iPhone... where's the INK & Gestures?
It seems that Apple really dropped the ball on iPhone with respect to OS X Ink and mouse gesture integration. Those of you that use Quicksilver with Abracadabra Mouse Gestures will immediately know what I'm referring to and how super efficient you can get with mouse gesturing.
While grabbing and throwing all your contacts to scroll down the page looks great during Steve Jobs-style demos, why not simply allow the user to use the screen as one giant INKwell with his finger to do spotlight searching for the correct contact?
For example, allow the user to activate ink mode and then draw a big "S" on screen to scroll immediately down to the "S" names in the address book on iPhone? Or continue inking letters to isolate, spotlight style, the contacts you are looking for? With integrated Core Animation, you can really start to imagine some awesome visual feedback while inking. This would also be especially useful for iPod mode.
Come on Apple, where's the interface revolution just waiting to be introduced with iPhone? Please don't wait until next year to bring this feature out. You have already killed 3rd party development to allow this feature to come to market on its own, so now it's up to you.
While grabbing and throwing all your contacts to scroll down the page looks great during Steve Jobs-style demos, why not simply allow the user to use the screen as one giant INKwell with his finger to do spotlight searching for the correct contact?
For example, allow the user to activate ink mode and then draw a big "S" on screen to scroll immediately down to the "S" names in the address book on iPhone? Or continue inking letters to isolate, spotlight style, the contacts you are looking for? With integrated Core Animation, you can really start to imagine some awesome visual feedback while inking. This would also be especially useful for iPod mode.
Come on Apple, where's the interface revolution just waiting to be introduced with iPhone? Please don't wait until next year to bring this feature out. You have already killed 3rd party development to allow this feature to come to market on its own, so now it's up to you.
Comments
How about we wait for the thing to come out before we start complaining.
Huh? Ink and gesturing would be a great improvement to the interface, so much so that they would have demo'ed it back in January if it had been slated for release with iphone's debut. i started this post to see if anyone has any idea why they would have omitted such obvious features.
you could say that it would be to leave room for features for iPhone 2.0 next year, but that would be short-sighted since this is *such* a competitive market (much moreso that the mp3 player market in terms of both market size and number of companies involved). Apple needs to bring out all its big guns, and ink and gesturing would be additional differentiators and could only help.
Additionally, since this is such a simple software addition it seems boneheaded that apple hasn't demoed or included it yet.
Apple Is Doomed.
NOT
It seems that Apple really dropped the ball on iPhone with respect to OS X Ink and mouse gesture integration. ...
Wow! Apple has been flailing about with ink and gestures since the Newton, yet you know so much more about the technology than it does. Apple needs your expertise.
Wow! Apple has been flailing about with ink and gestures since the Newton, yet you know so much more about the technology than it does. Apple needs your expertise.
Not to mention imagine Steve trying to explain gestures in the demo... The press would have had a field day with comparisons to the failed Newton and the whole outlook on the iPhone would have suffered in the process. Nope, from where I sit Apple did the right thing with keeping the discussion of the touch interface of the iPhone as 'simplistic' (easy to remember) as possible.
Dave
Anyway, back to a useful discussion, Apple could have enabled it as an "Advanced" feature that you have to turn on in the iphone preferences so as not to confuse the masses but still make it even more efficient for the techies.
Wow! Apple has been flailing about with ink and gestures since the Newton, yet you know so much more about the technology than it does. Apple needs your expertise.
Umm... iphone has demoed and will ship with several gesture techniques, namely the pinch for zooming in or out, and the press-and-drag for scrolling. there's no reason not to include even more advanced gesturing. have you tried quicksilver with abracadabra gesture triggers as i mentioned at the top post?
Well now it also seems AppleInsider forum members have become blind kiddie faithful.
Anyway, back to a useful discussion, Apple could have enabled it as an "Advanced" feature that you have to turn on in the iphone preferences so as not to confuse the masses but still make it even more efficient for the techies.
I think the point about the Newton PR fiasco has direct bearing on this. It might very well have such advanced features, but until the world is comfortable with more complex gesturing commands and, my personal favorite, chording, Apple would be wise to de-emphasize them.
Not to mention imagine Steve trying to explain gestures in the demo... The press would have had a field day with comparisons to the failed Newton and the whole outlook on the iPhone would have suffered in the process. Nope, from where I sit Apple did the right thing with keeping the discussion of the touch interface of the iPhone as 'simplistic' (easy to remember) as possible.
Dave
Well okay, I could see that it could have confused the press. But don't you think it should still be included as an option in advanced preferences and demo'ed on the iphone website?
Well now it also seems AppleInsider forum members have become blind kiddie faithful.
Anyway, back to a useful discussion, Apple could have enabled it as an "Advanced" feature that you have to turn on in the iphone preferences so as not to confuse the masses but still make it even more efficient for the techies.
I could see something like this coming down the road. I understand how Apple could want the first revision of the iPhone to be simple. They are trying to simplifiy the phone interface. Less going on is better. But I agree, being able to write in a contacts name to jump to that section would be cool. I wouldn't be surprised if it was on the back burner somewhere in an Apple engineers cubical.
Give it a bit of time. With multitouch, the door really opens up to what they can do. They are hardly taking advantage of the multitouch capabilities right now.
Well okay, I could see that it could have confused the press. But don't you think it should still be included as an option in advanced preferences and demo'ed on the iphone website?
hymie, fwiw, i think gestures would be a great idea as an advanced feature. your example of drawing the "S" to jump to the "S" contacts is solid.
that said, i also agree with the others that apple likely wants to keep the iphone interface as simple and familiar as possible for launch. iphone is a huge gamble for them, scads of r&d time and money invested. if consumers were confused or intimidated by the interface, it could flop in the near-term.
to point, consider all the flak apple's getting about the digitial keyboard. might actaully be very useful as apple claims, but most folks seem to be reacting based on it being different that what they are accustomed to.
once the iphone is launched and has traction, apple may augment it with advanced features like gestures. maybe even handwritten text as a response to the keyboard feedback. typing remains much faster than handwriting for the computer literate, but if the price point drops making iphone affordable to the masses, there may be slow typers that like the familiarity of handwriting.
time will tell...
hymie, fwiw, i think gestures would be a great idea as an advanced feature. your example of drawing the "S" to jump to the "S" contacts is solid.
Or you could just tap the "S" in the alphabet that runs down the side of the screen and it will jump directly to your "S" contacts. No scrolling necessary.
Or you could just tap the "S" in the alphabet that runs down the side of the screen and it will jump directly to your "S" contacts. No scrolling necessary.
Right, and scrolling or even jumping to the correct letter works great in their demo iphones with less than 50 contacts in the address book. However, power users will have plenty more than 50 names at any one letter location, making this still a "jump to S and then scroll carefully until you find the right name" scenario. Not so elegant.
Also, as I mentioned, think about the iPod functionality on this phone. If you have three thousand tracks that start with "S", jumping to "S" is really quite useless because you may still have to scroll through a few thousand tracks to find the one you wanted. This is less important now because iPhone is shipping with only 4GB of storage at the low end, but as storage doubles in the iphone, we will really start to need more efficient scrolling/find features and ink gestures is a great way to do it.
With ink gestures, you could just start handwriting the name of the person/business you are looking for with visual feedback of your ink translucently overlaid and it would autoeliminate non-matches, spotlight style. This is what power users would really appreciate.
Even simpler, it would also be great if they had a search bar with the screen keyboard available. That may turn up next Friday.