continued from part 2
iPad software: iPhone OS 3.x features and changes
Apple released iPad with iPhone OS 3.2, an incremental expansion upon the current 3.1.3 release used by the iPhone and iPod touch. AppleInsider profiled the core features of IPhone 3.0 in our review of the iPhone 3GS.
There are four categories of things that have changed between the last year's iPhone OS products and the iPad:
1) There's an entirely new set of Human Interface Guidelines for iPad.
The new HIG sets iPad apart as a larger format platform for apps. These guidelines shape how existing iPhone apps (such as Mail and Calendar and Mobile Safari) scale up as iPad apps, and how Mac OS X desktop apps (such as iTunes and iWork) can become native, streamlined iPad apps.
2) There are some interface tweaks and new features.
Some of these tweaks will likely make it to the iPhone and iPod touch via a forthcoming iPhone OS update. For example, iPad's expanded text selection and copy/paste system now offers spell checking, dictionary definitions, and other app-specific features. And of course, there's the new Bluetooth keyboard support.
3) There are several conspicuously missing apps on iPad.
For example, while it has a built in mic and support for mic-incorporating headphones, there's no bundled Voice Memos app (there are third party options). Similarly, Apple left off support for Voice Command (perhaps because its value is tied primarily to calling your contacts, even though it can also be used to navigate your iPod music playback.)
There's also no Compass app (but there is a digital compass, and it works in Maps). There's no support for Nike+, which wouldn't make much sense anyway, of course. And finally, there are no widget apps brought forward from the iPhone, such as Calculator, Clock, Weather and Stocks.
4) Finally, there are features that still just missing in general.
Some of these will be addressed in iPhone 4.0, which Apple presented on Thursday. Those features include such things as background third party apps, app organization into Folders, enhancements to Mail such as a unified inbox, Exchange improvements, and Game Center features.
The sections below will look into each of these four aspects of change relative to the previously existing iPhone and iPod touch.
iPad software: Human Interface Guidelines & App Design
In plotting the move from the small 3.5" screen of iPhone and iPod touch to the much larger canvas of iPad, there are several things Apple might have done. It could have simply made the iPad a way to run lots of existing iPhone apps on the screen at once, each floating like a window on a 1990's PC desktop. Fortunately, it didn't do that.
Instead, while iPad allows users to run the huge existing library of iPhone apps, Apple developed an entirely new expansion to its iPhone Human Interface Guidelines. This resulted in making a new tier of iPad software that is highly preferable to running the existing iPhone apps designed to run on a small screen. Once you get a taste of iPad apps, you won't really want to use iPhone apps on its big screen.
While many iPhone games are still completely playable and even look pretty good after being pixel doubled to fill the screen, users will definitely want to find iPad-specific software to get the most from their new device. And there's lots to choose from in the App Store.
Apple's HIG for iPad does not attempt to simply make iPhone apps bigger. In fact, the overall design of apps is changed significantly to make iPad apps feel more like desktop apps, rather than scaled up smartphone apps.
One example is toolbars. Mail on iPhone presents simple lists of accounts, mailboxes, and emails. Individual emails are presented on the screen with a toolbar at the bottom. On iPad, there's not only enough space to split the screen to show both your mail list and the email detail, but the HIG also specifies that the tools should be at the top.
Similarly, apps like Safari now present not just their toolbar on top (as shown below), but also use their menu bar to present new features, such as a Bookmark bar similar to the desktop version of Safari. On the other hand, iPad's Safari incorporates an iPhone-style, multiple page tabbed browsing system rather than trying to present desktop-style tabs, which would eat up a lot of screen real estate.
iPad software: Human Interface Guidelines & Documents
Apple's iWork apps illustrate HIG principles for working with documents. On iPad, documents are part of the application, not something you search for in the file system yourself. Rather than saving documents manually, the app saves work as you do it, keeping a record of everything you do so it can be progressively undone later.
You get can documents in and out of iPad apps in a number of ways. One is email; you can QuickView documents from Mail and then open them using another app right from Mail. You can also export iWork documents to Apple's iwork.com service, although this isn't yet working flawlessly.
Thirdly, you can use Apple's "File Sharing," a feature exposed in iTunes (hidden within a syncing iPad's "Apps" tab, shown below) to copy documents to and from specific apps.
iPad software: Human Interface Guidelines & Flexible Orientation
Another aspect of the iPad HIG is its insistence that the device has no default orientation. There is no up nor any left end; it's however the user wants to hold it.
iPad's iPhone OS 3.2 introduces a Home screen that can flip sideways and upside down. Apps are supposed to work however the user desires, although some can pick a fixed orientation, such as how Keynote only works in landscape, or how CBS's app only works in portrait.
If you don't like the headphone jack being on the "top," just twirl it around and its now on the bottom, and your screen adjusts for you. This is so slick its completely invisible. It's also a very new idea, something that I've never seen in a consumer electronics device.
iPad software: new tweaks and features
In addition to the overall structure imposed by iPad's HIG, the new iPhone OS 3.2 incorporates a variety of new little tweaks and features across the system and within apps.
Apart from the aforementioned text selection features, there's new support for custom virtual keyboards suited to a particular purpose (as demonstrated by Apple's Numbers spreadsheet) and custom finger gesture recognition.
Users can change their Home screen background (and as noted earlier, flip the Home screen into a landscape orientation. One annoying thing is that Apple swaps apps around on the page between the two orientations. It does not need to do this, as the six icons in the fixed Dock indicate. This is a pretty flagrant violation of the HIG principle of not shifting the location of expected user interface targets).
A variety of bundled apps get new features: Photos supports iPhoto 09's Places feature, presenting photos by their geotagged location. iPod can create and name new playlists. YouTube now supports 720p video playback. Maps now has support for Google's terrain layer, along with a simplified user interface for finding directions.
iPad software: conspicuously missing apps
Some apps on iPhone that did not make it to the Home screen of iPad are missing for obvious reasons: there's no SMS or Phone; there's no real need for a stand alone Compass (that app was largely a show off thing for iPhone 3.0; most people only use the digital compass within Maps or augmented reality apps); and it makes no sense to go jogging with Nike+ and an iPad strapped to your chest.
But there are an array of other handy little apps that also didn't make the cut. Their omission possibly suggests that Apple excluded them because it has a new strategy under wraps for widget-style apps like Calculator, Clock, Weather and Stocks.
The idea that iPhone 4.0 would introduce a new model for running multiple concurrent apps which included a way to overlay a dashboard of widget features above the primary application (much like the original Macintosh's Desktop Accessories) did not get fleshed out or even implied. In Q&A, Jobs even sidestepped the idea of widgets on iPad.
While users can perform most calculations or check weather or stocks using a Google search from Safari, the across-the-board omission of all widget apps is hard to explain unless you assume that Apple still has a Plan B in progress, and simply decided that including the old iPhone versions would look cheap and upgrading them all to a sharp, full screen interface befitting iPad would take too much time and effort.
If the company is gearing up to deliver an alternative way to present foreground applets that enable users to look up this kind of information, set a timer, or perhaps even chat over IM or play streaming Internet radio, it would certainly explain why there's currently nothing in that empty space right now.
It is apparent that iPhone 4.0 will offer things that Apple didn't detail in its initial unveiling; for example, developers have noticed an iChatAgent that could only be useful to a bundled Instant messenger app. We'll have to wait and see about widgets. And iPad users will have to wait a bit longer, as iPhone 4.0 will ship around June, but its iPad version won't be delivered until "the Fall."
source:appleinsider continued
