iPhone 4 and other mobile developments

iPhone 4 and iOS 4 are launched/released.
My iPhone 3GS experience has improved a lot after the iOS 4 upgrade. At last folders on home screens (much needed!) Generally the interface feels faster, transitions are faster (partly thanks to multitasking) and some flick-induced animations are faster.
Still cannot attach anything to an email after you start writting it! _very_ annoying.
Nokia has announced that will support MeeGo for its top of the range smartphones, the ones competing with iPhone and Android. I think Symbian has lost the train and the wide support of developers, but it will still survive in mid range phones ...for a while. Not sure how good and easy MeeGo development environment is.
I still don't like Apple's dictatoric approach and attempt to control everything you can do with their devices. Still can't store any file I like on the iPhone and send it by email... Cloud approach is good but I may still want to store certain files.

...

While making changes to my double-filmroll Imagetron (adding flicks and double taps) and it's two days after the commercial USA launch of the iPad....
I think the iPad is a nice new paradigm of computing, mostly a 'consumption' device, an attractive, thin, lightweight client to a lot of functions, with an easy to use, pleasant and fun user interface. Of course Apple will exploit it commercially as much as it can...

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, 15-18 Feb 2010

Visual Perception was in Barcelona this year.
Very exciting, inspiring, and useful. The atmosphere was great.
Everyone agreed that applications are driving and will drive the expansion of mobile data networks. The iPhone and the use of facebook on mobiles has greatly increased mobile traffic.

Ease of use is key. Social networks, personal navigation, mobile entertainment, the cloud, mobile marketing and promotion, novel interaction methods, augmented reality, sensors are all very promising technologies for new applications.

People spend a lot of time using their mobile phone. It's personal and almost always with them.

And let's not forget education fo rthe children.

pictures from the event are here

CU soon,

Vangelis

Well,

now after the apple iPad announcement, it seems I didn't get it right, I am a bit disappointed. The iPad looks usable but it could have been better. It's slim indeed and apple needs to make a healthy profit, so smaller resolution than expected display but if the software is clever it makes up for the lack of pixels in most cases.
It has adopted a more conservative and old fashioned aspect ration of 4:3 rather than my favorite Golden ratio (phi, 1.618) - pity for my taste, but component availability might be responsible for that.
The wide bezel doesn't look nice either, but not very ugly either.
Also disappointed no more 3D metaphors are present in the gui. Nice 3D surface for the standard icons at the bottom a la OSX, but there is more room for improvement.
No skype video conference either, no camera. One of my favorite apps.

To be continued...

Tablet predictions

What a tablet computer can be:

(possible forecasts for the Apple tablet)

1. Have an aspect ration of the 'Golden Ratio' Phi (φ) 1.618. Possible resolution of screen (under the commercial availability as of Jan 2010) 1280x800 or 1280x768 (or perhaps even 1440x900.) About 10 inches diagonal.

2. Have a finger and gesture touch interface. No pointer on the screen. Designed to function with fingers, not stylous.

3. Have more 3D (real or 3d-looking) user interface elements, like coverflow and the date-time picker found previously on the iPhone OS. 3D looking home page(s.)

4. Runs on arm cpu and has 3D acceleration.

5. Has webcam.