good point. Even on a cell phone, clustering can make selecting icons more comfortable and quick. Even though both are very small devices, my thumb is not of limitless length!
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iPad Bezel too wide?
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good point. Even on a cell phone, clustering can make selecting icons more comfortable and quick. Even though both are very small devices, my thumb is not of limitless length!
Given that, as someone who designs UIs for information dense systems for a living, I haven't seen any reasonable alternatives that hold up to lots of use I'm sceptical on this point. Just because something hasn't changed, doesn't mean no research was done. Before now, I've done intensive research onto alternative interfaces to solve problems I've noticed in existing ones I've been working on and yet in the end decided the existing system was, overall, better than changing everything (not to mention the concern of familiarity). Lack of change implies nothing about work behind the scenes.
With regards to 'cluster' UIs. This sounds like a form of pie menu. Now, pie menus got a lot of attention a while back but ultimately their benefits are usually considered less significant than their drawbacks in terms of familiarity, information density (mystery-meat navigation), range of movement available, etc. Given they are well-known, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had in fact experimented with them. We cannot know either way of course, unless an Apple designer comes out and tells us.
Whenever I'm faced with a design decision that puzzles me, I've found it greatly improves my art to assume it is rational and try and figure out why it was made. Designers tend to be perfectionists and obsessive about coming up with solutions to problems.
I'll be first to admit that while I followed the liveblogging of the keynote, my first impression was "really? Is that what we've been waiting for??".
I thought it looked ridiculous with it's large bezel, 4x3 aspect ratio and same iPhone springboard with spaced out icons. I was unimpressed. Call it marketing, brainwashing or reality distortion field, but by the time they announced that it would be $499, I was sold.
Since then, I have thought about the large bezel for your hands to hold and not to interfere with the device, the 4x3 aspect that makes sense for just about every task except movie watching and the simple home screen removes the cluttered desktops of the past two decades of computing... and it makes sense.
Whether anyone likes or not.. Apple has disregarded what we think we want and made a user experience that it feels the average person needs.
I thought it looked ridiculous with it's large bezel, 4x3 aspect ratio and same iPhone springboard with spaced out icons. I was unimpressed. Call it marketing, brainwashing or reality distortion field, but by the time they announced that it would be $499, I was sold.
Since then, I have thought about the large bezel for your hands to hold and not to interfere with the device, the 4x3 aspect that makes sense for just about every task except movie watching and the simple home screen removes the cluttered desktops of the past two decades of computing... and it makes sense.
Whether anyone likes or not.. Apple has disregarded what we think we want and made a user experience that it feels the average person needs.
How does one design something truly remarkable, within the confines of the current paradigm? seems to me, at some point there needs to be a fundamental shift in how we interact with personal electronics. all else is just a variation on a theme...
I suppose I SHOULD reserve judgment of the width of the bezel until I hold one in my hand, but my gut feeling from looking at images of the iPad is that the bezel is wider than it needs to be. and I still think it will be awkward to type on it. too small for 2 handed touch typing and too large to use the thumb method. but who knows? I might be pleasantly surprised to find it's not as bad as I anticipate.
To make something remarkable you simply have to make people pass remark. Paradigm shifts (an over-used term I feel) are rarely total. That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. All that is needed to be revolutionary in technology is change how society views it. That is difficult with a needlessly high barrier to entry, so in a sense total novelty may stop a technology from being revolutionary.
well...we could say that avoiding flash and multitasking was "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" when all we hear from apple is how it will slow down their products. To get a fresh start (UI-wise), isn't it a given that we need to start with a clean slate? (pun intended)