kzeise.com | Kai Mo's Musings on Software, Copyrights, and other stuff

AppCubby Timer

21. July 2012 · Categories: Software

App Cubby has introduced an interesting timer app.

As you can see in the image, it provides a very minimalistic interface to having multiple timers around. Press to start a timer, long press to edit a timer. And that is it.But as an interface it seems to me to be just a tad too minimalistic to fulfill my basic timing needs. What these buttons could easily do as well is serve as little stop watches.

To accommodate the stop watch you would get a different display. If you set a time for a timer, it will continue to be timer, but after it had finished, there would be second line on the bottom to count the time since the stop time. And when you do not set a time, it will become a mini stopwatch. It will then display three lines: current elapsed time, total time at last stop, and lap time at last stop. You use it as follows:

Press to start
Press again to take a lap time
Press long at any time to clear the timer

The third usage of timers is to keep track of activities. But I doubt this should be part of this simple interface, as you will need to enter quite a bit text to remember the activities you are tracking. But if you want it, you would use two lines, one for total time, and one for the current activity. You do a single press to start and stop, and a long press to reset everything.

In order to configure the timer, you will do a swipe from left to right on the button, and this will open a configuration dialog for the current unit. To learn about the shortcuts, when first starting the app there should be an explanation of the conventions: tap is start/stop or take lap time, long tap is reset, swipe right to configure. This should be dismissed by having a begin button at the bottom, where you must swipe to the right.

The iPad mini

17. July 2012 · Categories: Apple

There is a lot of speculation currently about Apple adding a 7 inch iPad to its lineup this fall, as the acclaim for the 7 inch Nexus starts to build. A good overview has been given by John Gruber. The main question would be what place in the line up it should have. It is my conviction that the current iPad is not too large, it would work nearly everywhere, even in a crowded subway car, but that it is simply too heavy to be used one handed. Given how much of its weight is actually in the battery, we know that with improvements in display and processor technology the iPad will come down in weight in the future.

But until this future emerges, it will be much easier to produce a separate device with a smaller screen to get the weight down. To hold a device somewhat comfortably in one hand, it should have a weight of 300 grams, maybe 350 grams. The Nexus 7 is 340 grams, and it is this low weight that makes it stand out. A 7.85 inch iPad has 65% of the area of the current iPad, so would be 394 grams could we simply shrink the iPad 2. But I expect Apple to do their best to reduce the weight even further, and to not include a Retina display until their power consumption comes down enough to keep the entire device below 350 grams.

I also suspect such a device to be cheap, say 250$ for the 16 GByte base, and to replace the iPad 2 in the line up. It will be close enough in functionality that the iPad 2 is no longer needed as a budget option, and the iPad mini is much stronger because it will also be for the people who most value the lesser weight.

The other question is how long we will have to wait until the iPad mini gets a Retina display of similar quality than the current one. This will be an issue because you require such a screen to make the device an excellent reading machine. And the smaller form factor will tend to tilt more towards consumption than creation than a larger iPad. Personally I would recommend to wait until you will get a retina display.

Apple screws up App Store

06. July 2012 · Categories: Apple

Apple screwed up the delivery of binaries in the App Store, and now the problem has been corrected. But then you read how the user should “correct” the problem: delete the app and download again. Small problem with this advice: all your data gets lost. Fortunately, the makers of GoodReader have described a workaround.

But I wonder: Why can someone at Apple get away with a solution that involves data loss for the user? Would they themselves find it OK for someone to delete their favorite app and cause all data to be lost?

A solution without data loss would be to simply increment the version number of the current executable, and push that out as an update. I wonder if this can be done automatically with the binary submitted to Apple, or if they must ask the developers to do that and resubmit. But even if the second option is needed, they should do a priority review of the resubmitted apps, and make sure they have the updates out within a day.

And then you wait for a bit, and then it turns out that Apple has actually done the right thing. Teaches you not to scream too early.

This also reminds me of another problem with the standard app installation and deinstallation process: There is no way for you to reinstall a single app and have its data restored. This would not be that difficult to implement: iTunes would keep backup data even for uninstalled apps around, until you delete the app from your computer. And when you add the app again to a device, you would get a fresh field in the app list: Restore last app data. This would allow you to unload games and when you decide to play them again, you could easily restore your last game status. Quite helpful when games are 500 Megabytes, and game data is less than 100 Kilobyte. Wonder if Apple will do such a thing, as it would reduce demand for high capacity devices.

The Microsoft Tablet

19. June 2012 · Categories: Software

So Microsoft will introduce its own tablet, the Surface. They deliver one very nice touch for it: the cover with an integrated touch keyboard, which includes a touchpad. This will make the dual use they envision much more practical, by significantly reducing the weight of the entire tablet. But as already discussed, the whole premise is a pretty flaky one: Software can only be optimized for one use case, and so the device is actually two in one: laptop and tablet. As a laptop, you will get a much better experience with an 11″ Air than with the ARM variant. On the other hand:

The ARM variant is the only one usable as a tablet, as the other is too heavy. And both will only sport a 140 dpi screen. The Retina display on the new iPad is actually amazing, as it suddenly enables you to read a full page of a document comfortably. You simply cannot compete against the iPad with such an inferior screen, especially if you want to capture a professional audience, where being able to read crisp text makes your life so much easier.

Microsoft seems not to understand that computing has become cheap, that you no longer spend 5000$ for a somewhat reasonable machine, but that 1000$ can buy you a computer that is overpowered for many and considered high end. With so much power available cheaply, it suddenly becomes quite economically possible to own two specialized devices, each working optimally for its use case. And Apple is working very hard to ensure that iCloud will work seamlessly to make working on multiple devices a joy.

In the end, Metro software does not work nicely with keyboard and mouse, and Windows software does not work nicely with only a touch screen. To make the switching work really well, one would need to develop every software with two different faces, and the hardware would be the wrong for one of them: either too underpowered for keyboard and mice, or too heavy for touch. The first one will go away with time, but Microsoft is actively preventing people from developing ARM desktop applications.

Of course Microsoft tries to leverage its position with Windows to get traction with tablets, but that means an inferior product user interface wise, and Apple is not expensive enough that you will accept it in return for lower prices.

The Retina MacBook

12. June 2012 · Categories: Apple

Apple has introduced their new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and it is a photographer’s dream machine. Finally we have a notebook that surpasses the image quality of the old Thinkpad’s, that has an IPS display with the wide viewing angles that are necessary to correctly judge the color of a photo. It will be absolutely amazing to have a display matching the new iPad on a notebook, and for most people the reduced weight will more than compensate for the reduced connections and loss of expandability.

With the removal of the 17″ MacBook Pro, this new machine is intended to replace it, and I wonder how well it will do that. Theoretically it is not a problem, because given the high resolution you can just get a bit closer to the screen to get the same field of view as on the 17″ model. The problem will be the software. It will assume 110 dpi and scale the elements accordingly. But to get the same scaling as you had, you would have to assume 133 dpi * 17.0 / 15.4 = 147 dpi, which is 33% denser. This means you could show on the 17″ display 78% more content, which is a pretty stark contrast, as shown by Aperture.

(110 dpi on 15.4″)

(133 dpi on 17″)

And when writing documents it becomes even worse, with pages you loose 150 pixels from the height, with Word 250 pixels, so your document area shrinks from 1000 pixels to 700 pixels, meaning that with the 17″ you had 40% more vertical space for your documents, even though the screen is only 10% higher.

So for Mac software to work properly in all configurations it will need to support three resolution steps. The basis would be what is currently called small and works best with a 110 dpi iMac display. In addition you still need a larger variant ( 120% or 125%) for people with aging eyes, and now also a smaller variant ( 80%, maybe 75%) for the Retina MacBook.

I wonder how long the transition will take, Apple provides five scaling steps, so hopefully this is a sign that Apple desires to support these steps with new apps.

The loss of extensibility after the fact is not such a big deal, with an 768 GByte option available, and the compact external ethernet connector not eating up much space. Now waiting first for the USB3 update for the Thunderbolt display, and then the Retina update for it as well.

The Dangers of Windows 8

29. May 2012 · Categories: Apple, Software

Michael Mace has written a very nice article about the problems with Windows 8. It clearly describes the problems I feel the software will face.

The main problem with Windows 8 is that Microsoft wants to leverage Windows to fight the iPad. When you read about the the design goals, you see that Microsoft sees the future as converged devices, with keyboard, touchpad and touchscreen all in one. On the other hand, Apple, which clearly moves OS X into the direction of supporting new features introduced with iOS, keeps the user interface paradigm based on using a keyboard in combination with a touchpad, and improves upon iCloud to ensure the interoperability between them.

The basic problem with the Microsoft vision is the tension over screen sizes. The larger the screen, the larger the battery needed to power it, and the heavier the entire device. The iPad already weights 662g (1.46 lbs), and feels on the heavy side. This means that the larger screens that are needed for efficiently working with classic Windows will be too heavy and even too large to create a reasonable tablet experience. The core benefit of the iPad is that you can use it on the couch, or anywhere else without a table, and that only works as long as the device is not too heavy. But for a desktop, you want the largest screen that you can fit on the table(s) you are using and still be able to carry around.

And an iPad is cheap enough that you can buy it in addition to a laptop or desktop, we are no longer in the nineties, when a reasonable computer was much more expensive, where even when you spent 5000$ on a machine you felt it could be faster for daily work, while nowadays only video editing / computer animation feel slow on a 1000$ computer.

Also mouse based computing has different constraints, it requires different trade offs for the user interface. Metro Apps will always be suboptimal when used with a keyboard, and making classic Windows Apps work with touch requires you to waste a lot of space to make the controls touchable. Take the layout for example: thanks to Fitt’s Law, you will want to put controls on all sides with a mouse, but for touch you will want them together so that you do not have to move your hand around. Or if you have a lot of different tools to present to the user: for the mouse, you will typically show all of them, densely grouped together, and rely on the high precision possible with a mouse so that the user can select what is needed. For touch, you will provide multiple panels with the information shown in a compact way, and when you click on one of these, they will expand to show touch friendly controls to manipulate.

Let us take a very telling example of the difference between touch and mouse: The humble list. On a mouse based device, lists can easily be very tightly spaced, and a tabular grid works very well. On a touch based device on the other hand, you will need 3 to 4 lines heights to pick a line. So you will want to use three / four lines per item, using the extra lines to put info below the header instead of to the right, and maybe use multiple columns of items to avoid wasting too much space. This will mean a different approach to spreadsheets than on the desktop.

So in the end I believe that the approach Apple takes, that you need a different UI for touch than for the mouse, is the right one.

(As an aside, the best way to select text on a touch screen would be to use something like the line loop in Diet Coda, and then use a tap with another finger while you still hold down your primary finger to switch over to switch over to select mode, with the main finger now extending a selection anchored on the position you were at when you did the tap)

The Retina Mac

11. May 2012 · Categories: Apple

Since the retina iPad came out, it has become quite obvious that Apple will want to provide retina displays also for their notebooks, especially since the discovery of double resolution art work in Mountain Lion.
The question now is which resolution will Apple choose for the lineup. I am pretty convinced that they will want to have only one resolution to make scaling the display production process easy, and that makes 220 dpi the natural choice. It is twice the 110 dpi found in the 27″ display, and with you keeping a slightly larger distance from the screen than with an iPad it would still classify as a Retina Display.

As you can see the required bandwidth would be large, and with 266 dpi requiring 46% more pixels than 220 dpi I believe it to be obvious that Apple will settle for 220 dpi as their only resolution.
The next question is: which models will get the retina display? Since Apple values simplicity, there are only two answers: all notebooks get or all Airs get it. I would not be surprised if Apple would wait with the Retina introduction until the screens can be produced in numbers even for 17″, to make Retina displays the distinctive feature for all MacBooks.

Sending Photos on the iPad

02. May 2012 · Categories: Photos

After John Gruber pointed out a very nice article about the web site optimization for dConstruct, with his special emphasis on image size, I was reminded of the appalling state of sharing images that we have on iOS. Take emailing for example: the only place where you can adjust the size of the images you are sending is from the photos app. No control from either the mail app, or the standard mail dialog. Not even iPhoto offers any control about file size. And this even though the image size dialog is done very discreetly, it shows the email size, and pressing on it gives you access to compression options.

Would it really be so hard offer the size controls from the photos send dialog everywhere? Or even have a context menu where you can select the output size per image? In the presentation for the new iPad 2012, Apple showed that LTE was the answer for downloading huge images via email. Wouldn’t the right solution be to compact the images? Images can compressed down to around 100 KByte ¹ and still look very acceptable even on the Retina iPad, you do not need to send 4 MByte full camera resolution images.

I do understand Apple’s desire to keep things easy by not burdening the user with decisions, but if you email images, aren’t they for viewing on screen, and wouldn’t it be more important to have the images load quickly instead of being super quality? So why not adopt the image size dialog from photos systemwide and make it default to 1024×1024?

These are compressed in Aperture, fit to 900 by 900, jpg quality 6↩

iPhoto on the iPad

29. April 2012 · Categories: Photos

iPhoto on the iPad is a brilliant piece of software that allows for a remarkable amount of editing, pretty much covering all the basics that you would want to have to get a quick appreasal of your photos. Of course it is still far from what you can achieve with Aperture on the desktop, but even so the portability of the iPad should mean that I would use it regularly. But I am not using it, not because it does not work, but because I cannot get the edits out into Aperture.

What I would like to use is the following workflow, so that I do not need a MacBook around while shooting:

Shot images
Import to the iPad
Use iPhoto to do a first round through the images, rating them and inserting the basic event data
Maybe do a bit of editing to see the effect of some basic changes
Transfer the images with all info ( including edits) to Aperture for archiving and fine tuning the keeper images

There would be a few functions that would make using iPhoto for this goal easier, like

Allow you to delete images on the iPad, so that you can already destroy the awful images.
Allow better marking of images, like the colors / stars in Aperture
Allow you to modify meta data for the images, like position and keywords, so that you can have them easily marked with the shot info on the iPad, instead of having to do this on the Mac.

But all of these improvements are irrelevant as long as you cannot get your changes out, and iPhoto insists on being a data silo.

The Nikon WU-1a wireless adapter

19. April 2012 · Categories: Photos

After having complained about the lack of wireless support from Nikon, they announce the WU-1a wireless adapter. This is brilliant, especially if Nikon will provide a good iPad and iPhone experience with it. The main benefit is that it is so small that you can easily put it into your bag, not costing a lot of weight. At the moment the only camera that is supported is the D3200, which is a pity. It should work with the D800 as well, given that it was only just released. Their current solution, the WT-4,¹ is not only expensive, but it is also large, and not easy to use thanks to a lack of mobile support. The adapter for the D4 is better, because it is smaller.

The irony is that with this adapter the D3200 will be the best DX camera you can buy from Nikon, even though with only 12 bit readings the image quality will likely be a bit lower than the D7000. But that matters less than the improvement to shooting you will get from the adapter, which will finally be easy enough to use that you will actually want to use it in the field.

The WT-4 does not seem important enough to warrant its own product page↩