Apple's Magic Mouse: A retail success, but a usability failure

You've probably heard by now that Apple sales of the Magic Mouse have skyrocked placing Apple in the unusual position of having 10% market share in the mouse market - that's just for the mouse and doesn't include sales of Magic Mouse peripherals when bundled with the iMac.

Great sales are probably the only indicator of success in a market. Stuff that sells well is successful; stuff that doesn't is not. What I don't understand is why the Magic Mouse is such a great seller. My only conclusion is that people are buying the thing without ever having used it.

Why do I say that? Because I did try it out. I spent about 20 minutes at the Apple store a few weeks ago trying to use the Magic Mouse and found the experience to be horrible. My attempts at swiping and tapping were full of unintended consequences as my fingers, accustomed a traditional mouse, tried to hold the Magic Mouse still while my other fingers did there multi-touch dance. In short, it just didn't work for me and its hard for me to imagine that it works all that well for anyone else.

I find the form factor to be less than comfortable and the touch surface practically unusable. Am I alone? Perhaps not. I've kept mum on the subject because I wasn't sure if my experience was universal - I'm still not sure - but I was delighted when theAppleBlog published an article in which Liam Cassidy also criticizes the Magic Mouse. Are we alone. Does everyone else love this thing?

Now here's a video of a Magic Mouse that really works! Notice the complexity of its design and the simplicity of its execution.

Augmented Reality Googles and Ubiquitous Computing

In 1988 Mark Weiser developed a new paradigm in computing which he called Ubiquitous Computing. The short explanation is that Ubiquitous Computing occurs when all objects in an environment have embedded chips and can communicate with other objects in the environment.

Weiser's vision has not yet been fully realized but it has been implemented in part in such things as shipping and storage where RFID cards communicate data about an object (e.g. a product) to a reader. Not quite the same as talking together but its a start.

From Ubiquitous Computing came Ambient Intelligence the idea that not only could objects in an environment communicate, but that they could automatically coordinate to respond to the needs of people.

Another idea that has evolved from Ubiquitous Computing and is the Internet of Things the idea that everyday objects are connected to the Internet and can communicate their state and information about their environment continuously.

All these ideas are essentially the same, but they emphasize different aspects of Ubiquitous Computing. The question that comes to my mind is what information would everyday objects provide and how would we use it? In other words, what's the use case?

I've struggled with this for a while now trying to figure out when it would be really useful for my toaster to talk to my refrigerator. Lots of scenarios have been discussed on the internet like the idea of an intelligent refrigerator that lets you know when you are low on milk or when the cheese is past its expiration date. Personally, I think the scale of implementing something like this is beyond our reach today. If it was easy than just about everything would already have RFID tags.

But what about a controlled environment? By controlled I mean a environment that is specifically designed to support ubiquitous computing rather than the world at large. An example of this is a warehouse where all the goods have RFID tags whose signals can be counted and therefor indicate when a product is low in stock. That's a start but its still pretty limited. How about a factory floor where every machine can report on it current operating state? For example, the drill press can report that its drill bit has gotten too dull and needs to be replaced. Now that sounds a little more interesting.

The second question is how do you report information presented by objects in a controlled environment? The most obvious solution is to write an application that people can access from desktop computer. I'm sure that's been done to some degree. But is that the best solution? Perhaps something more portable would be better like an iPhone. That would be an improvement as you could walk around the manufacturing area and get alerted to problems and interrogate objects at their location.

A really cool idea, which was brought to my attention by a blog post at Augmented Times is the use of Augmented Reality goggles with ubiquitous computing. In the video below a Dutch company demonstrates a concept that combines augmented reality with ubiquitous computing.

As the farmer walks around his large industrial farm, everything from milking machines, to grain bins, to cows report their current state projected on the lens of the goggle. Look at a cow and get a reading of its health. Look at a grain bin and get a reading of the type of grain stored and how much is left. It's a wonderful idea and one I think is actually doable in the short term. Watch the video for your self and see if it sparks some really cool NUI design ideas.

OCGM: George's Razor

William of Occam had a theory, which is commonly called Occam's Razor. The pop-culture definition of Occam's Razor is:

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

This is not really what William of Occam said but it gets to the crux of it for most people. The real theory is more elegant and has had a huge impact on philosophers and scientists. Sadly, Occam's Razor is also about as reliable a method of proof as statistics. (A really good article on Occam's Razor can be found here).

The validity and use and misuse of Occam's Razor is really not at issue here, I just felt it was important to point out that its not a done deal. That the simplest solution is not always the best. Why bother? Well its because a fellow NUI practitioner, Ron George, has chosen the notoriety of Occam's Razor to help promote his own universal theory of NUI design, OCGM (pronounced Occam).

OCGM stands for Objects, Containers, Gestures, and Manipulations. The idea is that OCGM provides a meaningful and common term that designers can use to describe basic components of any NUI design. It's really not meant to be a universal truth; Ron George just uses the pronunciation Occam because its easy to remember.

Ron George is no slouch when it comes to NUI. He was a member of the team that developed Microsoft Surface and even headed up a group focused on NUI design. He also had a hand in the development of Microsoft Direct Voice Interface for automobiles, MSN Audio.

While Ron George developed the theory and explanations of OCGM it was Joshua Blake who suggested the order of the acronym so that it sounded like Occam. So we have Ron George to thank for the theory and Joshua Blake to thank for remembering it.

I posted a really long blog post - longer than this one in fact - that challenged OCGM as the NUI equivalent to GUI's WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers). In response to my post (and the questions of others) Ron George was kind enough to do a follow up post which explains OCGM much more clearly than his first post.

To help folks understand OCGM (not to mention myself for writing about something is the most effective way to learn about it) I'll try to explain OCGM as I understand it. OCGM says that any NUI interface (perhaps any computer interface) can be organized into two primary concepts: Items and Actions.

Items can further be broken down into Objects (basically the representation of information) and Containers (the relationship among pieces of information).

Actions can be broken down into Manipulations (any action by the user with immediate an usually innocuous results) and Gestures (any action by the user that starts a chain of operations which are not immediate and may not be innocuous).

To understand the differences between manipulations and gestures lets use an example from WIMP - a paradigm we all understand pretty well. A single cllick on an icon on the desktop is a manipulation. The icon immediately highlights and the action is innocuous. Compare that to double clicking on an Icon which will launch an application. This action is neither immediate nor is it always innocuous - just ask anyone who has accidentally installed a virus. The point isn't that manipulations are safe and gestures are dangerous. The point is that manipulations help you navigate and investigate an interface but don't do anything to information. Gestures are the actions that result in changes in information or the presentation of information.

After reading Ron George's latest post, "Welcome to the OCGM Generation! Part 2", I've come away a lot more comfortable with OCGM than I was originally. One of my biggest complaints was that OCGM didn't address a broad enough spectrum of NUI technologies. Most noticeably to me it didn't seem to address Direct Voice Interfaces. Ron has managed to deflect this criticism very easily by pointing out that some voice commands have an immediate impact ("Call Home") and are therefor a form of manipulation while others are more complex ("Make an appointment for 9 am tomorrow at Microsoft") and are therefor gestures. Of course this example doesn't exactly fit with what I said in the previous paragraph because "Call Home" as a manipulation is not innocuous, but that may be an error in my own interpretation.

So is OCGM to NUI what WIMP is to GUI? Possibly. At least I'm more convinced now than I was yesterday. There are, however, a couple of issues that I still don't understand.

As I said in my post yesterday, OCGM doesn't seem to account for what I believe to be two of the most important aspects of NUI design (or any UI design): Affordance and Feedback.

An affordance gives you clues as to what you can do. A graphical button looks like a real-world button so you get the idea that clicking on it will do something.

Feedback lets you know that the action you just took actually accomplished something or was at least recognized by the application. Highlighting an icon you just clicked on lets you know that you've selected that icon.

If Ron George can explain how OCGM encompasses Affordances and Feedback than I'll be convinced that OCGM works for NUI. Otherwise, I think OCGM is a great start that would benefit from an added "A" and "F".

UPDATE: December 31, 2009

Joshua Blake wrote an interesting and informative blog post which helps explain OCGM a bit more. In particular he helped me understand why Affordance and Feedback, although critical to UI design, don't actually belong in the OCGM metaphor.

Here is the comment I posted on his blog:

Excellent article! You've helped me understand that Affordance and Feedback , although critical to HCI design, should not be part of the OCGM. After all, Affordance and Feedback are not included in WIMP, but are still critical the GUI design process. OCGM is a higher level abstraction. Affordances, Feedback, and Transitions are addressed at a lower, more concrete, levels of abstraction. Nice work!

What is NUI's WIMP?

Joshua Blake sent me an email pointing to a blog post he wrote about a new acronym, OCGM, that he and Ron George created to describe common aspects of human-computer interactions in Natural User Interfaces. That's a mouth full so I'll try to simplify it.

The technology you are using to read this post right now is most likely some type of Graphical User Interface (GUI). It might be Windows XP/Vista/7, or Mac OS X, or an iPhone or whatever. The point is that the primary means by which humans interface with computers today is through GUIs. GUIs have certain elements in common most notably all GUIs tend to use Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointing devices (WIMP). The WIMP acronym has been in wide use for at least a decade to describe the primary human-computer interface components in GUI systems. As we attempt to find a clear definition of Natural User Interfaces - none have hit the mark as far as I'm concerned - its natural to want to find parallels in the language used to describe NUIs to those we have traditionally used to describe GUIs.

WIMP is the prevailing set of metaphors used to design GUI systems. What is the prevailing set of metaphors used to describe NUIs? In order to find an achronym I think you need to have a large number of successful NUI implementations to distill and in truth we really don't have that yet. Therefor any attempt to come with NUI's equivalent to WIMP is probably going to fail in the long run. Just for fun, however, I decided to take a closer look at three attempts to find NUI's "WIMP": PETA, Post-WIMP, OCGM. But before I examine those attempts let me explain my two-part litmus test for considering them.

The first thing I'm looking for in a WIMP-like acronym for NUI is a term that is general enough to include - at the very least - three of seven technologies that I feel fall under the NUI umbrella as outlined in a slide presentation I gave to the International Association of Software Architects earlier this year.

NUI includes the following technologies (and probably others):

• Touch UI
  
• Voice UI
• Gestural UI
• Tangible UI
• Organic UI
• Augmented Reality
• Automatic Identification

The first three technologies (i.e. Touch, Voice, and Gestural) are the most important and perhaps the most likely to be thrown in to the NUI mix by other people. If a term used to describe a general metaphor for human-computer interaction in NUI technologies doesn't support at least the first three items in this list than its not applicable to NUI.

In addition to being inclusive enough, the terms used to describe NUI's "WIMP" has to be concrete enough to provide guidance. Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointer are all pretty clear. An acronym for NUI should be equally as clear or its not useful.


PETA
Jonathan Brill took a shot at this some time ago when he introduced the term PETA on his blog, which stands for Places, Animations, Things, and Auras. PETA wasn't intended to be generalized to NUI. It was specifically aimed at mulit-touch. So PETA doesn't pass the first test of being inclusive. It's all about Touch UI which is what was intended.

Post-WIMP
Another terms that has seen some use lately is post-WIMP, which simply means whatever comes after WIMP. Not much of a definition but certainly inclusive. This one passes the test of including the three primary NUI technologies in my list but fails to be concrete enough to be useful.

OCGM
OCGM which stands for Objects, Containers, Gestures and Manipulations is the most recent submission for consideration by the NUI community. The acronym was created by Ron George and Joshua Blake. According to Ron and Joshua OCGM is pronounced Occam, as in Occam's Razor (Occam is the guy in the picture above).

As much as I admire Ron George and Joshua Blake I'm sorry to say that OCGM fails both of my tests. It is at once non-inclusive of the three primary technologies I outlined as well as being to ambiguous to be useful. In addition, the terms used in the acronym overlap so much as to be redundant. Let me explain.

While you may not agree that all seven of the technologies I listed (i.e. Touch, Voice, Gesture, Tangible, Organic, AR, and Automatic Identification) are types of Natural User Interfaces, most people will agree that Speech, Gestures and Touch UIs are definitely NUI technologies. OCGM doesn't support speech. Speech is not a gesture nor is it a manipulation - at least not according to the definitions of those terms as they are understood today. A Direct Voice Input command is based on prompts, grammars, and dialog logic. Not gestures and manipulations. For this one reason OCGM doesn't work as a general metaphor for NUI.

There are other problems with OCGM. The biggest in my opinion is overlap and generalization. "O" stands for Objects. What is an object? That is a term that is so general as to be almost useless. "C" stands for Containers, which is equally as ambiguous not to mention its redundant. Isn't a Container a kind of Object? Finally, the distinction between gestures and manipulations while it makes sense in some cases is also redundant. It's like differentiating between application menus and context or pop-up menus. I would argue that any manipulation is in fact a gesture and if a gesture is used to manipulate the behavior of a computing system than its a manipulation. Manipulation may be a subtype of Gesture or Gesture might be a kind of Manipulation - either way, listing them both doesn't help the definition at all.

The Three Aspects of Any Human-Computer Interface
So what do I suggest? I don't. That's the easy way out, but I can list three aspects of any human-computer interface that must be considered in order to create a WIMP-like term for NUI.

• Affordance
• Command
• Feedback

Affordance
Simply put, an affordance is some indicator of what can be done with the system. If there is no indication that you have to touch the monitor to make it work or that you need to speak to a device to give it commands than there is no real affordance built into the system. Afforadances tell you what commands you can use with a computer.

Commands
The idea behind a command is that it's any method by which a human communicates a desired action to the computer. It might be a gesture, a touch of a button, or a spoken command.

Feedback
This is obviously how the system responds to commands. If you execute a command on a system and nothing obvious happens, than you have no idea if your command worked. The NUI system has to respond in some way. In multi-touch that might be an animation or an aura, in a speech application it might be a vocal reply or a non-vocal sound.

Where are Objects?
You probably noticed that these general aspects of human-computer interaction do not explicitly include "objects" where an "object" might be a physical device, controller, or graphical representation of data being manipulated. The truth is that an "object" or "thing", as I believe they are intended to be used in OCGM and PETA respectively, are in fact affordances or feedback or both. A Window provides both an affordance of what commands you can execute with your mouse as well as feedback in terms of how the graphical representation of the Windows behaves when its manipulated. Similarly, a prompt from a Voice UI (e.g. "How can I help you?") is an affordance and a voice or non-voice response is feedback. Are sounds things or objects? Some would say the are while others would say the are not, so in this case objects and things don't always work for NUIs especially speech recognition systems that are audio modal only.

Conclusion
PETA was never intended to be generalized for NUI so its not really considered here. I don't think Post-WIMP works very well because its way too general to be useful. I also don't think that OCGM works all that well because its not inclusive enough, its redundant, and its too abstract.

The three aspects of any human-computer interface paradigm are Affordances, Commands and Feedback. If you don't fulfill all three then you don't have a complete meta-metaphor. In addition, if you can't drill down on each aspect than you don't have a useful guideline for people using a specific human-interface computer paradigm (e.g. Command-Line, GUI, or NUI).

As I said before I think its just too early to try to declare NUI equivalent of WIMP - we haven't seen enough successful implementations to do that yet. In addition, we haven't even clearly defined NUI. Until we can do that we can't come up with a general metaphor common to all NUI applications.

One more thing. The types of solutions used to create NUIs are pretty broad - much broader in terms of inputs and outputs than GUI - so it may be that there is not NUI equivalent to WIMP.

NUI's Text Entry Dilemma

Over the course of this past year I've written numerous blog entries that highlight one of the biggest problems with multi-touch surfaces, text entry. Most recently there has been a lot of talk about a new patent for which Apple has applied. It's a touch screen that can provide physical tactile feedback. The solution is explained best in this post at My Digital Life. Does the articulating framework discussed in the Apple patient solve the text entry dilemma? I'm not convinced it does but it certainly has potential. Will it be a part of the rumored iSlate? I seriously doubt it but only time will tell.

So what is NUI's Text Entry Dilemma? In a nutshell entering text using a multi-touch screen, be it on a small device like the iPhone or on larger devices like the Microsoft Surface, is difficult because the user has to watch their fingers as they type on a "soft" keyboard. By soft keyboard I mean a graphical representation of a keyboard on a flat touch screen. In addition, alternative input solutions such as pen-based input and natural speech just don't work all that well.

The truth is there are very few solution which seem to work in practice. The soft keyboard on an iPhone works fairly well for short messages or web searches, but its slow compared to thumbing on a mobile phone keypad. The use of soft keyboards on medium sized devices such as tablet computers and large devices such as Microsoft Surface is a non-starter. Just try to compose an email on either a Windows 7 tablet or a Microsoft Surface using a soft keyboard and you'll soon agree it just doesn't work.

At the beginning of this year I wrote an blog entry which tried to explain the importance of tactile and force feedback in touch typing. What I was essentially saying is that you can't touch type with a flat smooth surface like a touch Screen because you can't feel the keys.

In October I spoke about multi-touch keyboards - what I call big track pads - and multi-touch mice as non-starters. Despite the hupla about the multi-touch mice Microsoft was experimenting with as well as a multi-touch keyboard Apple was patenting, I found both solutions to be un-workable. The truth is that you have to be able to see a direct correlation between your fingers positions on the multi-touch surface and the display in order to be productive. The only solution that I know of that provides this is the 10/GUI concept. Of course I might be totally wrong about this. Our more artistic friends who have been using things like the Wacom Bamboo might disagree with me on this one. They've demonstrated over the years that using a flat surface and stylus can work well even if the interaction is indirect.

This year I also pointed to a couple of multi-touch alternatives to traditional hunt and peck including Dasher and Swipe, but again these solutions require the user to watch their fingers as they type which doesn't work all that well in a productivity applications. A couple solutions that augmented the multi-touch screens with physical keyboards were also discussed including the SLAP Widgets and research by Bjoern Hartman which seem promising. The solution here is applicable to large table-top surfaces and could be extended, in principle, to small and medium sized devices. For example, mobile phones that provide both touch screens and physical keypads or Tablets that allow you to flip the screen to expose the keyboard in a traditional laptop configuration. The question is: are these really the only solutions that work? They don't seem to advance the NUI landscape very much. Perhaps a pure NUI interface for productivity application simply isn't viable.

Finally I discussed the possibility of replacing the keyboard with pen input or natural speech input. Both solutions have enormous potential, but as I discovered with real-world pen-based input and natural speech solutions the promise far out strips the delivery. Neither pen-based hand writing recognition or natural speech recognition work very well at all.

So after a year of thinking, reading, and writing about text entry in Natural User Interfaces I've come to the conclusion that the use of a physical keypad or keyboard which is somehow integrated with or tethered to a multi-touch screen is the only solution that seems work for anything but trivial text entry. This is a bit disappointing but it seems to be a reality given the current technical capabilities of alternatives including soft keyboards, pen-based input, and natural speech. Perhaps Apple's articulated framework is the solution, but the problem I see with that is force feedback. I can't tell by reading the patient if the articulated frameworks provides force feedback but without it I fear the solution is not going to work all that well.

2010: The Year of the E-Reader (but not Electronic Paper)

A lot of folks have written that 2010 will be the year of multi-touch and to some degree they are right, but multi-touch will only be an enabler for a more obvious consumer technology, E-Readers.

Sony has been offering E-Readers for a while and when Amazon.com came out with the Kindle, I seriously considered buying one. But I didn't. I just couldn't justify purchasing a dedicated reading device and I still strugle with that.

When Amazon.com came out with the Kindle iPhone application I didn't give it much thought. It solved the "dedicated device dilemma", but who would want to read a book on their iPhone? The iPhone screen works for games, applications, and even video but for book reading. No, the screen was just too small.

A couple months later I was in a jam. It was Sunday night and I didn't have a book to read to the kids. We read a couple chapters of a book every night. The library was closed and so were the book stores. I remember the iPhone kindle application and decided to give it a go. I download the iPhone Kindle application from the AppStore (free), purchased a copy a Kindle edition of Beauty and the Beast from Amazon.com ($1.49) and read it to the kids. After the first evening I was hooked on Kindle for the iPhone.

Reading on the small iPhone screen proved not only possible but also enjoyable. Flicking through pages was easy and the text could be made really small or fairly big. I didn't suffer from eye strain from the back-lit screen and the type was clean and crisp. I compared my experience with the iPhone to the actual Kindle device and decided that for me the iPhone was better. The screen size was more convenient, the text easy to ready, and I didn't have to carry around a second device. Since then I've read several books on my iPhone and the thought of going back to paper is very unappealing.

After reading my first book on the iPhone I tried the same experience on two touch screen computers: The HP TX2z Multi-Touch Notebook and the ASUS Eee PC T91MT. As I wrote in a later blog entry I was pretty disappointed in the HP and sent that back soon after getting the ASUS (HP game me a full refund, thank you!). I kept the ASUS for a while and even read a book on it using the Kindle for the PC, but the experience was inferior to the iPhone because the device was so heavy and like the HP, the multi-touch sensitivity was horrible. I finally returned the ASUS to Amazon.com (they refunded only part of the money so I won't be buying electronics from them again). The truth is that the multi-touch tablet computers available today are simply too heavy to make for good E-Readers and their multi-touch functionality is so horrible as to be basically useless. The iPhone wins on the multi-touch and the E-Reader front.

Given the poor state of multi-touch on tablet PCs - a situation that I hope will improve soon - the iPhone remains the best touch enabled personal device on the market. It's incredibly versatile (i.e. phone, web browser, e-reader, video player, game machine) and its touch functionality is by far the best implementation available today. 2010 will not be the year of multi-touch if PC manufactures continue to offer the kind of experience they are today.

So, what about Electronic Ink? Most people assume that the Electronic Ink reading experience is superior to back-lit LCD because you won't suffer eye strain. I don't find that to be the case at all. In fact, I prefer the back-lit LCD reading experience to the Electronic Ink experience you get with the Kindle and Sony devices. In addition, Electronic Ink is limited to black and white and gray scale coloring. It doesn't support video and the current devices are not very interactive compared to an iPhone.

I actually think Electronic Ink will take a few more years before it can compete with LCD technology especially given the evolution of media. Given the versatility of electronic readers why limit yourself to bland gray-scale images? LCD technology will continue to improve while Electronic Paper plays catch-up. The future, in my opinon, are small thin slate computers with back-lit LCDs and at least some touch capabilities. That is the only platform that is versitile enough to support the printed word as it evolves.

A good example of the power of an LCD computer screen over Electronic Ink is this video from Sports Illustrated showing a concept E-Reader experience with color images, video, changeable layout, menus, search and so on. Another example is an E-Reader concept by Bonnier R&D which is prettier than the Sport Illustrated version but not as versatile (see video below). Both of these videos are concepts and should not to be taken to seriously, but they do illustrate the real power of LCD compared to Electronic Ink. They also illustrate some interesting multi-touch gestures and content layouts, but as I said the multi-touch aspect while important is not the thing people will notice the most in 2010. It will be the emergence of the E-Reader as a must-have personal computer device. But what about the dedicated device dilemma?

In the era of the iPhone, devices that are only mobile phones, or only GPS, or only cameras, is over. People don't want to lug around a device for each need. The idea of a multi-purpose device was a widely held dream for years, but it was not realized until Apple introduced the iPhone with iTunes and AppStore. So, given the really poor state of multi-touch in the PC market, the rise of the E-Readers, and the desire for these all-in-one devices I suspect that the device of choice for folks this coming year will be the iPhone (again) followed closely by the much anticipated iSlate. If the iSlate is as versitile as I and many others have suggested, it will not only be an outstanding video and game platform it will also be an excellent E-Reader. As it stands now, the iSlate is the most likely device to propel E-Readers into mainstream (not to mention giving the PC manufactures a black eye).

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

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.