Ocarnia: This iPhone App Blows

I'm the least musically inclined person I know. I spent most of 6th grade band class in the Principals office (that's not an exaggeration), my piano teacher told my parents I was unteachable, and my guitar teacher gave up after several no shows. But put me on my iPhone with the Ocarina application and I can make beautiful music - well, tolerable anyway.

A week or so ago I blogged that I couldn't think of a single useful application - with the exception of helping the handicapped - for a blow interface. I stand corrected. Ocarnia, which allows you to play music by blowing into your iPhone mic while fingering four simple keys is absolutely wonderful fun. Bravo! Thanks to Lynn at Interactive Multimedia Technology for pointing me to this application.

Technology first, invention second, needs last.

Don Norman, the author of "The Design of Everyday Things" among other wonderful books, has written an essay questioning the value of design research in revolutionary innovation.

He makes it clear that researching human factors and needs is critical to the evolution of products, but he insists - and I agree - that design research makes little if any contribution to truly revolutionary innovations.

Personally, I think design research is important but sometimes I think the practitioners think of themselves as much more important to the process of innovation than is justified. That said, Don Norman does a much better job of expressing this sentement than I do. Thanks to Kevin Arthur of Touch Usability (see my blog role) for making me aware of this article.

Ditching the HP TouchSmart TX2z for the Asus Eee PC T91MT

Back in October I blogged about purchaing the HP TouchSmart TX2z multi-touch tablet computer. After I got it, I was less than enchanted with the device, but that is no slight to HP. The TouchSmart TX2z is one of the better Windows 7 touch tablets available today.

The problem I had with the TouchSmart TX2z is that my expectations were out of whack with reality. I wanted the TouchSmart to be as responsive and pixl-point accurate as my iPhone and it wasn't. In addition I had high hopes for its pen input and writing recogination, which was also a big disapointment.

The fact of the matter is: the multi-touch tablets for sale today will pale in comparison to the iPhone when it comes to touch interaction. That will be solved over time, but right now if you buy a tablet don't expect to be blown away but its responsivness. They all pretty much suck next to the iPhone.

Soon after I recieved the TouchSmart TX2z, Ausus released the lightweight Eee PC T91MT netbook with Windows 7 and a touch screen. Last month I blogged about ordering that device, which is half the price of the TouchSmart. Since I got the T91MT I haven't even picked up my TouchSmart again. In fact, I just sent the TouchSmart back to HP a couple days ago. I'll be keeping the Asus T91MT.

To be honest, in terms of power and touch responsivlness the TouchSmart is better than the T91MT. But to be fair, they both pretty much suck in my opinion. So why keep the T91MT and send back the TouchSmart? It has almost nothing to do with performance or touch sensitivity.

Early next year I'll be taking a two month sebatical in Central America and I need a very lightweight computer to take with me. I like the size of the T91MT and I think it will be an ideal computer to have while traveling. If I wasn't going to Central America I would probably return the T91MT too. While I do like it and its a pretty good eReader (with Kindle for the PC), its not much of a multi-touch device.

In short, I've been disapointed but not entirely surprised by the poor responsiveness of tablet computers with Windows 7. It's not really a Windows 7 issue so much as a hardware issue. Until manufactures are able to provide the same kind of precision and responsiveness as the iPhone on these larger tablet screens, there just isn't much to get excited about.

I'm optimistic, however, that all this will change by the middle to end of next year. Sadly, a lot of people are going to be dispapointed with their touch computer until they improve.

Developing for Microsoft Surface: The Book

The folks at nsquared have released a self-published book about development on the Microsoft Surface. With Microsoft opening up the SDK to everyone its a good time to put out a book on the subject.

I haven't had the opportunity to read it myself - just found out about the book this morning - but I'm sure it's at least decent. nsquared has been doing training for surface in Europe (I believe) for a while and their lead Surface person, Dr. Niel, is well know.

Anyway, now that you can access the SDK you might want to pick up this book if you plan to learn how to develop software for Microsoft Surface.

On the home front: It's not a done deal yet, but I'm hoping to sell my own surface machine next week. I love my Surface computer, but as I'm currently focused on the iPhone and see more of a future in Windows 7, it seems like a good time to clear out some floor space and pass my Microsoft Surface on to someone who can use it.

Why I Love Coding for the iPhone

As the last post said, iPhone users Love there phones and Hate their carrier. But what about application developers?

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I love the iPhone as an application platform. In over 15 years of software development, the iPhone is - bar none- the best software platform I have ever developed code for. Here's why:

1. It works. No doubt about it the iPhone works really well. Compared to every other multi-touch phone, not to mention multi-touch device, the iPhone provides the most reliable and accurate touch interface available today. Part of this is due to the fact that the coupling between the hardware and SDK is tight- making the discovery and documentation of anomalies (bugs) that much better.

2. It's fun. Work has to be fun or its just ... well ... work. Developing code for the iPhone is a blast. I've been at it for six months full time and I'm still really excited about the possibilities.

3. The Developer Ecosystem is HUGE! Nothing is more frustrating than hitting a dead end while coding. That happened a lot to me with the Surface - there just wasn't that much documentation or that many people developing code for the platform. Compare that to the iPhone where I can Google just about any issue I have and find the solution instantly in the top of the search results. In addition, the documenation available through Apple is pretty decent and the number of books you can choose from on iPhone SDK is mind boggling.

4. The Market is HUGE! What is there - 30 million iPhone users today? Probably more. With ease of access provided by the App Store its an incredible level of exposure.

Of course, the iPhone is not without its problems but lets face it - nobody does it better when it comes to a kick butt mobile phone experience. Not everyone loves the iPhone SDK, but in my opinion its excellent.

Consumer Reports on iPhone and AT&T

According to a post by Brier Dudley, Consumer Reports will be publishing an report on mobile phone carriers in the US early next year.

In a survey of folks from 26 US cities, AT&T, the exclusive US carrier for the iPhone, ranked at the bottom in customer satisfaction. According to the press release, "While AT&T's main weak spot is voice connectivity, they also scored below average in every attribute except Web access and texting."

Although AT&T had the worst consumer rating the press relesase from Consumer Reports stated that a "staggering 98 percent of iPhone users were satisfied enough that they would buy the phone again, despite below-par ratings for AT&T." Thus the Love/Hate relationship iPhone users have with their phone/carrier remains as strong as ever.

AT&T's exclusive on the iPhone has another 2.5 years before it runs out. When it does you can bet that AT&T will lose most, if not all, of their iPhone customers to other carriers - Assuming AT&T doesn't get another exclusive deal with Apple. I hope they don't because my service, while tolerable in the city, is horrible in many other places.

Microsoft Gives Away Touch Screen Laptops at PDC

Last year at PDC 2008, Microsoft gave all the attendies an external read-only harddrive with all of the software and presentations from PDC. It was nice, but this year was much better.

At PDC 2009 Microsoft gave away 11 inch Acer touch screen tablets to all "paying" attendees. With a custom BIOs its a one of a kind machine. That's pretty cool! Now I really wish I had gone.

By-the-way, I did receive my new ASUS Eee T91MT multi-touch tablet the other day from Amazon.com. It's much smaller than I imagined - the hand model in the Amazon.com picture must be one of Santa's thinner, smaller elves. I'm still playing around with it. I like the size but the multi-touch sensing accuracy could be a lot better.

This Blows

Natural User Interfaces can be really interesting when they leverage interactions that people use in every day life, but sometimes research in this area goes a little bit far afield. Here is one example, BAMB the "blow" user interface. I can't think of a single reasonable application for this.

A kind of Magic

I've written a lot about Magic as a metaphor for designing NUI applications. It started out with a series of blog posts:

Magic as a Metaphor for NUI Design: Part 1
Magic as a Metaphor for NUI Design: Part 2, Casting Spells
Magic as a Metaphor for NUI Design: Part 3, Enchanted Artifacts

Which is probably where I should have stopped since I pretty much said everything I wanted to say in those posts. But a couple months later I created a web site "dedicated" to the discussion of Magic as a metaphor for designing NUI applications called Magic.IO.

What I have discovered since creating that web site is that I don't really have much more to say on the subject. In addition, I've come to realize that unless you are creating a Harry Potter theme park designing computing devices to resemble magic artifacts is pretty pointless not to mention limiting.

The important point about magic and NUI is that NUI should feel like "A kind of magic". It should be invisible in terms of the mechanics but provide real value in terms of the results. The best example of a magical NUI experience, in my opinion, is Google's Voice Search application for the iPhone which I wrote about here. I love that application. My 4 year old son asked me a couple weeks ago, "how many teeth does an Elephant have?" I said, "I'll ask my phone". I repeated the question into the Google Voice Search application and abracadabra I had the answer (elephants have 4 teeth). Now that's magic.

What has been interesting, and this is surely due to the popular interest in the supernatural including everything from Harry Potter to Twilight series, is that the word magic is creeping up everywhere - I'm pretty sure that my own interest in magic as a metaphor is driven by the same popular culture. Western society has magic on the brain.

Anyway, my own conclusions is that a NUI experience has to be sort of magical in that it delights and provides value in some unique and unconventional manner. That's about as specific on the subject as I can get right now.

Other people are taking a stab at describing the relationship between magic - as in the magic of an illusionist - and NUI design including this thoughtful post by David Sherwin which was followed up by another interesting post by Josh Blake. While I was mainly concerned with the form factor of magic - how devices are designed and how you interact with them - David and Josh are more interested in the emotions evoked by magic tricks or illusions.

I suspect we have more in common than you can see on the surface, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. At any rate, NUI, as Queen said in the sound track of Highlander (one of my favorite movies), is "a kind of magic". I'm just not sure what kind it is. Is it magic in the fictional sense like Harry Potter or magic in sense of an illusionist? Perhaps its a little of both or something entirely new.

The Winner of the Microsoft Surface Design Contest

Microsoft announced User Interface Design GmbH (UID) is the winner of its "Touch First Developer Challenge", a Microsoft Surface design contest announced a while back and judged at the PDC 2009.

The UID application is an example of more display-ware which showcases UID's services as well as their design prowess. They have some really nice interactions and the aesthetics are excellent. Nice work guys.



In terms of showcasing their core competencies, multi-touch design, its an excellent application. In terms for providing anything other than a showcase of their work there's not much to see. While I really like their design I wish an application with more utility was chosen as a winner, but that's simply a reflection of my own person preference for applications that have real-world utility as apposed to display-ware.

It seems to me that there are very few real-world scenarios in which the Microsoft Surface makes a lot of sense. A variety of factors contribute to this: First and foremost, the form factor. A coffee table form factor is only appropriate for display-ware and home entertainment. Home entertainment is an interesting area, but given the Surface's high price its not going to see much traction in that market.

To make large horizontal multi-touch surfaces really useful they need to be higher and provide leg room so people can sit in a chair or on a stool and use them comfortably. There is only so much bending over from the couch a person is willing to endure. In addition, the price point needs to come down a lot. I've been pretty disappointed so far in the market for these devices both in terms of form factor and price points. Not just Surface, but all of the multi-touch tables available today.