cmasontaylor

It looks neat in a very gimmicky way I guess? But that UI looks hideous and incredibly slow. AND it’s on a 2-year-old version of Android? No thanks.

Larger screen size has won over no one.

If by “continue working,” you mean “video/audio keeps playing,” that isn’t the same thing as being fully functional.

If you do mean fully functional, then that’s a glitch. Any taps in the middle area that happen when the MT bar is onscreen are supposed to get rid of the MT screen and take you back into the main app.

Undoubtedly, I think your modifications add quite a bit. I particularly enjoyed the open API you invented for the ‘top bar’ part for audio apps, though it does strike me as a bit like just having an entire second GUI for the app itself, at least in Pandora’s case. I don’t think that menu was intended to do ALL the audio stuff from each audio app, but even so, your mods make it look simple and natural.

Your mods also look great on their own; well Photoshopped and all that. One thing you didn’t address that I think the Apple folks who work on iOS would notice immediately as a downside is that keeping the status bar, and introducing that extra top bar breaks the UI space metaphor surrounding the multitasking bar.

In iOS as it stands, the MT bar pushes the whole screen up, which is why the status bar goes away when this happens. It works sort of like insertiong a “leaf” into an adjustable dining table. And when you’re done, the top rolls right back down over it. Keeping the status bar, and adding another top bar would require a drastic change in the UI metaphor. You’d no longer just be able to think of the MT bar as something that’s lurking just beneath the veneer of the main app screen.

And while I doubt the average person is particularly attached to the integrity of the design metaphor, I think Apple’s iOS designers probably are.

Overall, I think if the mods are going to happen, I think it would be much more likely for Apple to just stick to your original thought of making the MT bar taller (which there is NO reason not to do in terms of actual functionality, or even in terms of design metaphors), than adding something to the top while they’re at it, as much as I like the functionality of SBSettings and Intelliscreen.

I’d honestly like to see this go in the other direction with most of the phones listed. I’d love to see the Galaxy Note made smaller but keep the same display size.

And with the iPhone, I’d like to see them simply extend the aspect ratio to 16:9 but keep the same width.

I use Daedalus Touch for all my longer iPad writing, and it has its own (similar) solution to this; just put your thumb on the far-right or far-left side of the page, and it moves the cursor.

Is anyone else amused that the image portrays the 64GB model, for which this is no longer relevant?

Good question. I’m not sure whether Apple’s serial numbers go up in numerical order at a certain point or not. You should probably try asking this at the Macrumors forums; the community there would probably be willing to try out different SNs to see.

So you’re saying you expect Apple to just throw away all their old stock at this point because they slightly improved on the design in a way that people weren’t even counting on happening?

“And how is this relevant? Apple also removes features from its desktop OS from time to time.”

And I think the special irony here is, Apple seems to be all but actively trying to kill DVDs, not so much for charging people extra for a souped-up OS, but just because they don’t like (what they perceive as) wasting space in their hardware.

You have a right to be irritated with MS on this one if you like, but comparing it to Apple in this context makes no more sense than comparing it to Linux does.

Apple is not a software company. Its software is designed exclusively to sell its hardware. Period. Microsoft has to make money from the sale of Windows. I’d join you in preferring a return to the “one size fits all” days of Win95, but if this is the way MS thinks it’s going to make the most money peddling its wares, then so be it. It’s up to them.

“Still, the White House has signaled that it is interested in some form of cyber security bill, so this won’t likely be its final act.”

Is this intended to imply that the Verge is opposed to any and all cyber security legislation? Because it comes off that way.