points is the well-designed default UI elements that help to assure some level of consistency across various applications. After all, apps are just tools running on a mobile device and shared layout principals help a great deal in minimizing learning curve for users.
Below is a screenshot of Apple Store’s Movies App that uses default iPhone library elements as well as a very similar app from Android Market.
Movies by Flixster (Android)
Movies (Apple App Store)
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Nov 25th, 2009
Mobile Traffic at glance (by AdMob)
A few days back, AdMob published a very interesting report on market share of various mobile OS and smartphones. The data suggests that Apple’s dedication to User Experience results in higher apps approval and user adoption rates. The report is a great read but for those that don’t have time here are the highlights:
Smartphone Traffic by Manufacturer – Worldwide
- Apple – 50%
- Nokia – 24% (Mainly from India, Indonesia, Philippines and South Africa markets where Nokia has 89% of the market)
- HTC – 12%
- RIM – 7%
Smartphone Traffic by OS:
- Apple OS 50%
- Symbian OS – 25% (Mainly from India, Indonesia, Philippines and South Africa markets where Nokia has with 89% of the market)
- Android OS – 11%
- RIM OS – 7%
United States Data by Manufacturer
- Apple – 55%
- HTC – 22%
- RIM – 12%
Smartphone Traffic by OS:
- iPhone OS – 55%
- Android – 20%
- RIM OS – 12 %
It is interesting that Apple’s traffic comes from only 2 devices – iPhone and iPod. Android traffic comes from 9 devices currently available worldwide. RIM traffic is a result of their current 11 smartphones and probably some past models.
The full report is available here. http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Oct-09.pdf
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Nov 11th, 2009
Smartphone sales per OS vendor
Stats from June 09 shows Symbian being the clear leader on Mobile OS market, thanks to Nokia and a few Sony Erricson and Samsung devices.
(data does not include Palm WebOS, which was introduced in June, 2009)It will be interesting to see what the chart will be for Q2 2010 with new Android phones introduced every week or so, Windows UX-focused Mobile 7 and Samsung’s Linux-based Bada.![Market share of Smartphone operating systems as of Q2/2009 by Canalys.[5] (data does not include Palm WebOS, which was introduced in June, 2009)](http://www.rossul.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/450px-Smartphone_2009.svg.png "450px-Smartphone_2009.svg")
Market share of Smartphone operating systems as of Q2/2009 by Canalys.