iPhone Lite - Yes, They Should!

"Analysts" are telling this:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/01/apple-seen-as-unlikely-to-introduce-new-inexpensive-iphone-model

I'm telling Apple should introduce an iPhone Lite and here's how I would have it done. Heh, writing's Cheap! :)

In the new iPod Nano, Apple has introduced a form factor that also suits a phone. 7.6 x 4 x 0.5cm. You can fit three of those on a Samsung Galaxy III (almost; that's 13.7 x 7 x 0.9cm).

Ingredients to add:
- GSM/EDGE telephony (no 3G necessary)
- iMessage
- Twitter (with pictures)

That's it.

Since the device is so small, one can think of using it with earphones only (the same as currently).

Having such a wide gap to the existing entry-level iPhone 4 makes a clear differentiation between the models. At the same time, this makes iPhone Lite perfect as a child's phone. Or as an entry level developing world phone (Brazil et.al.) without tarnishing the Apple brand.

Apple already has this division between iPhone and iPod touch. They only lack a phone in the Nano size category. It should look *exactly* the same.
 

Apple *always* lets you down!

I upgraded to Mountain Lion, and expected to get laptop/desktop/phone integration. That's what they had publicized. A more "iOS" experience, also on the desktop. Yeah. Right.

Got an alarm just a few minutes ago. Clicked it "shut" on my desktop. What the h*ll... It's still ringing on the phone in the entrance!

I genuinly thought they'd make the things *integrated*. You react to a message on one device, it gets handled on the others as well.

Nope.

Apple always leaves something for the next update. But this one they should have covered.

While whining, how about incoming SMS'es. If I'm working on a computer, let me see the SMS'es there, and react to them. INTEGRATE.

Currently, SMS'es are still confined only to the phone. No technical reason they would need to be so.

I'm beginning to think Apple is losing the magical "it just works" that they were known for, in the time when using PC's was hard. Losing their innovation mojo. Please - do better!!!

App Store should meet Bonjour (= local caching of downloads)

http://twitter.com/bmdesignhki/status/231451046185148416

Some more details on that.

It feels stupid that after one 4.3 GB download, each family computer under the *same* App Store license must perform the exact same download again, from who knows how far on the Internet.

A better approach would be for App Store agent to keep a cache of recent downloads (or even partial downloads) and expose that cache to any other computers on the same network, via Bonjour. Technically, this should be easy.

Authentication would still happen via the actual App Store servers, just as now. Only once the download begins, local caches would be preferred over the actual server seeds on the Internet. This is much akin to torrents, but not quite. It would reduce the server load that Apple is getting by some (maybe 10-15%). 

What do you think? I find no down side to Apple doing this, starting in some future version of App Store. Luckily, we only have two Macs at home.

How Apple Maps could be better

The news birdies brought this:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/11/report-apple-dumping-google-for-own-maps-app-in-ios-6

I have long wondered how far it will take for Apple to want to cut any ties to Google. Since it seems they are doing this, how about adding some *useful features* to the maps app on iOS.

Online vs. offline maps

The main problem I face with the iPhone in general, is that roaming abroad is still dreadfully expensive. As I've written before, I feel "at home" when the phone works not only as a phone but as a twitter and email client, and a maps engine.

Now, Apple could somehow fix the whole thing by i.e. starting their own global 3G operations, and giving reasonable global roaming charges. Let's forget that. What they can already do with regards to the maps update/transition is make roaming less needed. Fix it at the application level.

Current situation: separate map apps

For navigating in my home country, I use iOS Google maps. Works splendid. Pulls data off 3G.

For trips abroad, I can either pre-visit such areas in the Google map, and then hope the maps remain in the application's cache. They normally do. Or I can download (and possibly pay) for separate city-wide "offline maps" apps. There are *many* of these (by vendor, by city, free / commercial).

What Apple *could* do in the iOS 6 maps upgrade is unify all this. Make the caching explicit, and cut away the need for *separate* map apps. Just one Maps.

This is how to do it...

- Add to the preferences of the Maps app a selection of cities that will be kept available "offline", i.e. cached to the phone's memory itself. Navigation and route finding within such areas should work even when data roaming is disabled.

That's... all.

I hope Apple does get to see this customer feedback. If you second this idea, please say so to them here.

- Asko

My wish list for the next iPhone

There's some rumors on the net about what the iPhone 5 would be like.

- bigger screen (5")
- quad-core A6 processor
- 4G and LTE network support

Now, let me give a single 3GS model user's point of view of what I'd like to have.

The bigger screen sounds good. Since buying the iPhone my phone usage has transformed. It's mainly my Twitter machine, then email, then SMS, then phone. Really - using it as a phone is ... well ... getting less important all the time. But of course the phone functionality must be there, and be there flawless. But I'm not keen on the network specifics, as long as they work.

One *definite* killer version would be this:

- free Twitter roaming around the world

The way I realize I'm "back home" again after a travel is that I can tweet naturally. Whenever. Using 3G. This I cannot do on trips and... it's weird. This and the inability to use Google maps (unless I've been smart to preload the particular maps before the trip) is what bugs me the most. Don't bother with 4G/LTE unless there would be a decent global data roaming (hey - I'm fine with 64k speeds abroad!) that would not cost incredibly.

Doing this would make it feel like a world phone (ehem - I mean tweet unit).

Quad core. Nah. Details. Three would be fine but if four is easier to do, whatever. :)

One more thing.

Hopefully, the enclosure changes. Either to full aluminum (no you wouldn't do that, it's already passé and it scratches easily and feels cold in freezing temperatures). Go with carbon fibre, or any composite!

Be it "thermal plastics" or "nanocellulose", figure out the light and sturdy construction that will make us go "ooooooh" in awe. Do it One More Time.

Carbon covers simply look brilliant, they feel sturdy and nice, and they have somehow a "natural" feel to them. Go Green, Apple!

http://puremetalcards.com/blog/tag/carbon-fiber/

FastCoExist: Apple patent foresees sexy, bullet-proof iPhone

Making narrative videos based on Keynote could be easier

( This is a copy of a feedback I sent to Apple's Keynote team. )

<<
I love Keynote - you've gradually developed it into a very versatile and nice tool, for making in-person presentations.

However, where I feel it can be improved is making narrative "taped" presentations. I have done such recently using a combination of Keynote, Garageband and iMovie, and the experience left me feeling like swimming upstream. The workflow was clumsy and making changes to a certain slide's audio was elaborate. Doing the same completely within Keynote would be ideal.

Keynote has basic narration recording and slide synchronization already (see here). However, the approach seems to suffer from some UI confusion and lack of suitability to at least my usage case.

The UI terminology is not very clear. 

Here is the current menu structure:

This kludges together both the narrative part and rehearsal, which are actually two unrelated things. Top three entries are for making narrative presentations. The two lowermost are for exercising live presentations.

My suggestion for the same menu:

   Play

      > Play with narrative

      > Record narrative

      > Clear narrative

      ---

      > Rehearse slideshow

      > Customize presenter display...

This way, one would use the word "narrative" for a recorded slideshow, with audio, and the word "slideshow" for any kind of general reference (s.a. rehearsing your live presentation).

The use of "Play" as the main menu name can be argued, since it also covers recording and rehearsal. "Studio" might actually be equally good? :)

The workflow seems wrong.

"Record slideshow" has following options:

The "Record from beginning" moves to the first slide of narrative and begins a whole new sound track for all the slides. The "Record & Replace" (or "Record & Append" in some cases) stays on current slide and replaces the soundtrack for this (and subsequent) slides.

This works for ad-hoc narratives where the person casually goes through all the slides in order. It fails on narratives with planned text to read, where getting one slide right at a time is already a good bite.

My suggestion:

Get completely rid of the options dialog. Take people directly to recording stage, but in paused mode so they can start when ready. If they remain within the particular slide and end the recording by pressing ESC, replace only that slide's recording. If they proceed to following slide, replace the recording of that slide as well.

I believe this change is great since it cuts away a whole (unnecessary) dialog, and suits both the old and the new usage case. If one wants to narrate the whole slideshow at once, simply go to first page, start recording and proceed through all the pages. But it also allows to go back to certain page later, and re-record only that one. Without scrapping the audio of the slides behind it.

Going further

You could make a little (loudspeaker icon) icon by the slides in the Slides pane to show which ones have a narration attached to them and which not. Pressing that icon could play the narration without necessarily moving to that slide. Currently, such features are in the Document level in the Inspector - again highlighting the idea that narration would be an undivided, document centric thing. It actually is a the opposite - a page-specific thing that gets bound together just as slides get bound together when running them as a slideshow.

I believe this misconception is underlying all the problems I'm facing with the current narrative Keynote features. Fix that, and all will drop in place.

I believe these issues are easy to fix and look forward to that happening. 

Here is my current narrated presentation I did using the painful Keynote + Garageband -> iMovie workflow:

http://bmdesign.smugmug.com/Investors/Vision-public/18497382_sPHbtM#1529667808_sSFPcwz

<<

Going slightly more further (addendum)

Apple could actually scrap the narration features altogether from the Menu. "Play with narration" becomes unneeded if playing with narration would be available at the usual slideshow starting. "Record narration" may still be required - somewhere, to get things going. "Clear narration" can be done by usual slide handling, instead. Less UI is a good thing.

I would like to have external editing of the narrations (s.a. the effects you get in Garageband and clipping) but this is troublesome because of the need to synchronize a narrative with on-screen presentation effects (i.e. showing text or animations). Therefore, it's probably best to leave within Keynote.

Currently (iWork '09) exporting narrations to iCloud is not supported, but obviously it should be. However, these can be pushed as videos instead of interactive slideshows. I would like to have automatically generated markers for the beginning of each slide, though, so viewers would be easily able to skim back and forth to a particular slide.

Narrative slideshows are used extensively in i.e. pitching for projects or raising funds. I hope Apple makes producing them way easier than it now is. :)

p.s. I exported the slides to iCloud. Notice how much crisper the graphics look, because of no conversion to MPEG4 video. Also, the upload was 46MB compared to 230MB for video.
https://www.iwork.com/document/?d=Public_thing.key&a=p1303025490

One more thing...

The slide comments should be viewable (at least as an option) when recording the narration. Currently, they are not. I've placed the text to read in those comments and it makes sense to have it there, i.e. for making printouts.

GPU makers are still not getting it! - way to 'retina' displays

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/20/intels_ivy_bridge_support_for_4k_resolution_could_pave_way_for_retina_macs.html

There is a real need for 'retina' desktop monitors. Resolutions where we don't see individual pixels any more. I.e. the 27" Apple Cinema Display is otherwise brilliant, but reading text or even web pages on it is less than optimal. The pixels on such big screen become too big. Apple's laptops are way better in this regard.

But - it seems Intel would be going there with the traditional approach. Why?

We now have Thunderbolt. It's essentially a PCI bus over thin serial wire. So why not make the GPU *inside the display*. The distinction is not big for the consumer - they might not even be aware. The same cable. But instead of streaming each and every pixel across in such a GPU-within-display device the OS X display elements and commands would be sent. Like for text, the characters instead of the rendered bitmaps.

This also makes sense in other ways, especially when thinking of a small laptop + large stationary "office" display. Excess heat dissipation is easier in the display. One would get better graphics processing speed when working with the big screen. Why carry that GPU chip along in the laptop everywhere. Actually, latest Macbook Airs don't have a dedicated GPU. See - maybe Apple indeed is thinking this.

It is *so* obvious to me as a computer engineer that this is the way to go forward. Intel - please say this is what you have in mind. We don't need retina display support the old way.