October 2007 Archives

Has anyone out there been overwhelmed by the Leopard coverage this month? My RSS reader sure got a workout! 15 popular Apple blogs created a total of more than 600 posts about Leopard. How many ways can you cover the Time Machine feature? 53 ways. Chances are, if it is in Leopard it has been covered, then covered again. Here is a link to a page on the Apple website that conveniently summarizes 95% of the Leopard related blog posts.

I will summarize my experience with Leopard like this... The install was flawless, new features are great, the interface is polished, and the price is right.

1. Voice dialing. Many consider this to be a critical feature on phones without individual plastics number buttons.
2. Show call duration on the Recent Calls detail screen.
3. Enable the editing of contacts while on a call.
4. Caller ID has become a critical telephone technology. It is commonly used to avoid calls and prepare a greeting like 'Oh hey Steve'. This feature is less helpful when the phone is holstered on your hip and you are listening to music. When a call comes in you could take your chances and pinch the switch on the cable, in most cases people will remove the phone to see who is calling before committing to a conversation. The suggestion is to announce who is calling through the headphones (either by name or number). This could be accomplished using text to speech or by adding a contact specific recording on the Assign Ringtone screen.
5. Support for multiple greetings/messages. The most likely features would allow for custom messages based on contact groups. For example, contacts in a 'Work' group would receive a message such as 'You have reached the voicemail for Robert. I am not currently available, if you need assistance with the web servers please call 555-1234, otherwise leave a voice mail and I will return your call as soon as possible'. Other messages could be created for personal contact groups, etc.

1. The Lock Sounds and Keyboard Clicks are nice but in my opinion louder than they need to be. Rather than turning the sounds off it would be nice to adjust the volume levels for each sound.
2. Display a thumbnail of the currently selected wallpaper on the 'Wallpaper' item on the Settings screen as well as the Wallpaper screen above the album views. This would provide a more convenient indicator of the selected wallpaper when viewing settings (more convenient than turning the phone off and on).
3. Add more detail to the end of each mail account line to show whether the account is on or off. For example, the mail account would be listed with the description text on the left and the on/off status to the right.
4. Add an option to view/edit 'Known networks' to the 'Wi-Fi Networks' page.
5. Add an 'SMS' page to the settings screen. Add an option on the new page to hide incoming SMS communication previews. On several occasions when sharing an iMovie video on my iPhone a surprise incoming personal message has popped up on the screen for all to see. The proposed option would allow the user to select how they would like to be notified of incoming messages. Possible options include the existing preview text, a nondescript 'Incoming SMS' pop-up message box, or some other visual indicator (like an SMS icon appearing next to the battery graphic). The audible/vibrate feedback would not need to change.
6. Add a 'Dictionary' page to the General settings screen that allows users to view/edit custom dictionary words.
7. Add a page to manage privacy settings including pieces of data that can only be viewed after entering a passcode. For example, contact notes, web history, and note files.
8. Allow the user to change the order that email boxes appear in the mail application using the same methods as Safari bookmarks.

1. Option to delete more than one email at a time. For example, tap to select/flag messages then tap a button to display a pop-up with actions including 'Delete Selected'.
2. Option to delete all messages such as the contents of the 'Spam' folder.
3. The mailbox list view is indented to the right to allow space for a blue dot that appears next to unread messages. There is enough space in this margin area for other graphics/symbols such as the attachment paperclip and the 'To/Cc Label'. Moving these indicators to the left margin would make the email list even easier to read and makes better use of the screen real estate.
4. Allow unique signatures for each account rather than the entire mail application. This would be helpful when using the mail application for business and personal mail accounts.
5. The mail application checks for mail upon entering the application even though the Auto-Check setting is set to Manual. When set to Manual, the checking of mail should only be initiated when tapping the refresh/check mail button in the lower left corner of the screen.

Steve Jobs/Apple just posted an unexpected hot news item detailing the direction for third pary applications on the iPhone. Security is the top issue with moving forward with an SDK but it is something they feel will be ready in February. This is great news. I really think this is going to change everything.

I will copy and paste Steve's message here because hot news articles disappear after time...

1. Allow the user to set more than one timer and optionally specify titles to each. Multiple timers would be helpful when juggling tasks - turn off sprinklers 30 minutes, take dinner out of oven 20 minutes, and call Mom back 1 hour.

1. Turn the calculator into a multi-function application like the clock. Add buttons along the bottom for the calculator, a unit converter (from the Mac OS X Unit Converter -- area, currency, energy, temperature, time, length, weight, speed, pressure, power, volume), tip calculator (bill amount, tip percent, bill split, etc).
2. Add separator commas to more clearly display numbers in the thousands.
3. Add a backspace button to delete mistakenly typed numbers.

1. When searching allow for sorting by relevance, date added, view count, and rating as provided in the full web client.
2. Allow user to login to YouTube/Google account to view/maintain YouTube stored favorites rather than the local bookmark tracking on iPhone. This feature could not be implemented until the entire YouTube library is updated to H.264.
3. Allow the user to sort YouTube bookmarks using the same methods as Safari bookmarks.

1. Cache some chart data to allow the user to switch between chart views without receiving the 'Retrieving Data...' message. For example tap the '1y' button to view the one year chart -> tap the '2y' button to view the two year chart -> tap the '1y' button again. Each tap between views results in the retrieving data label appearing (even though at this time the markets are closed and data is not changing).
2. Option to pinch to zoom in and out of the chart to view different times. This can appear more smooth by locally storing a small amount of historical data for each symbol.
3. Option to scroll the chart back and forth to view data at a selected zoom level. For example, you can view the one day chat for symbols, but what did yesterday look like? In order to see this you would have to switch to the week view. Doing so causes you to loose out on the more detailed hour view. An example of this scrolling feature can be seen at finance.google.com.
4. Retrieve more data for symbols. Add a tabbed view that allows users to view charts, open/high/low/close/volume type information. Retrieve news headlines for each symbol that when clicked load in Safari.

Apple has updated their online store to include pre-orders of the delayed Mac OS X Leopard which will be released on October 26th.

Earlier this year Apple disappointed some customers when they diverted key Mac OS engineers to the iPhone project. This decision meant that the Leopard release that Apple had been hyping for several months would be delayed. This caused some in the media (including blogs) to question Apple staffing levels.

Hello, October 26th.

1. When new users reach the beginning or end of a photo album they continue flicking 3 to 4 extra times because they do not realize that there are no additional photos in the album. More experienced users will recognize the rubber banding action and try 1 or 2 more times just to make sure there aren't any more photos. A possible solution to the extra flicks would be to provide a visual indicator when the user attempts to flip past the first or last image.
2. Add a method to select a primary photo for each standard photo album rather than using the first photo in the album (idea is like the 'Make Key Photo' option in iPhoto '08). A possible implementation would be to add a button to the image action screen that appears after tapping the icon in the lower left corner (when in portrait mode) of the image viewer.

This is the first in a series of posts covering the enhancements we would like to see in a future iPhone software update. Breaking the list up in to multiple posts should make commenting on individual applications easier.

1. Disable the 'Send' button for space character or return-only SMS messages. In other words, trim the spaces and carriage returns from the beginning and end of the message. Disable the 'Send' button if the remaining text length is zero.
2. Add an SMS context sensitive keyboard button that when tapped brings up a user managed list of phrases such as 'See you there' or 'What time?'. Tapping on a phrase would result in the text being inserted in to the message textbox.
3. It is not easy to hide the keyboard once it is displayed on the screen. Users may want to view the full screen message history to review long conversations or after changing their minds about sending a message. To demonstrate, tap the 'SMS' icon on the home screen -> tap a conversations to load its contents (this is not necessary in some cases as the iPhone will return you to the last viewed conversation). If no conversations exist, create one by sending a message to a friend then restart the SMS application from the home screen. When viewing an existing conversation the majority of the screen will display call-outs containing individual messages. Tapping on the textbox at the bottom of the screen will present the user with the keyboard. At this point the most likely actions to hide the keyboard are pressing the home button followed by tapping SMS or tapping the 'Messages' button in the upper left and re-entering the conversation. The suggested enhancement would allow the user to tap on the conversation/content area to hide the keyboard. This behavior can be found in the Safari application when entering a URL or performing a search, the user can tap on the content area of the application to hide the form and keyboard.
4. Add a clear textbox (x) to the upper right corner of the input area. This would allow users to quickly clear text rather than having the backspace the entire message.
5. Tap message bubbles to display their sent or received time stamp. The display could appear above the bubble as with other timestamps on this screen, or in the form of a popup if the user performs a tap and hold like occurs with URLs and links in Safari.

Apple today launched their iPhone web application directory. Surprisingly, the page is a desktop style directory like the Download pages, not a special mobile/iPhone version. The application categories include Calculate, Entertainment, Games, News, Productivity, Search Tools, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities, and Weather.

My fear is if too many people use this site that Apple will come to the conclusion that web sites are the best third party application solution for the iPhone.

Have you noticed how Apple news has been increasingly negative in the past month? I try to keep my articles upbeat, but it has been hard to find many positive things to talk about.

Apple stock continues to reach new highs and some are just now coming to the realization that Apple is a big corporation with the goal of making a profit. The primary focus has shifted from the Mac to other profitable products like the iPod and iPhone. Many of the Apple faithful that stood by this company through the good and bad times now feel as though they have been left behind and forgotten. They don't have that feeling of being a part of something special, a tight-knit family of loyal Mac users sticking up for the little guy.

It wasn't too long ago that Apple could do no wrong. Steve was admired for his ability to mesmerize an audience with new product announcements. Today every public decision Apple makes will be scrutinized. Any action that appears to be made solely on the basis of increasing profits will result in a backlash from the community.

The iPhone 1.1.1 update breaks network hacked phones. The most unique description of this is the dead cow analogy from Leo Leport. The general belief is that it would have been easy for Apple developers to review the checksum of system files prior to updating the phone. Continue with the upgrade if the files match approved values, otherwise notify the user that the upgrade is not possible. Apple chose to go the route of a press release and a warning message prior to the upgrade in iTunes. Users who ignored the warnings are now shopping for a new cell phone.

99 cent ringtones. Surprisingly this has a lot of people upset. The outrage doesn't make sense when you consider what other companies are charging for ringtones (Only $1.99 annual fee per Ringback Tone with a $0.99 monthly subscription). So you want to make ringtones of songs you already own? Well, prior to iPhone 1.1.1 you could do this using the popular Ambrosia Software iToner application. Not anymore. Daring Fireball has a great article covering the whole ringtone subject in more detail.