Jeffrey Zeldman doesn’t think magazine or newspapers should be native applications on the iPad:

While some of this will lead to useful innovation, particularly in the area of gestural interfaces, that same innovation can just as readily be accomplished on websites built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—and the advantage of creating websites instead of iPad apps is that websites work for everyone, on browsers and devices at all price points. That, after all, is the point of the web. It’s the point of web standards and progressive enhancement.

I think he’s right in the long-term—using HTML, CSS and javascript to develop applications for reading is preferable because it can be deployed on all devices—but right now, the biggest issue for magazines and newspapers is how to make money from their content, and native iPad applications is the best way to do that.

A native iPad application allows you to charge a price for the application, do in-app purchases and, soon, subscriptions. More importantly, though, a native application puts you in the App Store, in front of every iPad owner. That’s big.

Building a web application that’s equivalent to a native iPad application is still difficult. There’s no way to do in-app purchasing and subscriptions as easily as you can in a native application, and until that changes, there’s going to be significant incentive to build native applications.

Apple could help out by giving web applications more system access and allowing them into the App Store, but purchasing is still the issue here: how do you do cross-platform purchasing in web applications in a way that’s as efficient and easy as Apple’s native solution?

Google’s Andy Rubin commenting on Windows Phone 7:

I think the screen shots I’ve seen are interesting, but look, the world doesn’t need another platform. Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons. Why doesn’t the whole world run with [Android]?

Perhaps, I don’t know, they think they might be able to build something better than Android? That’s just a guess, though.

Shawn Blanc envisions a MobileMe more integral to iOS:

Imagine if you will what a merging of Dropbox and MobileMe might look like. Something simple and completely expected, I suppose. It would be free, it would sync and share info and files, and it would let other apps use it for syncing. Imagine setting up your iPhone with your Apple ID once, and then any app that has a Mac and/or iPad counterpart would sync. Sounds like mobile bliss.

That’s exactly what I’ve been hoping for since MobileMe was released: that iDisk is fully integrated into iOS, so we never have to worry about whether a file is on out phone or computer: it’s on both, automatically.

Shawn thinks Apple should make MobileMe a free service, so it can not only be the iPhone’s web-based storage, but also what applications would use to sync their user data. That’d be a dream.

Apple should do this, and I think they will. Since competition from Android is so strong, they need to make the iOS platform as strong and easy to use as possible. Currently, syncing is a weak spot for the platform; developers have no good, simple way to build syncing into their applications. They can use Dropbox, which works well, but it’s clunky to ask users to sign up for another service; they can use MobileMe, which only a small subset of their users have; or they can roll their own, which is difficult. Apple needs to do what Shawn’s proposing.

Glif is an iPhone 4 tripod mount that looks perfect. The creators need some startup funds, so they have a Kickstarter project to get it funded. Contributing $20 helps them get started and gets you a Glif when they’re ready.

I’m planning on contributing. I’ve been hoping for something like this.

Gourmet Live for iPad is the first magazine actually designed for the iPad, rather than adapted to it:

You open the app and get a nice cover that fades into a set of stories, and then you tap on the stories to start reading. On some stories, when you finish reading you’ll hear a little bell ring and you’ll get a reward: access to even more content about that topic. That shows up in the form of a new “issue”, and all the issues you collect show up on a Rewards shelf that works a lot like iBooks. Pretty straightforward.

Rewards are the best part of using Gourmet Live — read a story on tailgating, and you’ll earn more stories about grilling. The goal was to acknowledge first that content is valuable, and that Gourmet readers are the kind of people who cherish collecting back issues that have meaningful stories in them. But we also wanted to capture some of that delight you get when you read an amazing story and just want to share it with people.

The experience is quite good. What a great idea.

Jon Siracusa :

The solution is a device that is unabashedly omnivorous. Yes, in traditional Apple fashion, it must provide a simple, elegant, user interface. But behind the scenes, it must be willing and able to accept content from as many sources as possible. This is what makes the device valuable and desirable: dealing with and hiding all this complexity!

Is this show on cable? Satellite? Downloaded from the Web? Streamed from Netflix? Is it on my Mac? My iPhone? Does it need to be transcoded? Upscaled or downscaled? These are the things geeks deal with manually right now, and regular people have little chance of figuring out. People will pay for a device that will handle all of this for them. It might take a while, but word would get around about the new device that actually makes your living room less complex, for a change. One box to rule them all.
…
The only realistic solution is to make an end-run around the existing players. Instead of trying to establish yet another isolated beachhead, accept and absorb all available content by any means necessary and concentrate on providing a unified interface to all of it… Apple-vended content included, of course. Win the consumers’ hearts and minds first by being the hero they need to save them from the current mess surrounding their TV. Win all those other content deals later, once everyone has your device in their living room. Step three: profit.

This would require a Google TV-like approach, where the device builds an interface on top of the set-top box rather than replaces it. This isn’t a satisfying solution, and I don’t think his logic holds up for this leading in the long-term to networks acquiescing and agreeing to place content on iTunes for reasonable terms. Allowing people to watch cable TV content (whether it’s live, DVR, or On Demand) is kind of like allowing Flash on the iPhone to get people to adopt it: in the short-term it might solve a content problem, because it makes existing websites, games and videos compatible with the iPhone, but it also makes those content owners complacent—why should they move their content off of Flash when it already works well enough on the iPhone?

I think Apple’s hoping to use the same strategy for the Apple TV they used against Flash: make the Apple TV popular enough to where networks have no choice but to make their content available on it. There’s two possibilities. First, they’re hoping that the $99 price point along with Netflix access is enough to make up for the lack of available TV shows and it will succeed well enough to push NBC and CBS to make their shows available for rental on iTunes. The second possibility is they aren’t betting on the low price and Netflix to make it popular, and instead want to build a SDK and App Store for the Apple TV and will use that as their advantage.

If they’re betting on the first possibility, then they better switch to the second one quickly. While Netflix streaming and the low price point are great, and necessary for the device’s success, it isn’t enough. Opening it to applications, though, would be. Imagine the fantastic games that would pop up, short films, news applications, or whatever else we can come up with. That would give people a great reason to purchase it that has nothing to do with negotiating with CBS and NBC.

Big event today—Apple announced a completely new iPod nano and iPod Shuffle, iPod touch received a large update, iTunes was bumped to version 10, and AppleTV received a big update.

That’s a lot of stuff. The first interesting thing is 230,000 new iOS devices are activated each day. That’s clearly in response to Google’s announcement that there are 160,000 Android devices activated per day (which Jobs said they suspect include device updates, not just new devices). In any case, that’s an incredible number—every day, more than 200,000 iOS devices are activated. That’s a huge market; there are now over 120 million iOS devices.

iPods

The Shuffle’s update is interesting primarily because it is a return to the prior version’s design. The last version relied on the headphone remote to control music. People didn’t like this, as it’s a clumsy way to control all of your music), so Apple recognized people didn’t like it and went back to what they do like: the simple Apple remote-like controls of the older generations. This is a good example of Apple’s willingness to respond to what their customers are telling them and build what they want. It shows that one of the usual criticisms of Apple—that they don’t listen to their customers—is completely and utterly false. They’re willing to recognize when they made an error and correct it. As a result, the new iPod Shuffle is much better than the last one.

The iPod nano received a radical update: it is now just a 1.54 inch touchscreen with a clip on the back, like the Shuffle. The OS resembles iOS.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I just need to use one, but it looks ridiculous. Small square objects are awkward to hold, but that’s exactly what the iPod nano is. I don’t see how it could be comfortable to hold. That would be fine if it was clipped to your shirt at all times and you never have to hold it, but there’s no other way to change what you’re listening to (save moving a song forward or backward) than to hold it and scroll through your music. And that presents another problem: because the screen is so small, 240×240 pixels, it can only show 3-4 artists at a time in list view. There’s going to be a lot of flicking involved to get to the artist you want, all while holding this thing in a weird, contorted way.

Perhaps it would be fine if it had voice control built in, but it doesn’t. Until that happens, this seems like a step down from the last version of the iPod nano just so we can get a smaller device. I don’t think that’s worth the tradeoff.

The iPod touch, on the other hand, received a fantastic update. It’s running the same A4 processor and screen as the iPhone, has an HD video camera on the back, and a front-facing camera for FaceTime. There isn’t a device out there like it.

iOS Updates

Two things: iOS 4.1 coming next week and iOS 4.2 coming in November.

The big update in iOS 4.1 is iPhones now take HDR photos. I can’t wait for that. Photos that would have looked blown out now look quite good. It also builds in support for AirPlay, a feature that will allow you to stream audio or video from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to your AppleTV (more on that in a second).

The 4.2 update is about the iPad—it will finally unify the iPad and iPhone’s OS. iPad will get the 4.0 features it’s been missing, which will be a godsend. I am incredibly dependent on Mail’s unified inbox. The most exciting part here, though, is the iPad is getting wireless printing. You’ll be able to print to any wireless printer connected to your network (presumably via Bonjour). This shows just how serious Apple is about making the iPad into a desktop replacement.

AppleTV

Apple did indeed announce a new AppleTV, and overall, it looks like a great device. It’s small, has 99¢ TV show rentals and $4.99 movie rentals, has Netflix integrated in, and costs $99. Unfortunately, while it apparently does run iOS, it doesn’t have applications. Joshua Topolsky, though, seems to think they are coming.

As-is, the AppleTV is a good device. It gives you access to a good TV show and movie library through iTunes (which will hopefully grow) and to a great back catalog of movies and TV shows on Netflix. That’s pretty good for $99, but it could be so much more. With applications, we could have Comedy Central’s shows, MLB baseball games, Hulu, games, and whatever else people come up with. Right now, it’s a decent competitor to other similar streaming boxes. With applications, it would redefine the segment.

I really want to have a reason to buy an AppleTV, and it’s close right now, but I am going to stick with my Mac mini running Boxee. The interface isn’t nearly as good (although I abhor the top of AppleTV’s homescreen—that white-gray gradient is hideous), but it gives me access to Netflix, Comedy Central and Hulu all in one place.

Apple is holding a special event this Wednesday and, besides an updated iPod nano and iPod touch, rumors are that they will announce a new version of the AppleTV based on iOS.

I do not have any inside information, so I do not know if that is true, but it makes sense, and I have a few ideas for what it can be. In short: applications can change the family room as much as they have changed the phone.

Apps, Not Applications

Applications on iOS devices, at first, do not seem like much of a revolution over personal computers. We have used applications on our Macs and Windows PCs for decades now; yet people conceptualize an iOS application as something very different from a computer application, as symbolized by the term “app.” They are not merely the same thing running on a different kind of device. They are different.

PC applications have always felt like abstractions, artificial and disconnected from reality, kind of like quantum physics. It might work, but it does not fit how we conceptualize the world and how things work. This is because PC applications work through abstraction; that is, rather than manipulate content directly, we work through three intervening pieces: our physical input devices—the keyboard and mouse, the cursor, and the application’s user interface widgets. In Microsoft Word, you do not grab a paragraph and drag it to a new place—you move a mouse to move a cursor to select the text to move it. You do not so much work on content as give the application instructions, which actually manipulates the content on your behalf.

As a result, PCs have never felt like the application they are running. They are a computer that runs applications. The iPhone and iPad’s magic, however, is the hardware is a frame for content. There is no intermediary between you and the application, and in many cases, the content itself. You interact with the application and the content directly. Whatever application it is running, it is no longer an iPhone or iPad—it is that content. If you are using Google Maps, it is a map; if you are using Star Walk, it is the stars; if you are using CalcBot, it is a calculator; if you are reading a book, it is a book; if you are watching a movie, you are holding that movie.

This changes the very nature of the device. The PC is a PC; no matter what you are using it for, you will never forget you are using a PC. When using iOS devices, though, they fade into the background. The iPhone and iPad, then, are merely frames for the application and content, and so they are no longer computing devices in the traditional sense. They are whatever application they are running.

Applications can do this for the television, too.

Apps, TV

When we watch television, we go through several intermediary steps to watch what we want. We have to first deal with the cable operator’s set-top box user interface, then watch a channel, and then finally the content we are actually interested in.

iOS will not turn the television into whatever application it is running¹, but just as the iPhone or iPad are frames for content, applications could make the television a frame as well. We would not have to worry about what time certain shows or events are scheduled for, or what channel they happen to be on. We would just go to that application. If I want to watch baseball, I start the Major League Baseball application and pick a game. If I want to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, I just go to it and watch. When those applications are running, my television may as well have been created by them specifically for watching their content.

Applications would allow us to go directly to the content creators themselves, and allow them to create the experience they really want for their content. No one else to deal with, just the creator. No need to deal with a cable company, their terrible user interface, or their lack of certain content. iTV is a frame.

This, of course, is perfectly possible technically, but cable companies are understandably afraid of content creators selling directly to consumers. This appears to be the largest holdup in an iTunes video subscription.

But there is more to it than getting network-created television shows, sports and news directly from the source. They are not the only content creators.

The web is full of incredibly well done short films, like Dan Brown’s Your Lucky Day or Garrett Murray’s Forever’s Not So Long, but the only place to watch them is on the web. iTV running iOS, though, would place them on the same level as large film studios. People could watch them—even buy them—in the same way they buy films from top studios. That, to me, is the most exciting part. This would give incredibly talented people a fantastic platform to deliver their work. I would absolutely pay for more films from Garrett Murray and I suspect others would, too. Why wouldn’t I, when they do such a good job and I can watch it right on my television? Everyone becomes a broadcaster.

The iTV is a frame.

In episode four of the Talk Show, John Gruber mentioned something he is excited about for iTV: games. There are all kinds of games that could take advantage of the larger screen, ability to integrate multiple players at a time, and iPhones or iPads.

The iTV is… Okay. You get it. The beautiful thing about applications on our televisions is we do not know what people will come up with, but someone will, and it will be available for us to use. That is incredibly exciting.

1. Not yet, anyway; consider Microsoft’s Kinect and it is rather clear interacting with a television screen will be much more direct quite soon. [↩]

Here’s a video of Steve Jobs talking about branding after he came back to Apple. Brilliant.

In a nut: branding isn’t veneer. It’s the core principles and purpose of a company, and it must be absolutely clear.

Rob Rhyne’s Briefs iPhone application is the perfect example of what’s wrong with the App Store:

At WWDC I was connected with two developer evangelists and eventually the director of the App store to discuss Briefs’ prospects. All three were very encouraging and helpful. This was in addition to several Apple engineers detailing their use of Briefs for company efforts. I left the conference with hope that differences could be resolved and Briefs would be up for sale.

That was until a few weeks later, when I was told (by the director himself) that the review had reached the “executive level.” Considering he reports directly to an Executive Vice President within Apple, I have every reason to believe him. Unfortunately two and half months have transpired since reaching the executive review. (and what a two and a half months it has been for Apple executives!) I have not completely given up hope, but it is time to move on.

So: his (incredible) application has been sitting in review for months, he’s handled the situation with great patience and class, and yet he still has no answer. Out of frustration he’s decided to open source the application.

This is absolutely unacceptable. The iOS platform’s biggest threat isn’t Android—it’s Apple’s own capricious review process. Why should developers put as much effort into building a great application (as Rhyne clearly did) when there’s no way to know whether it will even end up on the App Store?

News to Apple: for whatever dumb reason you think Briefs is a threat to the platform (or a number of other applications), treating developers like this is an exponentially greater threat.

Liza Daily takes a look at Pages’ ePub export quality, and the verdict is: it’s pretty good. Her only big complaint is it used div tags rather than proper paragraph tags.

I’m excited about this. Hopefully I’ll be making use of it soon.

Susan Orlean:

It’s funny… we just bought a new car and we were looking at getting a DVD system, a built in one, factory installed. And they’re ridiculously expensive of course, and all they do is play movies. So a friend of mine said what a waste. Just get Austin an iPad.

And that way if I get him just the small one without 3G, loaded up with a bunch of games and download some movies for him, it would take us like three years before we come close to the price that you pay for DVD. And she said its old technology anyway and it will be useless and they charge about $2,000 for them.

…If you’re on a road trip and you have a $2,000 built in DVD player in your car, and first of all, all they can watch is DVDs. They can’t do interesting educational games, they can’t draw, all they can do is watch a movie, totally passive…and then you get to the hotel for the night and you go inside and you don’t have anything. You buy an iPad and you’re reading books, you’re drawing, you’re doing puzzles, you can watch a movie, and then you get to the hotel and you bring it in with you.

I would have loved to have an iPad as a kid on trips. There’s so much there to spark a kid’s curiosity and imagination. Books, educational games, drawing…

Because of its form, method of interaction and software, the iPad is the biggest step we’ve made toward computing devices where we don’t need to work around the device, but it is designed to fit us. We are forced to mold ourselves to computers—keyboard, mice, abstract user interfaces—and so although they are powerful, computers are inherently artificial to use. You are constantly thinking about how to use it rather than just using it.

We don’t think about how to use a notepad or a book. We just use it. The iPad is closer to a notepad in how we use it than it is to a computer. This allows it to be something more than a computer can ever be: it can be a book, or a notepad, something we don’t think about using. We just think about what we’re doing.

Earlier in the interview, Orlean describes the iPad as a “window” to the web, because the iPad seems to disappear as you use it and all you see is the content. I don’t think it’s just a window to the web, but if the application is properly designed, it’s a frame to whatever you are doing. If you are using a book application, all you see is the words.

The iPad isn’t quite there yet, but it’s a large step toward that. And that is terribly exciting.

Quran Reader HD for iPad looks fabulous.

Brian Ford:

Apple references the diagram (Fig. 6) and says that it includes features that are made available as the embodiment of the invention. I’m not exactly sure what “the invention” is, but it doesn’t seem to be referring to Fig 6. 

The other clue that this isn’t about an underhanded attempt to patent the Where To app is that various pictures showing several completely unrelated app designs are all used to describe this same patent. None of the other drawings are consistent.

What’s worrying about the patent for me isn’t that Apple included existing application designs as illustrations, but that they are trying to patent types of applications. Perhaps they are doing so to defend the iOS platform (if other companies panted certain applications, they could be off-limits for the iPhone) and have no intention of using them against others, but patents absolutely shouldn’t be awarded for types of applications. It’s like patenting the sports car.

Justin Williams is developing again for iOS devices:

Now, almost a year to the day since that all transpired, I am about to release a new iOS application. What changed?

Primarily, the iPad.

His next application, Elements, is an iPad note-taking application that uses Dropbox for storage.