Multi-Touch Mac - No hard drive and no verbs either.
27/10/07 12:53
Just a few
days ago Steve Jobs was interviewed
by the New
York Times after Apple announced another
record-breaking quarter.
In a much glossed over point, Jobs was quoted as saying that there are 'no verbs' in the iPhone interface, re-iterating the point he
made during the Macworld keynote about not wanting to use a stylus for input at all.
We look a little deeper and talk about just how important not having 'verbs' in Multi-Touch really is.
In a much glossed over point, Jobs was quoted as saying that there are 'no verbs' in the iPhone interface, re-iterating the point he
made during the Macworld keynote about not wanting to use a stylus for input at all.
We look a little deeper and talk about just how important not having 'verbs' in Multi-Touch really is.
This really is
the underlying reason why the iPhone is such a
revolutionary device. "Multi-Touch has been around
for ages!", we hear you say.
It sure has, we were just as blown away as you the first time we saw video of multi-point touch input - no pun intended, but the 'point' really is
that it took Apple to make it useful.
We've said before that Apple seem to have a knack for solving problems with technology and not creating technology then trying to find a problem to solve with it. In this case they took all the technology, mixed it all together, added a pinch of awesome design, baked for 2 years and out came the iPhone.
We've also said before that this is a similar story to the original Mac's bitmap interface and mouse and the iPod's clickwheel - as if creating one revolutionary human-computer interface wasn't enough, Apple have now dropped this scale of change on market, staggeringly, THREE times.
Not only that, but this time they have taken one of their two previous interfaces and almost obsoleted them both in one hit. In the last article we talked about how Quick Look changes the way you view your files on the move on this new mobile platform. But it extends even further than that into Leopard where, Quick Look currently lives.
Frankly, we couldn't really see the point of Cover Flow on a screen that you cant touch. Sure it's pretty and convenient if you have a side scrolling mouse (ahem, Mighty Mouse) - but that's it?
This system is made for the touch screen, you don't ever select an action (verb) to do anything. You simply 'tell' the software what you want - a flick, a pinch, a tap. And although it's simple, it totally turns on it's head how we use computers, especially mobile ones. By sweeping this convention aside Apple not only leave behind the 'typical' human-computer interface but more importantly, they make the interface work like you THINK.
Believe it or not, Microsoft tried this long ago in Windows XP with 'tasks' in the Control Panel...today I don't know of many XP machines that have left it on, most people prefer the 'Classic' view simply because it makes more sense. The idea wasn't new then and it's not new now, but the point again is that nobody has really made it really useful until now.
Take the iPod Touch - the home screen has 'Music', 'Videos', 'Photos' and 'iTunes' as the four primary tasks Apple expect you to use the Touch for. It then takes other common activities using YouTube and not just made it a default bookmark in Safari - but made it into its own 'task'. More like you think, less like a computer does. You think you want to look at YouTube and you tap the icon to tell the computer you want 'that'.
If I tell my 49 year old mother to goto YouTube on her PC she, stubbornly, fumbles around with Firefox refusing help and totally unaware it's in her bookmarks already. Hand her the Touch, not only did she get from 'sleep' to YouTube in under 5 seconds from (with NO help), but she made the comment that she wished she could 'do other things on the computer as easy as this' and then she said 'This is easy' - at which point I realised I wasn't going to see my Touch for the next little while. It was this combined with Steve Jobs saying they removed the verbs from the iPhone interface that made us really understand that in this case, less is clearly more.
It's not so much what Apple put in to Multi-Touch, but what they left out.
Zillatron and Broadmier
It sure has, we were just as blown away as you the first time we saw video of multi-point touch input - no pun intended, but the 'point' really is
that it took Apple to make it useful.
We've said before that Apple seem to have a knack for solving problems with technology and not creating technology then trying to find a problem to solve with it. In this case they took all the technology, mixed it all together, added a pinch of awesome design, baked for 2 years and out came the iPhone.
We've also said before that this is a similar story to the original Mac's bitmap interface and mouse and the iPod's clickwheel - as if creating one revolutionary human-computer interface wasn't enough, Apple have now dropped this scale of change on market, staggeringly, THREE times.
Not only that, but this time they have taken one of their two previous interfaces and almost obsoleted them both in one hit. In the last article we talked about how Quick Look changes the way you view your files on the move on this new mobile platform. But it extends even further than that into Leopard where, Quick Look currently lives.
Frankly, we couldn't really see the point of Cover Flow on a screen that you cant touch. Sure it's pretty and convenient if you have a side scrolling mouse (ahem, Mighty Mouse) - but that's it?
This system is made for the touch screen, you don't ever select an action (verb) to do anything. You simply 'tell' the software what you want - a flick, a pinch, a tap. And although it's simple, it totally turns on it's head how we use computers, especially mobile ones. By sweeping this convention aside Apple not only leave behind the 'typical' human-computer interface but more importantly, they make the interface work like you THINK.
Believe it or not, Microsoft tried this long ago in Windows XP with 'tasks' in the Control Panel...today I don't know of many XP machines that have left it on, most people prefer the 'Classic' view simply because it makes more sense. The idea wasn't new then and it's not new now, but the point again is that nobody has really made it really useful until now.
Take the iPod Touch - the home screen has 'Music', 'Videos', 'Photos' and 'iTunes' as the four primary tasks Apple expect you to use the Touch for. It then takes other common activities using YouTube and not just made it a default bookmark in Safari - but made it into its own 'task'. More like you think, less like a computer does. You think you want to look at YouTube and you tap the icon to tell the computer you want 'that'.
If I tell my 49 year old mother to goto YouTube on her PC she, stubbornly, fumbles around with Firefox refusing help and totally unaware it's in her bookmarks already. Hand her the Touch, not only did she get from 'sleep' to YouTube in under 5 seconds from (with NO help), but she made the comment that she wished she could 'do other things on the computer as easy as this' and then she said 'This is easy' - at which point I realised I wasn't going to see my Touch for the next little while. It was this combined with Steve Jobs saying they removed the verbs from the iPhone interface that made us really understand that in this case, less is clearly more.
It's not so much what Apple put in to Multi-Touch, but what they left out.
Zillatron and Broadmier
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