I don’t want to call anyone out specifically because it’s a shared consensus. For iOS 4 and 5 Apple didn’t surprise anyone when they announced desperately needed features like App Switching and Notifications. People seem to think iOS 6 will be all surprises since they’re done with the “obvious” stuff. Well, no

1. Exposé App Switching
   • Apps make a literal screenshot when they’re switched out so why not use that to preview the app going back to it?
   • Something like the original front row carousel/turntable would be nice.
   • Coverflow definitely looks cool but like Flip3D in Vista it requires you to iterate the whole list to find what you’re looking for. The carousel would at least let you see a few things at a time.
   • I don’t like double tapping the home button. If we’re convinced swipe-down works for notifications, swipe-up should work for the app switcher.
2. Notifications need work
   • As has been pointed out, the “denim” background is supposed to be for things that are under something, not on top of. Apple needs to sort that out by either making the notification area under the UI or picking a different texture.
   • They look stupid an awkward on iPad
   • iPad should have a full dashboard for widgets (developers welcome!) and it should cube wipe up to it instead of pulling or sliding anything. The text notifications would itself be one of these widgets.
3. Shared documents area (and APIs)
   • Right now the photo library is the only thing multiple apps can read and write to.
   • Why not general document storage? This would also give websites somewhere to pull from for uploads – There is a fairly common problem where you cannot (for example) upload a résumé when paste/email options aren’t available (Seems like something to fix in this economy).
   • Like the photos app, include an app for browsing and organizing this, but make the APIs as robust as the photos ones so competing apps can improve the concept.
   • Note: This would not be a directory based file system. It would be asset/album based like Aperture (again, the Photos library).
4. Settings Settings Settings!
   • Mirroring over HDMI and AirPlay overscan, pick wrong resolutions etc. Let me override dammit.
     • I’m actually so fed up with this one that I’ve written a picker for this that will start showing up in my apps soon.
   • The Auto Brightness algorithm is always wrong.
   • I don’t use newsstand and never will. I don’t like looking at it. Why isn’t it a downloadable like iBooks is? Oh right, back room deals.
5. API changes
   • If I elect to not use ARC, I understand I’m responsible for releasing my own views. Stop calling release when I’m supposedly managing memory for myself. I HATE ARC and garbage collection. I’d rather see my competitor’s apps leak and crash than let them get away with lazing development.
   • Giving developers access to display brightness (which I asked for during iOS 2) was a great start. Keep it coming, please.
   • Free / Promo codes for IAP. Yes, there are times we want to temporarily make an IAP free without issuing a new binary.
   • Remove iAds purchase without touching store kit APIs (make this an iAd feature and a choice right in the app store). This is my alternative to trials, which I feel is too easily abused.
   • Rate and review without leaving the app. Perhaps add the 5-star thing between the app and the switcher to make it universal?

I’m sure the rumor is hours away from being shot down but we still have to deal with it. Even with a “onslaught” of Windows 8 tablets Apple will never have to release iPads or iPhones twice a year. Never.

But I’d like to address more specifically reports of Quad Core processors and Final Cut Pro for iPad. Despite my dislike of Final Cut Pro X it is clear it is much more touch friendly. Buttons are bigger and there are alternatives to the drag-and-drop heavy way FCP 7 did things (although still present). Why does this matter? After a while, dragging across a tablet is far more annoying than dragging across a mousepad. Touch surfaces don’t really do drags nicely. They do touches and gestures (swipes). Why is a drag not a swipe? When you swipe something, the UI really only needs to calculate a general direction and am imprecise distance and it figures out which swipe you meant. Dragging operations have a specific start and end. This is OK for imprecise actions such as rearrange app icons into discrete locations, but it’s not as good for placing things onto a timeline or dropping transitions into the tiny region between clips. It is worth pointing out though that Final Cut Pro X doesn’t fit on 1024 x 768…

While Quad Core chips seem obvious and inevitable, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple held off on it for some devices while still making a new processor (like using a dual core i7 despite quads being available) for the iPod touch and maybe even the iPhone 5. If this new quad core chip has better performance per watt, Apple could instead of keeping the power drain the same and getting more performance keep the performance the same and noticeably increase battery life, perhaps to negate LTE power drains. iPads on the other hand, deserve as much CPU as they can reasonably wield.

What may be true about the iPad 4 speculation is that the iPad 3 will be an iPad “2s”. Same case, quad core processor, retina display, Siri, no new hardware features. It’s already been said the the iPad 3 will be compatible with existing smart covers. Considering how gross my green smart cover got in its first 6 months (causing me to buy the grey one the day it came out) I don’t really care about buying new cases.

WebOS Nation unsurprisingly doesn’t think so. Still, I have a sad feeling that this is one of those cases where bad PR trumps all. A LOT of people linked to that NYT article, so now whether they realize it or not, future reviewers will be forced to grade WebOS as “alive or dead” instead of baselessly and objectively.

Android benefits a little from this because its tablets are graded on the Android scale (whose 1-10 is 1-4 on the iPad scale). Sadly, since it won’t properly be weighted, the best grade a hypothetical new TouchPad with WebOS can hope to get is “alive”, maybe even “alive and well”. But that won’t let customers know that on a scale where the iPad 2 is a 9, the iPad 1 a 7, the Fire a 3 and the Xoom a 2, a new TouchPad that’s a 6 will just be labeled “not dead”.

This nonsense is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope it doesn’t actually play out like this.

***

OK, now that that’s out of the way, I have to disagree that hardware, marketing, and Sprint were at fault while WebOS itself was “perfect”.

All iPhones have underclocked processors and even sometimes bench slower than other phones with similar clock speeds. This is not something you can ding the pre for because EVERYONE does it. If every processor ran at the speed it’s engineered to, you’d have two problems. First, yield would be too low. Remember when intel had 3.0, 2.66, and 2.0 GHz dual core xeons for Mac Pros? They only fabricated 3GHz chips, which came at a certain yield. Those that failed testing at 3.0 GHz were again tested at 2.66 GHz and if passed were sold as such, and those failures were tested at 2.0 GHz and sold as such and the rest were destroyed or sold at even low speeds. That means if you bought a 2.0 GHz xeon and thought you were so clever for clocking it up to 3.0 GHz you’d probably find out why it failed. The same is true for the processor in the Pre. Yes you could set the speed back to what it was “supposed” to be but that often made the phone quite hot and battery quite dead (the second problem). I’m not sure if today’s ARM chips do, but the (mobile) G4 could run at half clock and automatically spin up to full clock while you were rendering or something.

Even though webOS devices had a GPU and could run OpenGL content on it, the UI was not run on the GPU. This made scrolling choppy, things not anti-aliased enough, and contributed to the aforementioned heat problem. This is a really hard ding because Mac OS X has been doing this since 10.2 (mid 2002). iOS always rendered everything on the GPU. While it’s true that Android didn’t either (and also scrolled like shit) the Android UI didn’t have as many animations to notice were choppy. Since webkit was GPU accelerated (CSS3 transitions) it’s ignorant of the NYT article to say webkit wasn’t ready.

Despite Palm and Sprint’s terrible marketing, the thing was hyped as an iPhone killer regardless. To say this set the bar impossibly high is just to outright admit iOS can’t be toppled. When Apple entered the smartphone business, they knew they would be measured against the best: at the time that was Blackberry “email phones”. They took a key feature, browsing, which was awful on every mobile device, and made it 10,000% better. “It’s not the mobile web, or the kinda-sorta-looks-like-the web, it’s just The Web”. Palm then took Apple’s webkit, didn’t implement GPU acceleration, lost buttery smooth scrolling and zooming, and focused on multitasking, which everyone was certain the iPhone couldn’t do.

To this day I have to keep explaining to people that iOS always multitasked (how else would an OS work) and today it still doesn’t like they thing it does. Unless granted special privileges, background apps freeze, sleep, and thaw when resumed. Perhaps because they didn’t have this method to steal yet, Palm made literal multitasking. So if you had a browser tab with a heavy AJAX and JSON loop or something, it would just keep looping while you checked your email, tried to play Angry Birds, whatever. Again, killing battery life and making the thing hot.

Saying the hardware was inadequate to do any of that basically declares that webOS 1.0 wasn’t a mobile OS and Palm should’ve shipped it on netbooks or even desktops – which is something I’d like to see today though. I maintain my belief that webOS would be best on full sized touch surfaces for buying train tickets / viewing timetables or interactive mall directories.

Apple is supposedly looking into advanced backlighting for their alleged upcoming TV.

In this case, as usual, Apple is late to the party but probably the first person to do it right. Although I work mostly on Cinema Displays, I do have some high end Dell displays I use for everything else. They advertise 1000000:1 contrast because of a “dynamic contrast” feature that essentially dims or turns off the backlight in areas with black pixels. While obviously a good idea, I noticed it has some delay. Going from the dim space desktop pictures Apple includes to a white Safari window would cause the backlight levels to come up for example. The problem is that this was noticeable. It takes about a third of a second for the animation of a Safari window to open and be white. It then takes about an entire second for the backlight to adjust. Maybe this is OK for browsing but for gaming it’s a disaster.

Based on the report, it looks like Apple is only looking into letterbox situations. While with early LCDs “black” areas in front of a full backlight were often a very bright “black”, today’s IPS panels are getting pretty good at it. As a simple test, I fed black to an LED Cinema Display at full brightness and turned off the light. While it was detectably on, the light was insignificant.

I’m not saying Apple shouldn’t do this. Obviously completely invisible black bars would be ideal. This is why I only watch my movies using a projector. (This also makes for a superior experience dealing with 4:3 content – I hope Apple doesn’t ignore this use case if they do implement this, a lot of SD iTunes content is 4:3.) DLP is a lot better at blocking blacks and I often have no idea what ratio my movies are at because I don’t have the reference of bars against 16:9 to compare. After watching mostly 16:9 content I pulled up a much wider movie. Being that it was a bright winter day (you know that time of day where the sun is directly in your eyes no matter which direction you face) I used my 16:9 Dell display to watch and was horrified at how noticeable the letter boxing was, not because of the panel but because of the bezel.

If I had to describe a “perfect” solution it would probably still be a projector, but one that can shutter the letterbox so it’s literally black. Of course this is all in the context of movies and entertainment in general as projectors less than 10 grand have pretty lousy color and thus aren’t suitable for work. Maybe future laser projectors will be better at that.

I hope Apple realizes that they need to service people with 60″ sets, projectors, and other complicated setups and never discontinues the AppleTV brick. It obviously won’t need FaceTime support but should always run the same version of the software as the “real” Apple TV (kind of like updating your camera less iPad 1 to iOS 5). Either way, I’m probably going to buy an Apple Television for development purposes and maybe my alternative daytime viewing method. Regardless, it will be on my desk and not front and center in the living room. Apple won’t unseat my projector until they make one themselves.

*** Update ***
The rest of the article talks about running the whole movie through a auto-levels filter. First: this is kind of like Sound Check in iTunes, it kinda works, but the real problem is that there are these discrepancies to begin with. While there are shows that are dim for no reason (Glee needs a solid 2x to get to normal) most of the time the movie’s director / colorist chose to make it dark and adjustments are better left done manually so the user is aware that they are degrading picture quality. In my view, this is a very annoying trend in Hollywood and “too dark” is a perfectly justifiable 1-Star review. Darkness never does a good job of setting the mood it’s supposed to because a dark movie screen is often polluted by exit sign lights, and until Apple makes this television, households have similar problems. The best way to make people aware that the scene is “dark” but still have it be bright is to use a cool color temperature and keep the background reasonably dark, but never the subjects.

While I’m hesitant to do an update without a batch of new content, I might have to because I’m getting inundated with really good feature suggestions! The following is just a list of what’s being considered, it is not a promise of features to be implemented.

• Opacity
• Text
• Paint
• Arbitrary Rotate
• Zoom and Pan
• Undo
• History
• IAP Stamps Business Model (keeping the app free)

Looks like I have plenty to work on. 🙂

“Remember how the unofficial iPhone apps back in ’07 forced Apple’s hand in creating an App Store? I’d like AppleTV to get the same treatment”

I agree / share their hope. AirPlay is a good start but requires multiple devices. Control with the IR remote really blows this open.

You can still cling to life as your own company and not regret not letting Amazon buy you, but you need to do things you’re probably too proud to do.

You can’t write your own OS. You’re not good at it. You back stupid horses like Flash. If you think BB10 is going anywhere consider rebranding as “feature phones” and sell at $0 subsidized.

You need to think like Amazon did and take an open OS (WebOS might be eligible and a better idea) and customize the shit out of it. For example, turning the notification center into the BBM client and making the OS play nice with that cursor you still think people need (and keyboard), as long as you’re not too stupid also make the device function entirely without it.

That’s your only hope as a hardware maker – stop making all of the software.

Then there’s plan B: stop all hardware development and sell BBM as a service/app for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, AND Mac OS X and Windows.

My point is you can’t do it all anymore or you’ll just stay in 2006. BBM/Email clients are your strength. Play to them and outsource the rest.

It’s official. Sort Of. We’re still waiting for it to happen and then find out what can be done with it. Apparently HP will make new webOS tablets but not phones. Does that mean others can make webOS phones? Others can make other tablets? Will it be Google Open or open for real?

As a developer, all I want is a curated app store to outsource my billing to. If I have to “pick” a store like with Android and deal with multiple payment liaisons forget it. At most, I want one deposit per month from Apple, HP, and Microsoft. I’m not going to get into one check from each of 5 ad services, plus google checkout, plus amazon, etc etc. I don’t like stacking pennies.

I think Samsung will start making arm tablets with webOS. They might even be triple-bootable (webOS, Android, Win 8 ) with enough rooting, although I doubt you’ll see high capacity drives in them. Samsung seems to like making 16:9/16:10 tablets though and I don’t know how “flexible” he webOS GUI was designed. As a developer, I prefer Apple’s way of handling arbitrary frame sizes and I don’t really want to try to guess all the shapes a truly open webOS will end up at. CSS3 is starting to have better solutions for that though so we’ll see.

Updated: Using Encore was not fun… not that I ever want to burn discs

–

Last night I tried to do something I thought would be quick and simple enough for Final Cut Pro X to handle: Cut a m4v file. Said m4v file was already iPhone ready (480 x 270, small but usable bitrate, 33K audio). I have Final Cut Pro X set to match sequence to clip settings (which was a much needed feature) and try to drop the file into it. It tells me it can’t do it and offers me 640×480 or 720p. There is no “other” or arbitrary frame size in FCP.

I had a choice to make

1. Upscale to 720p then downscale on export
2. Find and Install FCP 7 and pretend this never happened
3. Find and Install Premiere Pro

1. Luckily I always had a habit ripping all of my CDs and my CS5 Master dmg’s were waiting for me on my time capsule.
2. My Final Cut Studio dmg’s were too but putting old software on my new SSD felt wrong.
3. I also didn’t want to accidentally find a Lion incompatibility.
4. Premiere has CUDA support and I have an nvidia GPU
5. FCP 7 has NO GPU support and I only had a dual core machine for this

Due to some time in PC only environments I’m equally versed in earlier versions of Premiere and Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro and if you can ignore Final Cut Pro 7’s out of date performance it’s clearly the better NLE. But Premiere isn’t awful. I like to think of it like Final Cut Pro 3 with better performance and format support. I went with Premiere.

If it worked, that Automatic sequence setting in Final Cut Pro X would be a dream, because the UI for setting sequence settings in Premiere feels 10 years old (it is). Still, being that I’m a Pro and not an iMovie user, I know what these things mean and could just deal with the bad UI and get it done.

That right there is where Apple missed the boat on Final Cut Pro X. It’s OK to make things easier, but when you sacrifice enormous amounts of flexibility to do so it isn’t worth it.

Although dragging things into Premiere from Finder almost crashes the damn thing, I did import the clip just fine using their preferred import method. I dragged it into my timeline and performed the cuts, a few ripple deletes, and exported it back out. Done.

Schmidt predicts Devs will pick Android over iOS in 6 months…
Nope. Not me at least. In reality, Developers will

1. Follow the Money
2. Do what’s easy

And right now Android doesn’t have either going for it. Despite a huge install base, the fragmentation of app stores and fragmentation of devices as well as proven customer unwillingness to pay on that platform is not attractive at all. Here are the future markets as I predict them:

Smartphones:
Android will continue to “dominate” in terms of raw numbers but all selling iPhone models will continue to be the most popular handsets. Android’s marketshare will increase far beyond iOS though. Windows will account for at most 10%. If iOS and Android are ignored, 3rd place Windows will have 70-90%. In other words, outside of the big three, “the rest” will eventually fade away. I may revise this prediction if WebOS isn’t killed off but I’m confident RIM has lost its chance at redemption.

9″+ Tablets (Arm):
Android Tablets are continuing to go nowhere. People like WebOS at closeout prices more than QNX. People love iOS tablets.
Considering how well WebOS did (even though it was a firesale) I’m first going to give a prediction assuming HP manages to do something with it.

If WebOS tablets continue to exist, they will have a huge lead over Android and Windows 8 in CONSUMER tablets.

In the CONSUMER space, iOS Tablets will never go below 60%, and what’s left will be a tossup between WebOS and Windows 8.

7″ E-Readers
This space is entirely dependent on ecosystems, which gives Amazon an advantage. Android doesn’t need to worry about competition here, but even if these numbers are included against 9″ tablets Android still won’t be number 2.

x86 Tablets
Windows all the way but overall a small number, smaller than E-Readers.

15″ + TouchScreen PCs
Here Windows 8 is uncontested and I expect this market will really take off. Metro really works well at 1080p. In Windows 7 touch was an unnecessary gimmick and didn’t work too well but Windows 8 is really addressing those shortfalls. Based on how little I paid for my Dell touchscreen I wouldn’t be surprised if only business customers could purchase non-touchscreen displays in the near future. Metro sucks without it, and Windows 8 will have metro on your x86 machine whether you like it or not.

In the arm tablet section I mentioned the iOS (and maybe WebOS) would outdo Windows 8 in the consumer space. I mentioned that specifically because I think businesses who haven’t already moved to iOS will see the familiar Windows as the way to go. It may not be a crushing loss to iOS but it might be a close one.