iPhone OS 4.0 Features: Part 4 of 7

#4: iAd
Apple's iAd platform may be getting scrutinized by the FTC, but let's just talk as if everything goes as planned for Apple. Which it probably will anyway.

Ads were never something I imagined I'd be discussing in an iPhone feature post. Fact is, if you've downloaded even a few free apps on your iPhone, you've probably had some exposure to inline ads - I mean, a developer has to make a profit somehow, right? The problem, much like web-based ads, is that they're often obnoxious, if not obtrusive enough, that you won't be compelled to click on them. Or tap, in this case. Many users install browser plug-ins to disable ads, especially Flash-based ads. (Though the vocal masses that once lauded ClicktoFlash seem to have been silenced by people who insist we need more Flash online. Suspicious! But that's a whole 'nother ugly topic.)

But why disable ads? You don't hear people complaining about ads in magazines or newspapers. It's how many of us first learn of products or services we might not have otherwise known about. The only magazine I even read any more is Photoshop User, and it has ads like every other magazine. But I've learned about some cool things because of that fact. Television ads fall somewhere between the web and magazines: they're viewed by millions, cause hey, what ELSE are you going to do for two minutes until your show comes back on? Bake a pie? TiVo and other DVRs let us skip past commercials, but so did the old-school VCR, if we so desired.

So why watch ads at all? Because sometimes we want to be informed. We may have a need for Product X, but didn't know it existed prior to the commercial. Or maybe we just didn't know that our favorite cleaning product has an improved formula and now works even BETTER at fighting tough stains and pet odors. And you may not have known you were looking for a new car, but that 2011 Mustang looks pretty good on TV, and… wait, 31 MPG? Really? Well maybe I should go check it out...

So that's the educational and informational side. There's also the entertainment angle. There are truly some great minds in the ad business, crafting anything from sensational and artistic ads often used for cars (See Lincoln's ads for some of my favorites - the MKZ ad in particular is simply stunning), to downright hilarious ones. The Super Bowl alone is enough to convince anyone the value of ads. They get people talking, and the most effective will get you interested in whatever is being advertised.

Why is it then, that advertising online and inside apps fails to have that effect? It's one word, and simple to point out, but hard to achieve: Quality. As TV advertising proves (I say, based on no actual knowledge of industry numbers), quality ads see results. How many times have you been speeding past commercials on your DVR only to rewind because you want to see your favorite one?

Is achieving quality ads online so hard because of the low entrance barrier? After all, anyone at a computer can get some simple image editor and create an ad, even those that have no business doing so. Is a solution to this to simply let a company with immensely high aesthetic standards control what ads are displayed through it's service? Apple seems to think so. And you know what?

They might be on to something.

The mock ads that Apple created and showed off for Toy Story 3 and Nike were fantastic, and could completely change what we think of when we think of online advertising. Offering simple games or other interactive experiences, wallpaper downloads, and even links to other apps WITHIN the ad are potential game-changers. Perhaps one of the most important aspects are that you never leave the app when viewing the ad. Knowing you won't have to switch apps and get back to where you were before viewing the ad is a huge plus for users.

Anyway, I understand Apple's examples weren't real ads, but they highlight the possibilities beautifully. From offering a better user experience, and applying some actual design standards to ads, I think they're going to be more enticing to people, and overall a good decision by Steve Jobs and company.

To be clear though, don't misunderstand me: If Apple pitched iAd as the one and only option to advertise within apps moving forward, I wouldn't exactly applaud the move, and I'm pretty sure it would be a bigger PR disaster than any rejected app story thus far. Thankfully, much like Game Center, iAd is an opt-in service. If a developer wants to use the platform, they can, and Apple controls & sells the ads, each side gets their cut, and everyone is happy. If not, hey, just keep doing what you're doing. Hard to argue the concept, especially if you're a developer looking to get your name out there with a free app or two, but still need to, you know, eat.

In the end, with or without iAd (iAds?), we're going to be seeing ads in some apps, so if we can be looking at something of higher quality than the norm, that even offers us some functionality and a pleasant experience, instead of, say…

...I really think I'd be okay with that.

iPhone OS 4.0 Features: Part 3 of 7

The idea behind making this series into seven parts was to highlight the seven "tentpole" features of iPhone OS 4.0 that Steve Jobs and company highlighted. Then I refreshed my memory on the list and realized a few things:

An improved Mail is welcome, and a nice addition, but the key changes are simply threaded message views and a unified inbox. The latter of course being a feature users have been begging for. All nice stuff, but nothing worth devoting a whole post to. Do you look forward to a unified inbox for all of your e-mail accounts like most of us do? Well good, you're getting it. Next!

iBooks on iPhone and iPod touch devices is cool, and should relieve many people who worried it was an iPad-only feature. I don't really know how popular it will be, as the reason it's such a big deal on the iPad is the bigger screen that's better suited to reading for long periods. The syncing between all your devices is a nice touch though, and clearly a "yeah, we can do that too" message to Amazon.

The new Enterprise features seem nice, but are completely meaningless to me personally.

What this means is that I could turn this into a four part series and appear a liar for promising seven. Instead, I've decided to stick to seven, but I'll branch out into some of those 100 minor features, instead of stopping at the major ones.

Long preface aside, let's continue with the next tentpole feature I am going to discuss, Game Center, and what it means for both users and developers.

#3: Game Center
As soon as the App Store launched, it was clear that gaming was going to be a large portion of its catalog. The iPhone as a platform was so far beyond everything else on the market (and still is, though the margin has gotten smaller in the last year or so), there was an amazing amount of potential as a mobile gaming device. Games that weren't quite on par with grade-A DS or PSP titles, but were light years ahead of the sub-sub-par "games" one usually associated with a mobile phone.

It wasn't long before we had the kinds of games that would benefit from a platform similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live or Sony's PlayStation Network. Or Nintendo's... Oh right, still waiting on that. Xbox Live in particular has proven itself to be a fantastic model for a social gaming network. For whatever it's worth, I think it's the most well-designed product ever to come out of Microsoft. For online gaming, comparing scores with friends and the world, and so much more, these services play a huge part in how people interact with each other and their games.

Back to the iPhone. While Apple didn't build such a structure into the iPhone OS, several developers saw fit to collaborate on a few of these systems themselves, the most notable being OpenFeint, Plus+, and Crystal. OpenFeint is the one I have the most experience with myself, and is generally a pretty consistent experience from game to game. It's a great system offering leaderboards, achievements, social features and so on. I'm sure all of the others are just as good as well, but the simple fact that there are multiple systems/networks on he platform underlines is a potential hinderance to the platform.

The Case for One Social Gaming Network

Users have wanted one official, built-in social gaming network for a long time, even if you don't hear about it as much as in the pre-OpenFeint days. One problem is that there's no telling which games will use which network, since devs are free to use any of several options. It fragments the market, and potentially confuses users. You can, for example, see what other games your friends are playing, but only if said games happen to be on that network. Not to mention the need to sign up and manage friend lists on each. What if I want to see ALL the games my friends play? Or see when they're online and send them an invite?

One of my favorite little puzzle games for the iPhone is Piyo Blocks by Big Pixel Studios. As a match-3 puzzler, it's perfect for integrating a social gaming network, most notably for scoring purposes. The game uses OpenFeint, which was nice since I was already using it. I don't know the details behind it, but when Piyo Blocks 2 came to the iPad, Chillingo took up the publishing reigns, and the game therefore uses their own Crystal network. So now I have two games in the same series using two different networks. I don't actually feel like setting up a Crystal profile/account just for one game, and really found myself wanting this mythical "One Network" solution. While this is just one example, I'm sure I'm not alone.

I was both surprised and relieved when Apple revealed Game Center. It was them embracing gaming like never before, even more than when they shifted their entire marketing program behind the iPod touch to focus on games. It promises to be a big win for gamers, finally offering one official network backed by a company with endless resources. For end users, there's really no drawback here: The other networks should still be around, as developers aren't required to use Apple's system, so there will be plenty of choices. Right?

Obsolete?

Game Center's announcement was a big shock to all developers, and certainly those behind OpenFeint and other existing services. Did Apple just make all of these obsolete? That's the question on a lot of people's minds, though I'd say that's not the case. There's already talk of methods that will help people migrate their stuff to Game Center - by choice, of course. Does this mean that developers will be able to support both Apple and third-party services in a single app? If that's the case, it's going to make things interesting, and not as dire as some fear.

Besides that, having a new service out there is already inspiring devs to plan new features that will go beyond what Game Center will provide, to give both other developers and users incentive to continue using a third-party solution. Competition is good, right?

All in all, I think Game Center is a win for everyone. It gives the platform the dedicated, integrated social gaming network it so desperately needs, but without obliterating the existing ones. We won't see Game Center in full until later this year - I'm guessing the fall, but it's going to be interesting to see what happens.

iPhone OS 4.0 Tentpole Features: Part 2 of 7

Part two of my series on the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 focuses on the feature I'm most excited about so far: Folders.

#2: Folders
Once upon a time, the iPhone had a single home screen, and life was simple. Eventually we were able to add websites as icons to our home screen, which meant we needed more space, so Apple added multiple home screens. Then a little thing called the App Store debuted in the summer of 2008 and everything changed. People suddenly found themselves with 3, 4, 7 pages of apps, and at 16 per page, it became quite daunting to both move about and find the app they wanted. There simply had to be a better way to do this. Over time - specifically in mid- to late 2009, Apple introduced two features that helped alleviate - but not solve - the clutter. One was a feature of the iPhone OS itself, and the other a feature of iTunes.

Interim Solutions
The iPhone-based solution was Spotlight search, introduced in summer 2009 with iPhone OS 3.0. Like its counterpart introduced in Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), Spotlight is easily accessible and fast as can be, and makes for an excellent app launcher, much like on the Mac. You can simply swipe left from your main home screen, type the first couple letters of your app, and tap the search result to launch it. Boom. Simple. It works fine, though for me it still feels more natural to browse by swiping back and forth between screens, so I don't find myself using Spotlight on the iPhone anywhere near as often as on my Mac (which is constantly).

The next, and even better attempt to fix the "too many apps" syndrome was bundled with the release of iTunes 9.0 in September 2009. Now, when your iPhone is plugged in to your computer, you get not only a full list of synced apps, but images depicting each home screen and their layouts, enabling you to quickly drag and drop apps between screens, even several at once. It's a great addition to the software, and one I use frequently, but there's one thing it can't fix: 7 full pages of apps is still 112 individual icons, no matter how logical your organization is. Many people were hoping for folders to consolidate similar apps and cut down on the amount of home screens they had to swipe through without having to just remove things from their iPhones. Of course, very few people - if any - seemed to have a realistic and usable approach to do so.

The Real Solution
It should be a shock to nobody that Apple found a great method. Let us feign surprise.

Feign!

Okay. Clearly, a desktop-like interface for creating and working with folders wasn't going to work here. The solution had to be something that felt natural within the OS, that fit with the way we already interact with our devices. Apple had already introduced what is essentially an "Edit" mode with firmware 1.1.3 that made it simple to move apps around and from screen to screen, so I suppose it was natural that folder creation and modification would be handled in Edit Mode. Or Wiggle Mode, if you prefer.

So to make a folder we just drag one app onto another? That's it? The OS even automatically names the folder based on the type and genre of the apps you put in the folder, which is great, simple and will probably suffice for a lot of people. For the rest of us, we can still name the folders to whatever we want as well. The UI for them is superb too: folder contents are revealed by the home screen background splitting and sliding apart, as if the apps live "behind" the home screen. The icons outside of the active folder then dim, making it clear that while in the folder, you're only interacting with the apps inside.

I probably don't need to explain at all why this is useful. I've spent a good deal of time moving apps around and organizing them in a certain fashion. I discovered a newfound love for word games after the App Store launched, and currently have ten of them on my iPhone, so I always want to keep those together on one screen. I have certain areas devoted to different things - brand new stuff and Lite versions I'm trying out live on screen #2, social-based apps are clustered together, as are utilities, photo-related apps, and my favorite of all my faux categories: "Games with round icons," seen here:

Needless to say, I live to organize and categorize, which is all well and good until I get new apps and it throws off my careful planning. Being able to move all of my "categorized areas" into folders is the one feature of iPhone OS 4 that's going to change the way I use my iPhone more than any other. Never again will downloading a new app or three mess with my organized app ecosystem, forcing a reshuffling of 7 or 8 screens of apps. In fact, I won't even have 7-8 screens of apps to scroll through anymore, so I'll be able to get to everything that much faster.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about Folders, so June/July can't get here soon enough.

iPhone OS 4.0 Tentpole Features: Part 1 of 7

Earlier this week, Apple delivered a preview of the forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0, and while they offered a glimpse into several of over 100 user features (Quick Look?), they highlighted seven major changes, which Steve Jobs referred to as "Tentpole Features." This series of posts are my thoughts on each.

#1: Multitasking
I don't really know if multitasking is truly the most-requested feature by users, or by Engadget writers who cite it as a point of alleged failure on the part of Apple's engineers. In any case, multitasking on a mobile device has certainly become a hot topic in recent months. But how important is this on mobile devices like the iPhone?

While the idea of having more than one app running at once is a nice one, I very rarely find a situation that requires it, or that I find myself bemoaning a better method than what we have. There's two key reasons: One, another app is generally only a home button press and tap away, and two, several apps maintain their current state so that when you switch back to them, you're in the same place as before.

Of course, both of these arguments have some key-shaped holes in them. Maybe you're needing to switch between apps you normally store on say, your first and sixth home screen. Outside of some icon shuffling or constant trips to Spotlight (a decent solution, but one that would become tiring), there's no quick way to do this, and it becomes a frustrating exercise.

Second, several apps do NOT maintain their current state, so it's a hit or miss affair. Every time the situation arises, we have to pause and ask ourselves, "Should I answer this text/call now?" followed by, "If I do, will this game stay right here until I get back?"

I'm happy to see that tools are being included in the SDK that should allow nearly all developers to do this moving forward, and easily, from the sounds of it.

Up until the event, any time I would read a story, blog post or tweet about potential multitasking, the lone example I would see as an app that would benefit was Pandora. I constantly looked for other examples, just to find out if people really wanted true multitasking, or if they just wanted Apple to allow Pandora & other music streaming apps special rules to run in the background. Don't get me wrong, Pandora is the prime example of why multitasking is important. I would love to use it myself, but never do simply because I'd want to do other things while listening. So this is great news for the ever-growing community of music lovers. And me.

That said, it was exciting to see just what extent Apple was going to implement multitasking, and what other apps would utilize it. I think we're going to see Pandora and Skype usage on iDevices explode. It's also going to do wonders for messaging apps: be it text, IM, email and so on, if taken advantage of properly.

When we're talking about running several things at once on a mobile device, the first worry most people will have is about battery life. And rightly so, if you look at the competition and their multitasking offerings. Sure, run all the apps you want simultaneously, but you better keep an eye on what's running, and watch that battery indicator, unless you want to find yourself suddenly without the ability to even make a phone call. See, it wasn't that Apple was being lazy by not implementing this, it's that they're concerned with the experience people have with their products, and wouldn't want the iPhone to suddenly appear to have a drastically-reduced battery life. It would be giving people what they asked, but also harming people's perception of the device. Apple's solution of allowing just the part of an app that NEEDS to run in the background (audio only for Pandora, for example) is brilliant, and should get around this issue. It'll still affect battery life of course, but not nearly as much as it could, and not to the extent it does on competing platforms either.

As a side note, I believe 'perception' is also the main reason that multitasking won't be offered on older hardware. It's a fact the current iPhone and iPod touch have superior internals, so while I imagine multitasking would function on older devices, it was probably too sluggish and, again, didn't offer the kind of user experience Apple would want to deliver. In their minds, maybe it was better to simply say an iPhone 2G couldn't do something at all, instead of allowing it and having legions of disappointed users. If so, I'd say it was a good call.

In conclusion, while I feel switching tasks is still generally pretty quick - even swiping five pages to access another app takes <2 seconds - there's some fantastic benefits to this model, and I think it goes without saying it will greatly change the way we use our iPhones and iPod touches.

And, eventually, our iPads, which I'm pleased to say I effortlessly typed this post on.