Problems of modern design and Apple Tablet

In light of the upcoming Apple event, I want to grumble at modern design amateurs. So I called those whose hobby is the creation of "concepts" of various devices and laying out renderings on the Internet (it is a hobby, because hardly anyone pays for such work). Design professionals sit in their own offices and produce not renderers, but supercars and the world's thinnest laptops, that is, real goods.


No doubt, the sublimation of your fantasies about the future into a bright, speaking picture is in some way useful, because the result is a very clear message to professional industrial designers about the aspirations of the target audience. However, an amateurish design too often gives a sort of fetishism to form and disregard for the principle, logic of work, usability (by the way, the design of Chinese computer technology always suffers from this - it contains a relatively good form of content that only gives the right to say some characteristic on the packaging , we don’t have to talk about the quality, applicability and reliability, in particular, mobile phones like to give the form of popular Western models, when the functionality of devices does not even come close to each other).

Today or yesterday at Habré there was a topic about computer concepts, where the authors of the pictures thought it was about an effective renderer, but not about a real step into the future of interfaces. As an example of the work of real designers on the same topic, I can offer Microsoft Surface - a thing not only invented and thought out, but also already embodied and commercially available, a piece with a completely different interface and principle.
')
When insistent rumors about the Apple Tablet spread, many design amateurs began to rivet the concepts of the future device. The browser emphasizes the word “concepts” in the edit field as containing an error, which reflects the idea of ​​this topic as well as possible. All these pictures contain the same systematic error: the standard MacOS X desktop (sometimes with an on-screen on-screen keyboard) is present in the image quality on the screen. It is this moment that gives the superficial thinking of the authors.

The Apple Tablet will not have an onboard MacOS X and simultaneously finger multitouch screen. As I understand, those who want to deny that Apple is thoroughly working through the usability of its products as much as possible, there is no one here. No doubt there were failures, for no one is immune from mistakes, but Jobs’s company tried to correct them as far as possible. The idea of ​​keeping a desktop OS at your fingertips is obviously a failure, and Apple is unlikely to go for it.

Let's try to figure it out. So, a device with a screen from 7 to 12 inches is supposed to be controlled with your fingers, like an iPhone. Please note that from the very beginning, although the “mobile version of MacOS” was on the iPhone, the interface strongly resembling the desktop “sister”, it never had. It's not about the whims or marketing interests of Apple - the touch-interface without a stylus entails a couple of serious limitations:

1. The finger is larger than the stylus and points to a spot, not a point.
2. Working with our fingers, we block the interface.

The second point entails a situation comparable to the situation, as if in a car the steering column and pedals were interchanged with each other. Everything seems to be there, but either it is necessary to steer with the feet, or to climb down before every turn, under the dashboard. Apple has already tested all the limitations of the touch-interface on the iPhone and, if expressed in the same imaging system, made an additional observation hole in the bottom of the car and made the car travel only while the driver is at the bottom of the steering wheel. For example, pay attention to the on-screen keyboard: when you press a button, it does not depict that it was pressed, but, on the contrary, it “crawls out” from under your finger - this allows you to feel more control over where you press. Most of the other soft buttons can easily be pressed not even with one finger, but with two or three. Again, so you can always see that you press what you need. Of course, when designing such an interface, not only these moments were taken into account, but I hope that I was able to illustrate that they also thought about this.

Now, in the manner of designers of amateurs, we will extend the iPhone to the estimated size of the "tablet" and put the MacOS X desktop there. We have 2 options:

1. High resolution screen. Immediately there is the problem of compatibility of desktop applications with the first limitation of the fingertouch interface - a large patch under the finger. Most clickable items will not be available.
2. The screen is “mediocre”, with a resolution of about a megapixel. But then some (if not many) desktop programs that rely on the usual high-resolution screen for Macs do not fit in the “average” screen. Sites will also have some problems, and their designers will have cognitive dissonance and a pattern break - the most modern and beautiful “axis” in the screen resolution will be at the level of the beginning of the century.

As you can see, the desktop version of MacOS X itself is not capable of providing the user with the former comfort in the new conditions. The way out of both situations can be partly recognized as a smooth full-screen zoom, long and consistently developed by Apple, and for the iPhone it turned out to be a salutary when it comes to display sites. The ability to zoom in MacOS X is, and it fits well on multitouch. Another thing is that the same zoom gesture can be useful in the applications themselves under the operating system - for example, in cartographic, graphic, all in the same browsers and so on. To force the user to remember that with one gesture it is necessary to zoom in the system, and the application itself to others? I doubt very much that Apple will do that.

It turns out that Apple really has 4 ways:

1. Take a chance and try a desktop OS with some tweaks, screen zoom and extensive limitations in the applicability of the device. This is a failure (especially in the light of the recently released Microsoft + HP tablet, which itself is a failure).
2. Put on the tablet the next version of the iPhone OS (one of the most likely options). The platform is run-in, and the ecosystem of programs is quite extensive. Multitasking with this option can be provided, for example, by the fact that one application will not close the entire screen, but only a part of it, so that the rest of the space can be used to launch other applications.
3. Release the OS and device with new input principles (don't forget that Apple has mastered voice input well and is experimenting on voice interfaces) and a conditional touchscreen, which does not have the main load on entering information. Personally, my guess is that a multitouch will be added to the voice input on the back of the device, which will become something like a big Magic Mouse or a touchpad. Do not forget also that input devices that read the impulses of the CNS (brain) of the user, that interfaces based on machine vision are already developed and are being sold. One of the most winning moves for Apple is to break into a new era of human and computer communication, releasing a device that doesn’t particularly rely on obsolete input methods.
4. Do not do Tablet. (it is unlikely, for the sake of a simple update, Macs would not have begun to trumpet this way to the entire Internet - this could turn into the biggest disappointment of the audience).

The topic aims not only to guess what Apple is up there, but to show that simple thinking reduces the likelihood of the release of a mobile device from the desktop OS to the smallest. Consequently, the people who “delighted” us with their renderers of the giant iPhone with MacOS X Snow Leopard on board not only did not come up with anything special, but even just didn’t work with their heads to a sufficient extent.