Samsung is not copying Apple

Found this a while back, reading about the Samsung-Apple legal spat.. why doesn’t Apple show this to the Judge?

 

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Thoughts on Invention

The term ‘invention’ is messy

Out of the following people, who do you credit an invention with?

• The one who thought of the idea first (“He thought of this years ago!”)
• The one who first published the idea first through a blog, book, article or educational paper (the idea is shared among a small group of like-minded people)
• The one who first made the idea into a workable prototype (building the first proof of concept to pitch to the Moneylenders like VCs)
• The one who figures out to mass-produce the product (manufacturing issues are highly under-rated and not covered by media a lot)
• The one who makes profit from the product (coming up with a business model to make the product accessible to the maximum number of users while making a profit)
• The one who media propagates as the inventor (journalistic license is taken for the sake of sticky storytelling)
• The one who affected people’s lives- in a good or a bad way, with the product (People love products that help them kick ass)

While there is no one person who can be given credit for an invention, but anyone who propels the invention to the next level can be assumed to be a valuable contributor.

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Thoughts on Apple TV- 2

Now, is Apple TV its old set-top box with a new interface? Or a whole new TV? The TVs available today are dumb terminals with the rich interactive experience coming from the set-top box.

The current experience for interactive TV comes through a set-top box. The interface lets you play around with the tv schedule (record or make shows favourite), browse the web, watch photos. The problem here is that there are two interfaces- the TV and the set-top box. Apple’s TV aims (or would aim) to reinvent TV viewing the way Flipboard revolutionized RSS feeds reading.

Another crucial question is- how does one bypass the localization issue? Different countries have their own language channels, local cable operators who know what people want to watch and what they’ll pay for it.
How does one create an engaging experience across languages and countries?

The solution could lie in breaking down the content into its bare essentials. All TV programs are moving images and/or text. If we can scan whats displayed on the screen, we will have a lot of data in terms of text (ticker tape, stocks, headlines, team names and scores), and images (faces, objects, places). Now using the power of internet, these metadata can be used to show related information to get an enhanced viewing experience. This will work for multiple languages and across countries. Here are some examples of how the TV could display related content for news, music and infotainment channels.

For an example, the other day, I was watching this motor racing documentary on Audi team participating in Le Mans 2008. While watching, I had a lot of questions as to who won the race the next year, are the drivers still racing, how is Peugeot faring, and how do these cars help building the cars we drive. Now normally, I would have my laptop or iPad to look these up, but would be great if I can see it as I am watching the documentary.

Apple is about controlling the key points in a business in order to provide a seamless experience to the user. The main players in the TV business are content providers (channels), distributors and cable operators and tv manufacturers. In the next post, I will try to understand how Apple could cut the cable operators layer by redefining TV’s digital distribution.

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Thoughts on Apple TV- 1

Its been almost 10 years since Apple was rumored to launch its own TV. Apple kept denying it, mainly because it does not talk about their future products. But Steve Jobs kept dropping hints that they are constantly thinking how to revolutionize the TV industry. The release of Apple TV in 2007 was the first step. The goal was not to compete with a DVD player and not to be another set-top box. In 2010, he said the TV industry is based on a subsidized business model, and that the problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. Also, unlike the phone industry, which has a GSM or CDMA
standard, there are no global standards for TV.

Coming back to the current interfaces for popular TV set-top boxes include TiVo, Roku,  Google TV,  Boxee. As we can see, the software is good, but has lots of room for improvement in terms of an integrated experience.

Apple is known for making disruptive consumer products in already established markets, with new business rules. In the TV industry, I think the biggest block to innovation is the cable operators. They control the distribution of content and their set-top boxes run on software that is really, really not upto the mark.

In my next post (coming soon), I will show how I want my Apple TV to look and work like. Stay tuned.

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Android- Disruptive Innovation?

I read this great, though-provoking article on Android. It talks about the disruptive market that Google has created in the mobile space. Here’s what I understood from it-

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1 The Android strategy is defensive rather than offensive. The tactic is about protecting the core business of Google- serving web ads. As the Android market share grows, its less likely for Google’s competitors to display ads to a large audience.

2 Google is paying carriers and handset manufacturers to put Android on their phones and also gives a cut of the mobile search revenues to carriers. In this process, they’re also getting rid of ‘middlemen’ of the web- browsers like IE and FF. Google had to pay them to make its search engine visible in desktop browsers.

3 For most consumers, if the UI looks and works somehwat similar to the iPhone and has all features, that’s all they need. They will stick to Android like they did while Microsoft improved from Windows95 to Windows8.

4 iPhone revenue is generated with the same business model they used for Mac. So its unfair to pit them against each other. (Win vs. Mac is also a useless debate).

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I am not sure if users will click banner ads on their phones the same way as they did on desktops. In phones and tablets, apps have become the main way for people to look for information not search. Also, the real estate on phones is too little to display ads. Ads can be displayed inside apps, but the experience is mediocre.

Consumers, carriers, handset manufactureres, software makers are frantically trying to innovate. Only time will tell who is going to prevail. Have a read of the article and let me know what you think..

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Flash on Android

I don’t get it.
Isn’t it enough that flash websites can run on Android devices? Now Adobe wants us to build apps in Flash. I understand its a business decision to get the desktop experience on mobile devices. But the UX is compromised.

Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Air and Adobe Reader are available in the market. After installing these three on my phone, they have taken 30MB of my phone’s internal storage. The android market tells me the sizes are 4, 2, 6MB respectively but then the apps update themselves and become bloated.

On top of this, these apps cannot be moved to the sd card. I tried installing large games like gun bros and pocket legends but the phone needs more internal memory to install them. I guess to work well, the adobe apps need to be ‘closer’ to the phone hardware. If every other app manufacturer starts thinking like this, then a user wud not be able to install more than 5 apps. The comments on the app pages scream for introducing the feature to move the app to the sd card.

This is not the desktop era anymore with infinite processes, unlimited resources of hardware and software, and no battery hassles. hw and sw need to work together in mobile devices as the resources are limited.

If installing adobe apps makes installing other apps a pain, why would I want to do it (unless I am forced to). My guess is- Android will not change its flash family apps for the better. The excuse will be that it will work fine for larger screens-tablets as they have more processing power blah..

The question is-can you make a great interactive experience on a small screen, with the resource hungry adobe platform?

Todo:

• Can I disable/uninstall flash on the phone and see how my experience changes?
• Can I read pdfs without installing the Adobe Reader app?
• Look for Android apps which are made in Flash platform and see if they’re any better than the native apps.

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Android Market- Bizarre Bazaar

So, I ‘flashed’ my HTC HD2 (running Windows Mobile 6.5) and had Android 2.2 running. The warranty goes out of the window, but after a year of using a half-baked interface, I could not stand to run the worst OS on the planet on a gorgeous 4.2 inch screen anymore.
So back to Android. The OS has some peculiarities, and so does the market. Short story- nothing beat the iOS experience.

Long story-

• When you update an app, you replace the whole app. Kind of reminds me of an iTunes desktop update. I don’t like either of them.
• Some apps do not close when you exit them. The result is rapid battery loss. You have to go to the Task Manager for Android and “Force stop”
• Adobe Air app is the heaviest app I’ve loaded yet (16 mb).
• Taking a screenshot is such a mission. Installing JDK, then Android SDK, and running some .dat file after searching from the complex folder structure in the ‘Android’ folder in Windows explorer…
• Most apps don’t have an exit button.
• I hate the hardware ‘Back’ button. It should be renamed to ‘StumbleUpon’, cause you never know what screen it will show.

Some things that I do like about Android

• Angry Birds is free
• The facebook integration is nice (populates your phonebook with contacts from Facebook who have published their phone numbers)

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Under the Google Doodle

Google had this doodle today as a hom(p)age to Jules Verne. By moving the joystick on the right, the image ‘behind’ the Google logo moves and takes you on an atmospheric underwater journey (reference to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea).

I was curious enough to find how the guys created this. So, turns out its not one background image. There are four overlapping images, moving at different speeds according to how you move the joystick. Its HTML5, and the effect is pretty cool!

Here’s the combined image (check out the Google logo at the seabed :)

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iPad Interfaces of News Apps

Reading news on the iPad is becoming a popular use-case for the device. Some apps connect you to twitter and facebook so you can also follow ‘social’ news. The interaction works for all apps works in a fairly similar way (tap on preview to show detail; top left button to get back). The interesting part are their interfaces, which seem to follow two patterns. But before looking into that, lets break down a news item into bare essentials.

A news item consists of

* Picture/Video Screenshot

* Headline

* Text (Intro and detailed)

For me, all three should be shown for scanning articles effectively. Two types of interfaces are used to show news-

1 Scrolling Squares

Some notable examples are-

• BBC News- The best in this league. 50/50 space is allocated to preview/detail. The news categories are scrollable rows. More categories can be seen by scrolling vertically. One cannot add new categories while in portrait mode.
• npr- designed by bottle rocket. Same concept as the BBC except news details appear only when u tap on a square.
• Pulse- This news app was showcased by Steve Jobs while unveiling the iPad. Maybe its because the scrolling squares with pictures look so cool.. But after using it a while, its nothing out of the ordinary. To me, it looks exactly like npr which doubles up as a visual RSS reader.
• FLUD- The latest RSS reader to join the scrolling squares. I couldn’t find anything novel about this one too.

2 The Fluid Grid

I guess this interface type is difficult to develop and doesn’t blow you away with great looks. No wonder I don’t see many apps like this. But the fluid grid is much better than the other because of several functional reasons.

• It Emphasizes importance of articles by size
• Newspaper look- layout is different for each page, but based on a grid structure
• All three news essentials are shown
• Seamless adaptation in portrait and landscape modes

Some best examples of this type:

• Flipboard- is the best interface for browsing news- mainsteam and social. The categories page is similar to Time magazine app, and copies NYtimes look in inside pages. It adds a discussion column on the right for viewing comments of the article.
• NYTimes (editor’s choice)- The interface look very much like the app they released for Adobe Air (which IMHO is the most brilliant app EVER!). The news aligns itself beautifully in anyway you hold the device. There are no pop-ups or layer on layer of content- just news. Not to forget elegant ad placing too!
• Huffington Post- This app has nice navigation for news categories.

Magazine Interfaces

I also looked at some magazine interfaces to see how they display news.

• TIME- once you are used to the interface, its a joy to use and read. The only downer for me was that it doesn’t remember the last state of the last article you read. Khoi Vinh doesnt like the interaction. designed and developed by  woodwing.com, thewonderfactory.com
• WIRED- I really found this one to be overhyped. Its got the same layout as the print magazine (lots of white space). Its more smart than simple.

Summary:

1. Most of the hyped news apps borrow interfaces from big brand news apps.
2. NYTimes, Time Magazine and Flipboard have the best news apps for the iPad.
3. Fluid grid works better than the scrolling square.
4. We need to come up with better ways of browsing news content.

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My Observations of the iPad

Last week, useit.com published a preliminary report on the iPad. I had to read the review as it was the first review of the device + I have been using the device myself.
I found the article to be too lengthy, too general and vague to be applicable. The article should be renamed to – Expert reviews for some iPad apps.

So here’s me on my take on the iPad and busting a few “myths” propagated by the study.

ipad is
1 a container for apps and 2 an input device (on-screen keyboard). It does these jobs pretty well.

+ves
1 There is one exit button for all apps- the big button on the device.
2 When you paginate through the apps and reach the beginning, app search appears. This feature integrates well in the swiping experience.
3 Any application breadcrumb can be found on the top left.
4 I dont miss mouseover. Or do I? Time will tell.
5 Watching movies is a great experience, mainly because of decent stereo speakers.

-ves
1 Volume slider on ipad does not tell you which way to mute or full volume.
2 The tilt lock is not apparent.
3 no consistent pagination behavior in some native apps (ex: ibooks).

Myths

1 iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability-

All adobe air apps are made different, have different interface components and have ”weird interaction styles”. How can you blame Adobe or MS Windows for these completely different apps?

Even the web browsing experience on the pc is unique on different websites. Hovering over a picture could produce completely different results.

A bad example of a touch interaction is the scroll behavior in HTC HD2. You touch and drag the finger down or touch and drag the finger up to scroll!!. Two completely opposite paradigms for scroll. And thats a OS issue not an app.

2 Cant hit small targets on websites-

A netbook with a touchpad as input will have a similar browsing experience. I don’t need to see a pointer as a visual indication. The touch software in the iPad is pretty accurate in deciding what I want to click. As far as I am concerned, if you can browse on a netbook, you can browse here too.

3 Quoting Jef Raskin saves the research-

Did not see the name-dropping any useful to the review. His great insight on card sharks vs holy scrollers works for any type of screen- big or small. but I do not understand its need to be applied specifically to the iPad.

There were some strange tasks on which the study was based. For a comic book app, the task chosen was “Delete the copy that you have just downloaded.” Why would I throw away the book that I just bought?

Design Suggestions for iPad Apps-

1 would love to have a “most frequently used apps” page or button
2 quick access for apps (search)
3 “show hints” button on the top left of each app. clicking which will show an overlay about what is touchable or not.
4 have to rethink of the hover action for interactive objects
5 test apps for usability and then update them.

If you are interested see some great iPad UX guidelines at UXMAG..
What the article needs is to show the best and worst practices for designing apps. Following is great review for the iPhone. I would definitely want to hear what these guys find about the iPad.

How people really use the iPhone

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