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IPad UI Roundup
- gr366 17y agoNice to have a post that deals with the concrete details of what the iPad is today, not what it may become. I agree that some of the UI elements look shoehorned in from the iPhone interface, and running iPhone apps on the device just wasn't going to have an elegant solution given the resolution-dependent UIs. But the revolutionary bit is the multitouch/lack of mouse pointer part. The iPhone was a gentle introduction to this new paradigm. It'll be interesting to watch how people catch on and how quickly other companies adopt it — not to mention how Apple handles its patents around this stuff.
- joe_the_user 17y agoIs there a reason no one has called "Gorilla Arm" on the iPad? I suppose it's mostly because it's UI which you aren't supposed to do any sustained or difficult work with. But it seems unlikely that even Joe-The-Non-Geek will be happy with something they can barely use.
- ugh 17y agoDoesn’t that only apply to stuff you use standing up? Is that a problem when using a touchscreen lying or sitting on a couch? Or sitting in front of a table?
- blasdel 17y agoYou still have to either hold the thing up somehow, or look straight down at it in your lap / on the table. If you use it in a dock, you have to hold your arm out straight in front of you to poke at it (no mice, even with a keyboard). Apple didn't do anything to address Gorilla Arm. They even made the thing weigh 1.5 lbs by stuffing it full of lithium-polymer to get that 10 hour battery life.
- joe_the_user 17y agoNo, It's worst standing but I believe a Gorilla arm "effect" results from any devices which forces the user to do extended input without physical support for his/her arms. Just see how long you can sit at a chair with your hands in the standard keyboarding position but without the keyboard. The iPad looks just big enough that any serious input going to require repeated arm-raising whereas the iphone/ipod-touch is small enough you can use it with your hands always resting on a table.
- ugh 17y agoAren’t my arms supported when I’m lying on the couch or sitting on the table? I would say they are.
- mrshoe 17y agoThe new and simple method was to use automatic saving and persistent data – but with iWork on the iPad as a serious content creation platform, this isn’t an option anymore. Why not? Can we not think outside the box even when we've been outside the box? Or am I missing something?
- padmanabhan01 17y agoYeah.All it takes is a way to browse those docs from within iWork apps.
- jsz0 17y agoThe Omni Group announced they are working on Omni Graffle for the iPad. To me this is a killer app. A great example of where a desktop application would actually be better on the iPad than the desktop.
- mortenjorck 17y agoIf Omni can put it all into an easily-browsed "notebook" format, that might just convince me to get an iPad. This is the first idea that actually has me considering it.
- glhaynes 17y ago"A great example of where a desktop application would actually be better on the iPad than the desktop." Yes, exactly. I first "got" the iPad when watching the introduction keynote video and saw iWork in action. This can truly be a better experience than the Mac for many, many things.
- wooster 17y agoYes, indeed. As an anecdotal example, a friend at an extremely large international law firm says every single lawyer there is using OmniFocus on their iPhone. At $20 a pop, that's a handy haul from just one app and one firm. I'm sure they'd absolutely love to have the rest of the apps in that suite (outliners? yeah, lawyers love those) available for iPads.
- Raphael 17y agoToolbars really ought to be on the bottom rather than the top, so that you don't cover half the screen with your arm (although I suppose you could come in from the top or the sides to avoid that). The left and right sides might also work, but then you get into dominant hand territory, which Apple consistently avoids for good reason.
- glhaynes 17y agoI could see feeling like they were "too close" if they were at the bottom. And if you're always reaching over them you might feel worried that you might accidentally hit them. (Just speculating without having used one.)
- sans-serif 17y agoSeconded. I've used my laptop in cramped space before and found typing to be almost impossible. Try it.
- Raphael 17y agoNeat touch: the full-size keyboard of iPad has actual tactile ‘nubs’ on the F and J keys, like a real keyboard. Are the nubs always there? Or do they pop out only when the keyboard interface is shown?
- jws 17y agoI think the reviewer meant to say pictures of actual tactile 'nubs'. There was a patent application for raise up tactile feedback devices, but I don't think they are in the iPad.