It has now been two-weeks ago since Apple opened the cage doors and let out a roaring lion to the masses. We’re hopeful that we prepared you enough to get all set to install OS X Lion onto your Macs and welcome the bucket loads of new features that it brought along. Here at Smoking Apples, the team has spent the last several days immersed in curiosity and excitement exploring everything that Apple’s latest and great OS had to offer and have taken some time to outline our thoughts about OS X Lion.

Ankur Gupta:

When Apple released the Magic Trackpad back in July ’10, it made little sense to get one until Apple took the wraps off Lion at the ‘Back to Mac’ event in Oct ’10. While some might say Magic Mouse does the job just fine, it only offers a peak into the glorious world of Lion filled with multi-touch gestures, natural scrolling, iOS-type scrollbars and other neat tricks lifted straight from iOS. These are best enjoyed using a Trackpad and I cannot emphasize this fact enough.

I’ve had access to Lion on my iMac all along the releases of the Developer Previews and I have had a love-hate relationship with it. I’m not a big fan of the rubber-band scrolling. It is intrusive and slows down your productivity as content takes time to roll into position. iOS-style scrollbars or scrollers have also intruded into Lion. These monochrome narrow lozenges appear only when scrolling action is taking place and disappear few moments after it completes. Yes, they do save space but they are overlap the content and that annoys the <redacted> out of me. What’s worse is that there is no way to turn either of these effects off. Moreover, I struggled getting accustomed to natural scrolling; but the Magic Mouse isn’t the right device to take the plunge anyway, in my opinion.

Moving on, Lion has way more good stuff to counter all that I’ve outlined above and it begins with Mission Control. I’ve never been a pro-active user of Spaces but Mission Control has been a game changer for me. It has simplified Space and window management so much that is has forced me to accommodate Spaces in my workflow. Some of the other Lion features that have caught my fancy include Auto Save and Versioning. Cmd-S shortcut has lost its mojo with Auto Save feature that automatically creates a snapshot virtually every time you make a change to a document. Versions maintains the track record of all the changes that have been made and you can go back in time to restore a particular version of a document. What’s really impressive is that all this stuff takes place in the background without the folder getting cluttered with multiple copies of the same file.

A lot of apps have gotten substantial upgrades and Safari is my favorite among them. Full screen mode, integrated Downloads window and much better memory management are good enough to prevent me from embarking on the Chrome ship. The Reading List feature might interest a few but Instapaper users like me will dismiss it in a single glance. Mail has risen like a phoenix with a revamped look and dozens of new features but I prefer Sparrow Mail as it offers better Gmail integration. Being an ardent Fantastical user, the new iCal does not impress me either. Preview too has received several subtle changes and I absolutely love the refreshed look that it dons. Finally, Finder too has received some love from Apple and it ditches the archaic look to flaunt a monochrome sidebar. The ‘All My Files’ is a nice addition that aggregates files in a single place. There are always subtle changes that blow your mind away. One such thing is the transformation of multi-item selections into a neat compressed list-view representation from the earlier near invisible image of the source. Also, the new ‘Arrange By’ option that neatly sorts files into groups is more than handy. One quirk that remains in Finder is the completely random view-state that a folder is presented in. Finder behaves like a truant providing no clue what view to expect leaving you with no option but to manually set things right.

Lion replaced Snow Leopard a week ago on my primary system, but I’m still adapting to it. With Apple incorporating so many changes, Lion presents a learning curve even for seasoned OS X users. I had to toggle some switches back to Snow Leopard state to feel comfortable with Lion and it will be a while before I can convince myself to turn them back to their original state. Lion with full screen app support opens a whole new world of opportunity for developers and it will be interesting to see what they make of it. With Lion one can almost sense that touchscreen Macs are going to be the next big thing from Apple. OS X Lion (or OS X Monochrome as I like to call it) is a big step by Apple and I’d like to believe it is in the right direction.

Chaitanya Adgaonkar:

Mac OS X Lion is undoubtedly the most important OS upgrade in Apple’s history. With Lion, Apple has taken quite a few bold steps.

Upgrade:

To begin with, the only medium through which Lion was made available to the public was via the App Store, to be downloaded as an “Upgrade” to your current OS. I think it’s great that Apple took this decision. I may have used the SuperDrive on my MacBook Pro only once in the last two years. It’s time for Optical Media to go away, and Apple has hammered the first nail in the coffin. The upgrade process was smooth as it has always been, and I was playing around with Lion and its features about an hour after the download started.

Back to the Mac:

The second major step was the merging of iOS elements into OS X — what Apple likes to call ‘Back to the Mac’. Today, iOS devices make up the majority of Apple’s sales and customers. For many a customers, their iOS devices are also their first Apple product purchase. The popularity of iOS has also sparked interest in other Apple products, the most important of them being the Mac. More and more iOS users are switching to the Mac and with Lion, Apple is doing its best to make these users feel at home. The ‘natural’ scrolling, autocorrect, Resume may feel odd to old-time Mac users, but these new converts will feel very comfortable with all this. Personally, I love all the new system features. AutoSave and Versions will specially come handy while writing those long papers in school. Autocorrect annoys me a bit right now, but I am getting used to it. The other big feature is the Mac App Store. iOS users love that they can install applications with a single tap, and now the same is possible on OS X too. Launchpad is another addition to Lion catering specifically to the converts. Personally, I have a lot of apps installed, and Launchpad actually makes my app launching experience more difficult.

Apps:

My favorite apps on OS X have always been TextEdit and Preview and in Lion, both these apps have received great updates. TextEdit has a much cleaner interface and the formatting bar got a well deserved makeover. Preview on the other hand now has fullscreen support, which is great for reading PDF notes without any distraction. The notes and highlight features have also been updated. The updates to other system apps on the other hand haven’t impressed me much. Mail has received an update and it is much better than before, but like Ankur, I decided to stick to Sparrow. The apps that have received the most amount of criticism have been iCal and Address Book and I find myself agreeing here. While the calendar views in iCal look fine, it’s the window that annoys me. I find myself clicking on the bits of torn paper at the border, trying my best to get rid of them. Address Book on the other hand is even worse. Remember the last time you scrolled on page in a real life book? No? Well, someone at Apple did. Address Book UI makes no sense to me. Also, why does clicking on a book-mark flip the page? Yes, I know it brings me to the group view, but the clicking on bookmark part makes no sense. If the two pane view wasn’t bad enough, there is another single pane view which is even more ridiculous. I understand that Apple is using real life metaphors in UI to make the experience easier for users, but they should work on matching the actions for real life use too. The Address Book was just fine in Snow Leopard and I was quite disappointed by this part of the update. Safari feels much faster. Most of the Safari updates have been under the hood, and the improved performance is quite evident. iTunes 10.4 is now a 64-bit Cocoa app which is a very welcome move, but I haven’t noticed any improvement in Performance. iChat was largely ignored in the Lion update with unified contact list being the only feature worth mentioning.

General:

Mission Control essentially unifies Exposé and Spaces. I never used Spaces on Snow Leopard, and I don’t find myself using Mission Control either. The Dictionary app got an update, and now includes a British Dictionary and Thesaurus. This might not be important to you, but as a guy who puts petrol in his car and not gas, this is a very welcome move. Finder got a few updates too. Search has been improved, but my favorite feature has to be ‘Group selected files in a folder’. Lion also includes system wide support for full screen Apps. I don’t see myself using full screen apps regularly, but full screen might work great for production/editing apps like Aperture and iMovie so I am going to give it a try.

Lion is just the beginning though. iCloud is set to launch this fall, and I think that is going to change a lot of things. Lion marks a very important step in Apple’s history where it began unifying it’s platforms, and if this is the direction we are going in, I am extremely excited to see what we have for store in us in the future.

Preshit Deorukhkar:

I have been a Mac user for 5 years now. My first purchase was a Mac Mini running Mac OS X Tiger. Since then, I’ve spent many hours working with OS X always powering my primary machine and have had the privilege of almost never bothering to work on a Windows machine. OS X has been a remarkable resource of some of the most fantastically developed apps. Whenever I’ve felt that something’s missing in my workflow, there’s always an app for OS X that fills that gap.

Of course, when iOS came into the picture, it was a different story altogether.

Even though I’m a technology writer by profession, I still consider myself to be an “Apple enthusiast” at heart. So every Apple event has always been like Christmas where Santa brings us gifts. So like I have always done, this time too, I made sure that I unsubscribed from most of the Apple feeds in Reeder — I like to enjoy every bit of announcement that’s made on the stage. And boy was it worth it.

As Ankur and Chaitanya have already outlined above, OS X Lion brings a lot of features, ideas, technologies and UI elements from iOS to the Mac. I love the subtle overhaul the OS has received in different places. The aqua scrollbars had started to annoy me in Snow Leopard, so I welcome the new iOS-style scrollbars in Lion. Unlike Ankur, I am not bothered by the Rubber Band scrolling.

Even though I own a MacBook Pro, it’s permanently connected to a 24″ Apple Cinema Display. I also use a Magic Mouse (Or a Logitech Performance Mouse M950 at times), so I’m missing out on the goodness of Mutitouch Gestures that everyone has been raving about. But is that bothering me? Not at all. I like what the Magic Mouse is capable of and I’m happy using it. Even if I did have a trackpad, I’m sure I’d have never used most of the multitouch gestures.

The other most-talked-about feature in Lion is Fullscreen Apps. The only app I seem to really use in that mode is Safari. May be it’s the big Cinema Display, but nothing makes me want to push my apps to fill up the entire screen. The same is also true for Mission Control and Launchpad — I never use it. I wasn’t a user of Spaces, so this shouldn’t be surprising. But having talked to my non-techy friends, this seems to be the “OMG this is so cool” feature of Lion, along with the wonderful Mac App Store and its ability to download apps with a couple of clicks.

Autosave, Versions and Resume are wonderful features though. I like the fact that three of my favorite features in Lion are also the ones that do their thing in the background, without bothering the user. This has made working in TextEdit, Preview and iWork apps a wonderful experience. I wouldn’t want to think about going back to pre-Lion machine ever again.

If you ask Team Smoking Apples, I’m considered to be the ‘Email whore’. I seem to have a thing for emails, and love receiving and responding to them. I had briefly converted over to Sparrow Mail app, but I’m back to using the native Mail.app in Lion. The interface overhaul along with the brilliant new features were impossible to resist.

All that said, I think OS X Lion has to be one of the most fantastic piece of software to come out of Cupertino and yet, it just lays the foundation for some wonderful things to come our way. The amount of thought and handwork that has gone into the OS is commendable. Lion has received a lot of flak for oversimplifying things for power users, but we tend to forget that these power users form only a minor part of the Mac user base. If you look around, or spend 45 minutes at your local Apple Store, you’ll find out that to the majority of Apple’s user base, what Apple has been doing with its products is nothing short of incredible.

Normally, Apple keynotes bring joy and happiness only to Apple fans around the world. But the last keynote had something for everyone. Fans of other operating systems, usually otherwise known as Apple haters, are generally foaming at the mouth after an Apple keynote, struggling to find negative things to say other than something along the lines of “Apple suxx” in the comments section of technology sites for the next few weeks. But this keynote probably made them feel like Christmas came earlier and Santa Clause was actually a nude Playboy model. Because for the first time, Apple had taken design ideas from its competitors instead of the other way around, which is how it usually has been over the last few years. The tables, it seems, have turned.

But did Apple really just blatantly copy others? Did they just sit around for several months doing nothing and then at the last moment said, “Screw this. Let’s just copy Android.”? I don’t think so.

Let’s take a moment to look at the MacBook Pro design. Whichever way you look at it, it’s an absolute masterpiece and you’ll be hard pressed to find a better designed notebook in the market today. Same goes for the iMac. These designs are in fact so good that Apple hasn’t even bothered to change them in the last few years.

In case you are wondering why I drifted off to the Macs, allow me to explain. The thing about designs, I believe, is that there is just one right way to do it,  with limitations imposed by the technology available at that time. What I mean is that there cannot possibly be a better designed laptop today than the MacBook Pro and Apple knows that, which is why they haven’t bothered changing it. They have reached that level of perfection that cannot be exceeded without significant technological advancements.

But like I said, there can be only one right way to do it and more often than not, Apple is the one to get there first. They did it with the MacBook Pro, the iMac and even the iPhone. The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best looking phone ever manufactured. It’s not quite perfect, but there’s nothing better out there right now.

Now we often see other manufacturers trying to copy Apple’s designs, sometimes even blatantly. But what I feel is that they are not trying to copy Apple. They are instead trying to come up with that perfect design, and the closer they get to achieving that, the more their product starts to resemble Apple’s.

Think about it — can you think of a better design for a spoon? Will you be able to design one that has the same functionality but doesn’t look anything like the standard spoon? I don’t think so. That’s because the spoon’s design has reached that level where it cannot be improved any further (functionally and not just aesthetically) with current technology.

In the case of notifications in iOS 5, the reverse happened. Android had pretty much perfected the notification system. So if Apple had to create a perfect notifications system it was going to be difficult for them to not make it look like the one on Android. For their part, they actually went a step ahead and improved upon what was already an excellent notification system on Android. It’s not quite perfect yet, but if anyone does manage to do that, I believe it won’t look far too different from what Apple has done here.

However, this logic does not always apply. In some cases I’m pretty sure Apple simply “borrowed” the features instead of spending any amount of time developing them on their own, such as the auto-focus and exposure lock feature in the new Camera app. The credit there goes to developers of awesome apps such as Camera+ and also goes to show how fantastic their product is, if a company like Apple has to turn to them for inspiration.

Of course, I have no proof to back up my thoughts here. They are just that, thoughts. Thoughts that occurred to me one fine day. I believe Apple independently came up with the idea of the notification system just the way I believe they did not come up with some of the features in the camera app. Some might think of me as an Apple apologetic, I think of it as looking at both sides of the coin.

I don’t think any iOS user out there is complaining about the new changes in iOS 5. But I’m sure knowing the fact that some of the new features have been taken over from other operating systems would not have been a very pleasant sensation. They are not used to this. But I hope this little explanation helps in easing some of it. It did for me.

[This is a guest post by Prasad Naik, a technology reviewer who currently writes for GSMArena. You can respond to his thoughts on Twitter, he's @krazyfrog.]

Finally.

Let me say it again. Finally.

I know I’m not the only person on earth that’s happy about Verizon getting the iPhone, but I would bet that the reason for my happiness puts me in a minority. I’m not happy because I think it will have better coverage or because it might result in competitive plans or pricing. Nothing like that. I’m happy because this means I can finally have one. Just like the day I got my driver’s license or the day I graduated high school, I feel like a whole new world has been opened up to me.

I know some of you are probably thinking I’m nuts. Let me explain. You’ll probably still think I’m nuts but I’m having a good day. I don’t care.

I’m not a Verizon customer because I want to be. I mean, it’s a fine network and all, but I don’t have a choice. It’s Verizon or nothing. Sure, there are rural carriers in my area but I prefer to have nationwide voice and data, thank you. Sprint sort of works out here, and T-Mobile can make calls, but AT&T is no where to be found. To help illustrate my point, do me a favor. Go on AT&T’s website and look at their 3G coverage map.

Go on. I’ll wait.

Did you see that big area that wasn’t covered, otherwise known as “rural America”? Yeah. That’s where I live. Out here in what I affectionately call the “Great White Space”, we enjoy the simple things in life. No traffic jams, no department stores. Just the occasional cow in the roadway and if you’re really desperate for a new wardrobe you’ll have to drive at least 40 miles in any direction before you get to a Wal-Mart. All that, and no iPhone reception. Until now.

So maybe you might understand my position. As a person who truly appreciates technology, I enjoy Apple products. I have for a long time. If you’re reading this, you probably do too. You probably already have an iPhone and know how great they are. Maybe by now you take the iPhone for granted, but try to put yourself in my shoes.

If you have problems with empathy you might be thinking “Well, Verizon has Android phones.”

I know. I own one. It’s an alright phone, but it isn’t the same. To me, it just isn’t the best technology. Sure, it makes calls just like the iPhone, but people don’t buy smart phones to make calls. They buy them for the apps. If any of you don’t agree that the iPhone has better apps, I won’t argue. MacStories has a great piece on the difference between iPhone and Android apps so I won’t go into it. I couldn’t say it better if I tried.

When the Wall Street Journal first confirmed that the iPhone was indeed coming to Verizon, I thought it might be wise to wait until June to see what the iPhone 5 will bring. It probably would be wise to wait, but now I don’t care. Now that I know that it’s really within my grasp, I can’t resist. Not to mention that I write for an Apple blog. Wouldn’t it make sense for me to have Apple’s most popular product sooner rather than later?

Some of you might consider this a bit over the top, but over the last four years, the iPhone has kind of become my Holy Grail. It’s like that really hot girl you always wanted to ask to the school dance, but she always had someone else to go with. Now I feel like I finally have a chance with her. And while that metaphor might seem a little creepy, I don’t care. I just want to enjoy this moment, so I’ll say it one more time.

Finally.

One trend trend that has picked up momentum of late, is applications sporting custom user interfaces. It started off with minor customisations to the tab bar, or maybe a different shade of blue, but has somehow mushroomed out into complete disregard for what makes iOS the platform it is today. Publishing Beautiful Pixels, a blog about UI design, we see a lot of such apps. They’re very pretty, but when you get close, you begin to see how broken they are.

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean. Take Gift Plan from Glasshouse Apps. They’ve taken what appears to be a tab bar, and remixed it into a scrolling ticker. You can tap on the next item if you like, but the bar scrolls, bringing your currently selected item right in the center. Dunk, a dribbble client, has two tap zones on a fullscreen image. Instagram and Path, both modify the tab bar to include a Share button. Teux Deux’s iPhone app has a custom list that has no rubberbanding effect. Droplr has a modified toolbar, where the Add file button swiftly changes to a stop button while refreshing. A lot of this looks sweet, and works just fine when you’re looking at the app itself. And that’s how I look at apps when considering them for a feature on BP. Is the app pretty to look at, with fine attention to aesthetics? Up it goes on BP. It would have been a different case if I had to look at them in the bigger picture.

•••

As it goes with us techie types, people come to us for solutions to their technology related problems. The latest, was someone who wanted to know whether what they really wanted was a netbook, or an iPad. They wanted me to convince them to buy an iPad (“How is this easier than what I’m already familiar with?”). One of the reasons the iPad is so easy to use, is because Apple has created a platform that was simple to understand from the ground up. A button looks like a button behaves like a button. Mixed with some real-world metaphors, and beautiful typography throughout the user interface (except for the Notes app until recently), iOS is a well thought out user interface. There are different kinds of buttons, too, each of which should carry out the same action in every iOS app you use. Tap on one of those tabs, and it will take you to a different section of an app. Tap that arrow-shaped button in the toolbar, and it will take you do the previous screen. When Apple rejects an app for using the refresh button inappropriately, there’s a huge outcry over how closed the App Store is. But Apple is really trying to ensure that everything looks and behaves the same. They get this wrong sometimes — sometimes it really is a refresh button — but by and large I’m glad they police the user interface aspects of the apps as well.

So here come these applications, that are seemingly pretty, but break UI conventions left right and center. I’m not a designer, and there might be nothing wrong with those apps I pointed out above, but I know that experimental user interfaces have their consequences.

•••

Pull to Refresh

Another little issue I have, is with this incessant obsession with Pull to Refresh. Loren Brichter (emphasis his):

…that reloading was simply “loading newer”, and “loading newer” put new messages at the top of the list… and activated the action based on a finger motion that you were already doing. Why make the user stop scrolling, lift their finger, then tap a button? Why not have them continue the gesture that they are already in the process of making? When I want to see newer stuff, I scroll up. So I made scrolling itself the gesture.

Very recently, the jailbreak community added Pull to Refresh in Mail. People had been asking for it, so of course, someone delivered. But Pull to Refresh makes absolutely no sense in the Mail app. First of all, most email gets pushed to the iPad or iPhone, or at least refreshed every 15 minutes. Mail isn’t something like Twitter, where you have a new message coming in every minute (and if you do, you probably don’t want to look at it). But most importantly, I don’t ever scroll the Mail list. The action is always tapping. And even if you consider the limited amount of scrolling, it’s always from top to down. If you don’t scroll up like you do a tweet list, how is the user supposed to discover the Pull to Refresh gesture? It’s not just Mail. I’m seeing task list apps, storage apps, sporting this new UI convention that doesn’t work better than a good old refresh button.

On this week’s Engadget Podcast (which is a great listen, btw), Joshua Topolsky was talking about how the Android phone manufacturers were adding superficial skins for the sake of adding them: “Desperately trying to differentiate the same product, so they can sell it…”

•••

Yes, or no?

Should everyone keep native UI and make plain old boring apps? Not at all. Or we wouldn’t have Pull to Refresh, or so many of the other UI enhancements we’ve seen from third party developers. What I don’t appreciate, is needlessly tampering with what works already. Loren Brichter continues to maintain Twitter for iPhone using mostly standard UI, augmenting certain parts of it in the most careful manner. The tab bar is slightly modified, but it still feels like a tab bar. There’s a swipe gesture, but it’s not a necessary gesture, so the app is still functional without its knowledge. And execution is another big factor in implementing custom controls. Compare Tweetie’s swipe gesture to Reeder, where the latter practically pushes its way in on every careless scroll. And that’s why Tweetie was and is the simplest yet most powerful twitter client for iPhone. Another great example of a custom iPhone app that looks and feels like a native app, is Iconfactory’s Twitterrific. It’s beautiful, yet uses standard user interface conventions, and it works — it’s the simplest iPhone twitter client around. Instapaper, yet another iOS app, that is instantly familiar. Simplenote recently redid the user interface, but it still looks and behaves like an iOS app.

But what about the Tapbots? Surely they’re out of their minds? Their UI works because it is so out of this world, that you can never be confused over what a button does. But even with something like Pastebot, if there’s an actions menu required, they won’t reinvent the button, but will bring that established button concept into their user interface. By contrast, I recently came across a custom app that uses a “compose” button to edit a list (and then add new items, said the designer). It’s an unfinished app, so I won’t name it.

In many ways, iOS offers designers the opportunity to experiment without too much of a penalty, since they all run full screen, thereby becoming the dominant user interface. That’s why skeumorphic user interface work on this platform. They don’t interfere with the OS, and provide an easy to relate to environment for users (who doesn’t know how turn a page?). But even those user interfaces can use standards UI wherever it’s called for. Take the iBooks app for instance. It’s got a beautiful shelf UI, and pages that turn, but supporting all of that is standard iOS controls that behave and feel exactly like with any other app. The recently released djay for iPad app, uses a very realistic user interface, but there’s no confusion over what will happen when you press a button.

Perhaps I’m over-reacting here, and it’s okay to have so many different UI conventions. Customers vote with their wallets, and if they don’t like it, it’ll be off the phone in no time. There are after all plenty of poor designs on the app store, that we should be grateful for these beautiful though slightly offbeat ones. The bad ones will be rejected because they’re bad. But I’m not convinced that’s the whole truth.

Feel free to offer your criticism.

I remember when I got my first Mac, the iBook G4 14-inch. Powered by a 1.33Ghz G4 processor, 512MB RAM, 60GB hard drive, and a resolution of 1024×768 (meaning 91 pixels per inch), all of which was absolutely stunning at the time. I used it all the time for Adobe’s CS2 suite, productivity, and the internet. It ran all of this mighty fine, and I never felt it ‘slow’ and unusable. As is the case with any new piece of technology.

Of course, software evolved, Leopard came along, hard drives got full, and relative to the newer machines, the G4 felt slow to a point that it wasn’t usable anymore. Then after 4 years, the battery died, and we didn’t see the value in buying a new battery for a dying machine. It was used tethered to the power socket for a while, and then one day the OS crashed, and ended up being shelved, collecting dust.

The other day I came across Dave Coalo’s article on how he has switched to using his G4 iMac as his primary work machine. The iBook immediately popped to my head, and I was determined to bring it back to life.

Most of the tasks we use the computer for remain the same. You can’t type faster than *any* computer. The iBook ran MS Office just fine, it ran Safari just fine, and email worked perfectly. If it did so much back then, why not make it do all that today?

Newer software is the biggest cause of sluggishness in older hardware. I remember when the iPhone first came out, the first opinions were that it was super fast. Apps loaded instantly, lists scrolled butter smooth. What happened? Software updates happened. Of course in the case of the iPhone it’s near impossible to go back to version 1.0, both technically and in terms of features. But Mac OS X Tiger was a fairly mature platform, with little that it can’t do over Leopard — I’m talking about real world output, and not just the kinds of software features each platform provides.

The first step, was to find out what was wrong with it; it wasn’t progressing beyond the startup chime. Simply resetting the PRAM (holding down Cmd+Opt+P+R during startup) got it back on its feet — when you’re determined enough, no problem is too big, and vice versa. I then installed a fresh copy of Tiger from the install disks, and ran it through all its updates. I installed Office 2004 instead of 2008, and installed the Open XML converter for compatibility with the new document format. These are all fully functional applications, where the newer versions simply add needless features. I did update Safari to version 4 because it includes a newer webkit engine, for better compatibility with the web.

The iBook is surprisingly capable. It starts up in less than 50 seconds. Launches Safari in 8 seconds. MS Word in 18 seconds. iTunes in 6 seconds. But more importantly, it runs all these apps smoothly in the background, effortlessly switching between. iPhoto v5 with a few thousand images thrown in launches faster than iPhoto v9 on my iMac. I’m sure I could install Photoshop CS2 and it too would perform admirably.

Of course, using Tiger means I personally couldn’t use a lot of the apps I require, like Espresso, nor could I manage Photoshop or InDesign with such a small visual canvas. I can’t stand notebooks anyway. But the intended audience wasn’t me. I chose Tiger over Leopard because it was intended on being used by people in an office environment, who needed word processing, internet, and email. And this is what most people use a computer for. They’ve been using the iBook for the past week, day-in day-out, and I’ve received no complaints so far — they have no clue that the brushed metal UI is ugly, even though they also have a Snow Leopard Mac mini running.

Techno-lust can lead to a flawed vision, making it difficult to see the true value in things.

•••

To do great work you need great determination, not tools. You don’t need a high end Mac Pro to develop applications. Take Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit:

I do everything on a relatively low-powered MacBook. Is this constraining? A little bit. But I think it goes to show that you don’t need the fanciest Mac or the largest screen to get the job done.

Recently, I profiled Samurai on Beautiful Pixels. I was surprised to find out that he created all of his CSS experiments on his 13 inch MacBook. I’ve been using a first-of-the-Intels iMac for the last four years. It runs all the software I need, and runs it well. Aperture and InDesign slow it down a bit, but I’ve learnt to manage memory without thinking about it. While the urge to get a svelte new aluminium iMac is only growing, every time I feel a weak, I look at this article on ewaste.

•••

Macs have been beautiful machines since right from the beginning. The first iMac is still insanely beautiful if you look at it in the right light. You don’t need to upgrade until it begins to hurt. And when you do, remember that there’s always someone else who can make good use of your old hardware.

I wonder, how many of you are actively using older generation Macs?

It seems like there’s a sudden surge in discussion over the iPad’s hardware, over a combination of recent rumours and iOS 4.2, that I felt I had to chip in. Although the question of whether or not Apple will introduce a smaller iPad has been settled by Jobs, there’s still debate (for the sake of it) as to whether it’s the better size. And second, fanboys seem to be lusting over the

The 7 inch iPad

The first piece of opinion comes from Paul Miller at Engadget. He likes his iPad, but wishes it would be smaller, like the Samsung Tab:

I can’t help but yearn for an iPad that’s as small and light and comfortable as this new Nook. My biggest problem with the iPad is its shortcomings as an e-reader. First off, it’s heavy. Josh noticed it in his review, and it hasn’t gotten any lighter over time, no matter how many iPad-curl reps I do. Next up, it’s just a little large for curling up with like you do with a book. Combining the curl-up-incompatibility and the weight and I’ve actually managed to hit myself in the face numerous times with the iPad while attempting to recline with it. Third, the screen’s resolution is inferior to many e-ink displays, along with the high-res LCDs being used on the 7-inch Tab and Nook Color and PlayBook.

I blogged about this a few weeks ago, that weight was the number one thing Apple needs to fix on the iPad. I thought I’d get used to it after a few weeks of usage, but it hasn’t changed one bit. You can’t hold the iPad in one hand for more than a minute without wanting to put it down or have another hand support it. In my little note, I wrote:

Making the iPad lighter would be no small feat. The three major sources of iPad weight are the battery (148g), the LCD (153g), and the front glass (193g), which is 500 grams out of a total of 680grams. Because battery technology is moving at a snail’s pace compared with the rest of technology, the only way you can reduce the size of the battery, is to reduce power consumption. The electronics are already just sipping power, so making room for improvements in performance, that’s not going to drop. The glass, well, I don’t think that can be done away with so easily, considering how integral a part of the whole experience it is. The only thing that can drastically change the game, is the display, which could reduce its weight and power draw — perhaps one of those AMOLED displays, but this is still an uninformed suggestion.

The other option would be to make it, as Miller says, of a smaller size, like say 7 inches. That would greatly reduce the size of the glass, and the thickness required. It would also drive a smaller display, requiring a smaller battery. And, it would mean a smaller bezel, making the device even smaller.

But is a smaller size really worth using? I don’t know about you, but surfing websites on the iPad feels just right. Any smaller and it would appear to be an experience more like the iPhone. If it feels like surfing on the iPhone, then why not just use an iPhone and get over it? Not just websites. Take the keyboard as another example. I use both hands to type on the landscape keyboard. I can hardly type a sentence on the portrait keyboard without getting frustrated. It’s either got to be full sized, or brought down to an iPhone sized two-thumb version. Anything in between is frustrating as well.

Apple has obviously tested every screen size within .1 of an inch of each other. The iPhone UI is meant to be accessible using just your thumb. But with the iPad you’re using your forefinger, which means your hand is freely floating in space. You need bigger UI to compensate for that. As an example of what I’m talking about, see how much more difficult it is to navigate an iPhone app on the iPad (which is why 2X mode is the only way to go). Notice the size of the pop-overs (or the sidebar). They’re half an inch wider than on the iPhone, and resolution has nothing to do with it. The pop-over is that size, because smaller elements would require more accuracy to hit, thereby causing slowness in interaction. Now if the screen were smaller, and the pop-over was the same size as it is now, it wouldn’t be a pop-over anymore, as it would occupy almost or even a little more than half the size — feeling very iPhone-like.

The one situation where a 7 inch display makes complete sense, is for reading books, and I’m not talking about Instapaper long reads. That’s a task that involves far more holding than interacting, and the 7 inch size is perfect for reading. In fact, iBooks’ reading view, if you crop out the superfluous UI and margins, is roughly a little over 7 inches. But reading is just about 5% of what I do with my iPad, and I’m sure most people aren’t using it as a book reader — that’s just one of the many things it can do.

I do think Apple needs to figure out the weight issue, but not at the cost of screen size.

Retina Display: Not gonna happen

The second big discussion, is over the retina display. Everyone would love to have the retina display on the iPad, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be available on the next iPad.

There are two opinions of what size constitutes a ‘retina’ display. One, is that it needs to be over 300ppi to be a retina display (the pixel density over which the human eye cannot discern pixels). The second, is that it should double the pixel density, thereby creating 2048*1536 display at 266ppi. I think when the iPad does get a higher resolution, it’ll be the latter, and not a ‘true’ retina display. For one, you hold the iPad at a distance much further away than an iPhone, and second, it would be a far easier transition for developers, considering none of this is based on a resolution independent OS.

The most important reason why we’re not going to see any kind of resolution enhancement, is that the technology is not there yet, at least not sustaining the price point, battery life, and performance of the iPad. The iPhone’s retina display sports 0.6 million pixels. An iPad retina display would have to drive 3.2 million pixels.

In terms of usability, a retina display is more of a luxury than a crucial feature. The iPhone was retina’d because not only was the technology present at the time, the competition was getting ahead of Apple. I use my iPad every day, and at no point do I go “If only this thing had more pixels”. The situation probably presents itself for those who concurrently use an iPhone 4, but even then it’s a marginal adjustment. Moreover, Apple doesn’t have any competition stealing its marketshare.

Retina display not happening in 2011, and doubtful even in 2012.

No USB ports please

Third, is with this USB port rumour. Yeah that’s not going to happen. The problem with having a USB port, is that people would expect it to work with every peripheral imaginable, which obviously won’t be possible. I can see an integrated SD-card slot on the iPad, but even that is far fetched. Wireless is the way to go.

The Next iPad

So what will the next iPad have? I’d say a front-facing camera, more RAM (hopefully 1GB, but the reality will be closer to 512MB), slimmer and lighter (wishful), a faster processor, and a white version shipping several months after.

Your thoughts?

[Photo by Ari]