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You guys have this wrong. 3D is superior to Street View. Not now, but it will be. It’s likely Google will likely deprecate Street View in favor of 3D in a few years.

The only problem with 3D is that street level imagery isn’t available yet to paint in street level views for 3D maps. What’s going to happen when that street level data is in 3D views?

13 minutes ago on Google Maps satellite view reminds me of something...

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Likely. It’s a consequence of small internal storage sizes way back when.

What’s downloaded from the Google Play store is typically the game “engine” which is smaller in size so that it would take up all the space in say an 8 GB or 16 GB internal storage device. After downloading that and starting the game, it will then download the multi-hundred MB or GB size of game data that could be stored on the phone’s SD card, or internal storage if no SD card.

Since Android apps can’t be stored on SD cards, not anymore apparently, and only stored on internal storage, and many Android phones have 8/16 GB internal storage and an SD card for larger storage, I imagine many vendors who have GB level size apps have to do the split.

1 day ago on What makes the iPhone so good?

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Now, if you read all this I’m sure you’re dying to find contradictions and I eagerly await them, good day.

Your arguments for one screen’s superiority over another relies on a subjective criteria. It basically relies on a “1600×900” res screen is better than a “1440×900” res screen because of “reasons”.

People have widely varying comfort zones on screen resolutions, likely related to the type of work done for some people. Not only that, widely varying comfort zones on the quality of images and fonts on screen. Apple’s implementation of 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1050, and 1920×1200 on the rMBP 15 appear to be good enough such that I see people use those screen resolutions interchangeably.

The difference in sharpness between “1440×900” and “1920×1200” on the rMBP 15 appear small enough such that other factors like font rendering technique and upscaling of low-PPI images are more driving factors than non-integer scaling of the UI. Also, I read more complaints of lagginess from high-DPI screens, largely associated with Intel IGPs, then of fuzziness from UI scaling.

So I would expect the differences between 2880×1800 and 3200×1800 to be quite small, and the driving factors in perception of screen quality will be driven by GPU and UI DPI scaling techniques.

1 day ago on HP redesigns Envy and Pavilion laptops for 2013, including one with a 3200 x 1800 screen

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While I don’t understand why iPads (or iPhones) dominate these web usage statistics so much, it’s inevitable for Apple’s iPad marketshare to drop down to the 20% range. They are simply not willing to sell devices at very low margins at very low prices.

In many ways, you don’t want them to dominate the tablet market like the DAP market (iPods). Take the high end. Carve out and maintain a good 20 to 30%, especially if the tablet market is a 500m to 1b unit per year market.

1 day ago on Didn't IDC Say iPad was Losing Market Share? 1 reply

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I’m not exactly sure what is meant by the post either. The snow iBook design shipped in 2001. Unibody MBP design language started in 2008.

1 day ago on HP redesigns Envy and Pavilion laptops for 2013, including one with a 3200 x 1800 screen

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What was his original point? He doesn’t say.

Your point needs to be proven though. Lets see examples. The current example you have is for a design study specifically to see what an iPhone would look like using what Apple believed to be Sony’s design language. It never shipped, and lays in the realm of design concept only. Doesn’t exactly prove your point.

1 day ago on HP redesigns Envy and Pavilion laptops for 2013, including one with a 3200 x 1800 screen

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The central issue is the fairness of the USA taxing an American company’s income (profits) earned in not-USA places. Currently, those profits can only be taxed if they are brought back to the USA, otherwise, if left overseas, the USA will not ask for taxes on them.

As long as this is true, international companies will naturally put their international operations centers in countries with low taxes on profits, (and leave the money there), and put parts of their business that are the most costly (debt, capital investments, etc) in countries that’ll allow the highest deduction rates.

As to why Senators Levin, McCain and others would have problem with this, who knows.

2 days ago on Why Senator Levin's is Bent Out of Shape Over Apple's Taxes 1 reply

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Yawn? At least you could read and understand it enough to yawn. It reads like it is machine translated, If this article was machine translated, it has a long long long way to go still.

“It has an array of features and fundamental loops, it has failed to cross-over. Primarily an explorer for all approved applications to access for utility and activating default status.”

Fundamental loops? Cross-over? Explorer for all approved applications to access for utility and activating default status?

WTF? Any guesses on what the native language is? It’s got to be non-European. These two sentences could easily be applied to string theory in physics, let alone a computing company.

2 days ago on If iOS 7 disappoints will you jump over to Android? 3 replies 9 recommends

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Bottom center, auto hide, magnify off, scale effect, no apps are permanently docked except for Finder. App folder, downloads folder and recycling to the right.

MBP 15 at 1440×900.

3 days ago on What are your Dock preferences?

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It’s doubtful the terms were just about money.

3 days ago on Find my iPhone uses Google Maps! 1 reply

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I think it is inevitable for Apple to expose a system “user” portion of the filesystem.

Maybe there’s some magic design in the future that can solve how to manage files without presenting a filesystem or a grid, list or tree of files, but I can’t think of any. People inherently think in discrete chunks of stuff. They manage to those discrete chunks, from rigidly structured (like dewey decimal) or randomly depending on the proclivities of the individual.

3 days ago on Would you like AirDrop for iOS 7 to look like this? 2 replies

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It’s not fixable. (Well, within normal nation state to nation state boundaries.)

3 days ago on Senators blast Apple in hearing for keeping most profits overseas 1 recommend

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Feedback:

1. It’s not immediately obvious to me how to unlock.

2. The white background UI version is hideous.

3. The music controls are too small and close to each other. Minimally, the play, forward, backward and scrubber should have tap targets about the same size as the unlock “button”. I could care less that they’ll obscure album artwork if I actually can’t even tap the controls. What’s more important? Being able to tap the controls or not obscuring album artwork? It’s always tapping the controls, especially since in iOS parlance it’s 2 user inputs away.

4. The date and temperature font and sky indicator icon in the weather/clock widget are too small, while the font for the location is huge. What is important to the user here? The date, the temperature, what the sky looks like or where they are, which one? Minimally, you can go with indifference, and have them all the same font size. I’d say that temperature is most important, what the sky looks like, then the date. Actually, I’d just move the date on top of or below the clock. The location font can be smaller, as generally, people do in fact know where they are.

5. Quick access buttons for settings, wifi, airplane mode, whatever the 4th one is, is stupid. You hear from lots of people on the Internet that desperately want them, but you’re designing to the wrong audience if you have aspirations of design a UI for the mass market. I’ve said this before, if you’re micromanaging system systems to the point that you find value in quick access settings, you either like doing it or the design of the OS is bad such that it forces you to do it to save battery or whatnot. Neither are good reasons to devote precious UI space to it.

6. There’s no need to have the weather/clock widget on the “home screen” all the time. What is the most important function of the home screen? The answer should tell you what should be on there. Of course, this is where taste comes in and how you’ll determine how well you understand the mass market.

7. In the home screen alone, there are 3 ways to see the time (status bar, clock widget, clock app icon), 2 ways to see the temperature (weather widget, weather app icon), 2 ways to see what the sky looks like (widget, app icon), and 2 ways to determine the date (widget and calendar app icon). You’ve overachieved by a factor of 3, 2, and 2 there.

8. The app icons generally are uninspired. The “clock” styling is too busy with the 1 minute tick marks. I don’t like any of the app icons whatsoever.

3 days ago on iOS 7 UI concept designs 1 recommend

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It looks like Apple because it’s just the OS X AirDrop UI design. Not much of a leap here. The difficulty with “files” will be Apple’s reticence to presenting a file manager to users in iOS. It’s not a UI design issue. It’s a long standing philosophy since the beginning in 2007 to not expose users to the filesystem, and to not even let applications have access to a system-wide filesystem in iOS.

3 days ago on Would you like AirDrop for iOS 7 to look like this? 2 replies

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The reason Apple developed their own version of maps is because Apple and Google couldn’t come to terms on Apple’s usage of Google Maps. Google Maps is not free for Apple’s usage.

4 days ago on Find my iPhone uses Google Maps! 1 reply 6 recommends

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Firstly, there aint no such thing as a free lunch. A bigger 16:9 screen can be placed into the current iPhone by reducing the bezels per MykeM’s image, but it still means your thumbs have to traverse a larger area. It will be harder to use one-handed, unless the UI is changed so that UI controls are primarily placed at the bottom.

I’d like to maintain one-handed use as much as possible. A 4.5" display is doable for me only if the UI is changed to maintain that. So, the swipe from the top edge down for NC has to be changed. Back buttons, URL input boxes, settings buttons, tap the status bar to go the top, etc, all have to be reworked to be accessible. That’s quite the tall order.

At some point, the display simply gets too wide for my thumb to even access UI controls at the bottom. So there is an upper limit. Also, the larger it is, the more critical it becomes to make the device as light as possible. Light and big are diametrically opposing properties. So, design-wise, there’d be consequences like reduced reliability, hotter, shorter usage times, etc, that might not get fixed.

4 days ago on If Apple made a 4.5 inch iPhone...

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Beauty, elegance and simplicity. From hardware design, icon design to usage models. For example, the corner radius on the iPhone is quite good, holistically beautiful. This is reflected in the round-rects of the app icons. The materials are typically exquisitely chosen. Performance is typically smooth. It’s just a simple in-and-out of applications. It’s rare for me to fiddle with settings or to fidget with some kind of WiFi security setting to connect to WiFi.

5 days ago on What makes the iPhone so good?