IPhone Needs a New Home
teehanlax.com
teehanlax.com
http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=windows%20mobile%206.0%20to...
When I had a Windows Mobile device, I found the Today screen very busy. I'm usually only interested in one or two pieces of information from the Today screen, and found the information-overload aspect of sifting through the unnecessary data distracting. How would this new design avoid that problem?
People need to realize Apple is a consumer electronics company now more like Sony than Microsoft.
Plus, a lot of the iPhone's UI now is just ugly, usability aside. The settings menu is just painful to look at, compared to the slick menus and options in Android phones.
Never have understood why people in software equate dormancy with worthlessness.
...there is something different about software, evidently. I want something I use to still work if Android gets updated to version x, and a dormant app doesn't normally promote confidence that this will happen.
Users know this instinctively, which is why a website that never changes loses users quickly.
Software is almost never bug-free when released, and increasingly isn't feature-complete. I don't think it's crazy to be wary of using software which isn't being actively developed. It will certainly depend on what it does, and whether or not what it doesn't do (or what bugs it has) are livable.
Already people are experiencing issues with features not working properly [1], and relatively simple (but non-vital) updates to add to functionality are not being made [2].
[1] I don't get RSS updates reliably any more, essentially making the app worthless to me, considering that was the main reason I bought it.
[2] E.g. the Twitter button opens m.twitter.com, not the official Twitter app. Same goes for Google Reader.
I initially thought the screenshot was a LockInfo theme. In any case, such an app already exists, and has for quite a while. There are also plugins for RSS, Things & Appigo tasks,iOS notifications etc.It's very themeable, as well.
The only hitch? Your iOS device needs to be jailbroken, due to Apple's limitations.
The author's LockInfo home page is pretty lacking but he spends a lot of time hacking on LI and you can follow his progress via his Twitter account, @stimpy5050
Edit: Oops, the LockInfo page is: http://david.ashman.com/lockinfo/
I've always wondered if David has ever been approached by Apple to work on iPhone notifications. He deserves some recognition for delivering such an essential feature set while Apple has taken their time.
Lockinfo became too much useless info for me to have open all the time. Notified Pro with Statusbar plugin is the minimalistic approach I was looking for, although not perfect as yet.
Edit/ Unsure what year the post was created. Might've been before Lockinfo.
In that small an amount of space you can basically get today's weather which I can see by looking out of the window which generally makes it a bit useless really.
Not saying that I wouldn't like a better notification screen on the iPhone - I really would - just that all weather widgets do to my mind is add a bit of graphical sugar but with no great purpose.
Or am I missing something? Does everyone else live in a bunker?
Maybe that's just the UK and the US is getting something more accurate but I'm guessing not.
The spatial resolution on the weather data is pretty good; it distinguishes between my town and the next one over, and gives separate forecasts. The forecast is always a little different at home than at work (about 30 miles), but not too bad. Maybe it'd be a problem if I lived in the Bay Area, where the punchline of the "don't like the weather?" joke is not "wait 5 minutes" but "move 5 feet".
Or work in an office without a window? Or live somewhere where it can be sunny outside, but still need to know if you need to take a jacket to lunch?
I find the single day temperature / image to be too much of an average (so 12 degrees and sunny means that it's between 6 degrees and 18 degrees which basically doesn't help me for that sort of decision making).
Maybe that's just where I live and that for others it does provide useful information.
I never understood this till I lived in India. I understand your confusion. I do agree with you that weather widgets waste pixels and can be done in a better, more compact way.
Would you by chance happen to live in California?
I live somewhere that can be prone to extreme temperatures... looking outside doesn't tell me if it's wickedly cold, fairly cold, or surprisingly comfortable. If it's snowing, I want to know how much is expected and so on.
This is useful for certain types of users, that lead busy lives. Therefore for professional users and business users the homescreen in the article will be an improvement because of the extra information but for the casual user and home user it will be mainly an increase in stress, I expect.
*Doesn't blackberry have one of those?
I was under the impression you could get it via a jailbreak, but as I've never jailbroken my iPhone I've not looked into it.
The reasons: if I see a badge on a program (mail, phone or SMS) I will check it anyway, so I don't need the full info on the home screen.
I don't cary my phone with me everywhere, especially when at home, so checking up on the situation is a common task for me.
LockInfo, for instance, lets you choose the type of information to display as well as how to display it. You don't see anything you don't want to see.
Then once you use something like it, you can't go back. There are a ton of people who jailbreak just to install LockInfo. That's how good it is.
"@bradleyland It did briefly exist in the Cydia store. But working in the Jailbreak Community proved too difficult" - @teehanlax
Pity. Also, I just blogged about something similar, and was surprised to find this on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2275922
This way you don't have to crane your thumb down or juggle the phone to a higher position in your hand.
Can we try and not make up stuff?
---
The location of the slide, I guess, is to allow people to see their lock screen wallpaper. That's my stab at it, but who knows.
[1]: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserEx...
How do you hold it?? :)
You can, of course, get your little finger under it move the phone body up so it's easy to swipe with your thumb however that's a lot of hand movement and you need to look at what you are doing.
If you are holding the phone whilst walking you generally hold it as in the image above which is much more secure it would be nice to be able to answer it without having to shuffle the phone with your pinky.
To be honest even moving the thumb horizontally to me doesn't feel like the most natural way to move your thumb. Instead consider moving your thumb from the top left arcing across (i.e. from a 12 o'clock position to almost 3 o'clock) of course you'd need to consider lefties but it feels a lot more natural...
There have been several mobile devices which used the "daily agenda" format for the home screen (my old iPaq comes to mind: http://www.bestezonlinestore.com/images/T/PDA1391SL-304.jpg) and while it intrinsically seems like a good idea I wonder why they chose not to go that way?
The lock screen just displays your wallpaper, and is actually one of the only places you can see your wallpaper without clutter. It's clean, simple, minimalist. Adding widgets and text and shit all over it is the exact opposite of that.
And frankly, that's a big selling point for the iPhone (and apple products in general). That's actually the point.
Edited: Typo.
You hire someone with a view to them working with you for years and I don't think notifications is that big a deal that you'd bring in someone specific to do it.
At least fingers crossed that's it because it would be great to see something in iOS5.
I expect Apple will start allowing screensaver/wallpaper type apps in the not too distant future. It'll open up another revenue stream for them.
We know it's almost ready to be rolled out (by looking to jailbroken iPhones) but Apple will want to iron out memory problems before releasing it (at least that's what they'll say).
Btw, I own an iPhone and MacBook so I'm not anti-Apple.
There's also IntelliScreen (requires jailbreak, available in Cydia): http://intelliborn.com/intelliscreen.html#step1
One doesn't want anything being touch-sensitive on the device when it's locked other than the unlock mechanism. So if there was more information shown, there'd be no way to do anything about that information (reply to it, clear it, delay it until later, etc) without unlocking the phone and then navigating back to the information that triggered the information in the notification through whatever app was doing the alerting.
Maybe I'd feel differently if I had a passcode/password on my phone; but, since I don't, unlocking is just a button-push-then-swipe that happens unconsciously during the transition from my pocket to in front of my face. So I might as well use the 'real' app by the time I'm ready to do anything on the device.
The exception of course is the time/date which are already shown - that's information that is strictly received by the user, who doesn't have to do anything (in the device) in response. So maybe adding things like the weather as an option makes good sense... but I don't personally think I want actionable things like emails/tweets/etc on the lock screen.
Of course, there is on iPhone the "alternate lock screen" that appears when you double-click Home and music is playing. Maybe there is room for an expanded not-quite-unlocked mode when you double-click Home to unlock?
I personally expect there to be changes to the notification system in iOS 5, but I won't be surprised if the lock screen stays approximately as-is. Wouldn't necessarily mind being surprised though!
This is exactly what I was talking about here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270870
This is not unimportant cause Apple wont let your into the App Store before you spell it right (at least in the App).