For those Apple fans out there - Apple After Steve Jobs

Many of us, iOS developers (full time or indie ones like me) are first and foremost Apple product lovers and Apple followers. If you are like me, when Steve Jobs passed away, you we're in a state of shock. But now, as time goes by, we start to look forward again. And we continue to love Apple's products and Apple in general. A few weeks ago, I started a new blog. A place where I can express myself on Apple After Steve Jobs. Today, I'm happy to report that this place is now open to you all, dear followers.

http://appleafterstevejobs.com

Come. Follow. Participate. 

Enjoy.

Çingleton 2011 Symposium - a brief summary

Last weekend, the Çingleton 2011 Symposium was held in Montréal for the first time. This two day event was very enlightening and refreshing. It was about mobile application development and general trend in that field.

I attended this symposium and here is a brief summary of things that I've heard at the event.

First, the most striking thing is that as iOS developers with ideas and a desire to push limits of mobile applications, we are all part of something really big that is going on since 2007. Nobody knows if we are at the tipping point yet. It is clear that things we do now with our mobile devices is very different from things we will do in five or ten years from now. Nobody really knows.

Second, Apple legacy will be felt for a long time even after Steve Jobs passing away. What Apple does is provide users with great products and great user experience with them. And to achieve this, they are not afraid to take risks and try new things. We should too, as iOS developers do the same thing. Think design, think about the users, think about the experience should all be driving our development efforts.

Third, we should feel grateful just to be in the middle on all these technical advances and be able to make a difference. Even small ones.

Here is a few things that I've have heard on the floor at the event:

• Applications discovery is still a major problem for indie iOS developers. How do we get noticed in a 500 000 applications store?
• Android presence in the market is very real. Developers starts to think about the business value of porting iOS apps to the Android Market. Fragmentation is a real issue. More than 650 devices to test against. 
• The iPad potential in story telling application is way under utilized. A few good apps exists in that area but their cost of development make them rare beasts. 
• The analog world is more and more numerical. The use of natural user interaction models will help make the numeric nature of this world more approachable. 

Finally, here is a few photo sets from this event.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/sets/72157627919287660/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cingleton/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/foobar/6252403530/in/set-72157627786395573

My only words.

Let's Talk iPhone - my predictions

My predictions aligns pretty much to those of www.9to5mac.com:

1. iPhone 4S - A5 chip, 1gig of system ram, 8MP cam. Same physical design of iPhone 4. World phone. Same screen.
2. iPhone 4 - 8gigs config, same components for the rest, new entry level phone.
3. iOS 5 with iCloud launch. This is the real deal this year guys. Not the hardware. 
4. iOS 5 assistant (this is one of the cue from this year fall event title). 
5. iTune 10.5
6. Updated iWork mobile and desktop
7. Facebook integration like Twitter 
8. Facebook iPad app
9. Slightly updated iPod touch.
10. Slightly updated iPod nano.
11. No more shuffle. 
12. No more classic. 
13. No "one more thing". 

See you all in 2012 for:

1. iPhone 5 with 4" screen
2. iPad 3 with retina display

Thank you Steve.

Today is a sad day. Steve Jobs is resigning from Apple as CEO. The rest is history. Thank you Steve. Really.

Comments on iOS 5 Notifications Center implementation

As you know, notifications handling and management is a very popular topic among iOS enthusiasts. I can't remember all proposals that I stumbled upon in the last few weeks before WWDC 2011 keynote. Now that iOS 5 Notification Center is officially announced, I would like to compare Apple's implementation to my own proposal published a while back. 

In "iOS notifications: a better implementation proposal" my improved notifications handling was split in three parts: 

1. Providing visual cue for the newly received notification
2. Invocation method to access the notification stack
3. Management of the notification stack

Visual cue

According to Apple's keynote, when a new notification is received by the device, a visual feedback is provided at the top of the display. A small band is flipped like a cube to show the notification for a while. Then, with the same animation it disappears.

This visual effect and position is better then my proposal as it shows more information in a place where people are used to look for status informations: the status bar. The height of the bar is about the same as the status bar when a call is ongoing. Also, the animation is even less intrusive than my proposed vanishing in-the-middle view.

Invocation method to get to the notification stack
As many notifications can arrive in a very short period of time or simply during the day, a stack of notification is building. Apple proposes the two methods to open the process notifications: swipe from top to bottom starting at the status bar or swipe a notification from left to right while looking the lock screen. The first method will get the user to the notification center. The second method will let the user access the application responsible of the notification. By skipping the use of a stand alone application, Apple simplify the process of accessing the notification stack and provide a system wide invocation method without going back to the home screen.

Management of the notification stack

Apple's implementation of the notification stack management is pretty simple and requires nothing new to learn. Swiping a notification, tapping the X to dismiss a section are all gestures that users already practice a lot. The Notification Center's background is pretty dark. Emphasis is put of the text and the application icons. Apple introduce a special visual cue at the bottom of the view to dismiss the Notification Center.

 All in all, I like Apple improvements to the iOS notifications.

iOS notifications: a better implementation proposal [Update #3] - Post WWDC 2011 Keynote

[Scroll to bottom for the updated info following the WWDC 2011 keynote.]

In a previous blog post (iOS notifications: what are the problems?), I exposed the real issues that lies under the current implementation of iOS notifications. Those who think Apple is interested to buy the maker of Boxcar are misunderstanding the issues. The iOS notification backend is not the root of the problem. Nor is the way push notifications works. The problem is the user experience of handling push notifications. Boxcar is an application that helps you define triggers on Twitter or an RSS feed to get notified under certain conditions. This is not where Apple needs to invest its resources. What needs to be fixed is very simple:

• how do we present notifications to the user in a way that is less obstructive
• how the user can peek and manage the notification stack

Less obstructive notifications
In order to implement less obstructive notifications to the users, one must understand the stages of notifications:

• visual cue for new notifications
• invocation method to get access to the notification stack
• management of the notification stack

Visual cue
The first part of my proposal is to focus on the visual enhancement targeted at the status bar. The status bar could see the addition of a small icon just on the right. This icon would be present when the device just got a notification in the last hour (could be user-defined setting). For lightly used device, the icon shouldn't be there too often. For heavily connected users, it could be always there because of frequent notifications. In that case, the notification icon could disappear once the users visit the notification stack (more on that later). In general, the proposed behaviour is pretty much the same as the one we experience with the location services pointing arrow.

The next visual cue enhancement proposal is the way notification gets displayed while occurring. Instead of standard alert with buttons, the proposal is to use the same kind of visual feedback a user see while adjusting the device volume. An implementation example is shown in the following movie (you can download the original one here).

This proposal is very subtle and produce much less disruption to the user. In fact, beside looking at the notification which shows briefly, the user can continue to do whatever he was doing before the notification. Some interesting details: the display duration would be proportional to the size of the content: the more text, the more time the notification get displayed. The device would vibrate briefly while the notification occurs. Finally, the user could tap the notification to bring the application responsible for this notification. 

Not all notifications would get this treatment. Critical alerts like the following would still behave in the same way as today:

• Low battery warning
• Location services usage permission request
• All other notification requiring immediate user acknowledgement

Invocation method

Now that we get less obstructive notifications, how to we get access to them as they pile up in the notification stack? Many scenarios are possible:

• swipe gesture on the status bar
• introduction of a notification space in the task switcher
• notifications app with a red badge

Swipe gesture on status bar
A swipe gesture could be a vertical gesture: from the status bar to the bottom. Then, a special view would take over the home screen (a little bit like the search view) to display the notification stack. There is a small problem with this scenario: the status bar is already responsive to a single tap in order to scroll the current view to the top of the displayed data. So this could be problematic.

The second possibility involves the addition of a notification area in the task switcher invoked by the user with a double click of the home button. This possibility is not really good because of the lack of space in this area and because this would not be a real task switching space anymore. Also possible is scrolling to the left shows the iPod controls, another scroll to the left if for the volume control. Adding another scroll to the left is not a solution. This proposal is not retained.

Another possibility could be the use of a dedicated notification application with a standard red badge number. In my view, this provide the most consistent and extensible solution. The notification application icon could also be made permanent in the task switching space (first from the left).

Notification.app

Notification management

The use of a dedicated notification application could be the closest thing to the Boxcar proposal. This may be the reason for the rumours in the last few days. So the application becomes the invocation method to see the actual notification stack. Next, it provides a way to centralize notifications and see previous one very easily. The notification history problem is then fixed.

Notifications sorted by time

Notifications sorted by applications

Looking at the previous picture, a table of application icons on the left with the application name as the main tag line. The detailed text portion could be the actual notification message. Very simple implementation as you can see. On each cell, the user can tap to see the detail view. The following is what a user could be presented after tapping the Phone.app notification. This view is divided in two parts: the notification content on the first half, the user action part at the bottom half.

Standard visual organization for notification's detailed view

Notification's detailed view example

At the bottom, the user would have an action that is contextual of the type of notification. In the previous example, the user can call back. For a SMS notification, the user could be offered the choice to reply. Hitting the action button, the user would be switching to the application responsible for the notification.

To get a more complete proposal, we have to define what kind of notifications do we expect to put there:

• calendar notifications
• missed calls
• sms message
• location-based notifications (introduced in iOS 4)
• app store updates available (why not!)
• long lasting task completion from backgrounded apps
• clock notifications
• Game Center notifications
• event-based notifications (checkins)

Final implementation details
Apple should provide the following settings in Notification section of the Settings.app:

• to let the user see immediately a notification (this is the current obstructive way)
• quiet periods: start, end, weekdays, holidays, all day, repeat
• how long to display notification visual cue
• how long to keep notifications in the stack: days, weeks, months
• sort notifications by date or by application
• notification flag in the status bar: always, for notifications in the last N hours, M days

Developers point of view

First, I don't think this proposal requires a lot modifications to the iOS's APIs if at all. Second, I think Apple can implement this proposal as all the notification content is already there in internal data structures. I don't see a lot of stuff to put inside iOS to achieve this goal. Maybe we'll see that in iOS 5 this summer. Who knows.

As you can see, iOS notifications can be improved in many ways. This blog post is about proposals of a few user experience implementation regarding iOS notifications. Now, it is your turn: write your own comment or suggest improvements too in the post's comment section. Lastly, why no share this article to your peer! That would be awesome.

PS: MacStories.net has another interesting point of view on iOS notifications. Good read.

[Update 1] Something very nice is MobileNotifyer: This is iOS notifications done right (video). Very cool.
[Update 2] Another take on this famous problem: http://talkingpengwin.com/re-design-of-the-ios-notification-system. I think my proposal is better though.
[Update 3 - After the WWDC 2011 Keynote] I just finished looking at the Apple video presenting the Notification Center. I'm happy to see that they essentially did what I wanted. In fact, instead of a dedicated application for managing notifications, they managed to put all this into a scrolled-down view. Access is also more direct as you can swipe on the lock screen a notification to directly get to the right app that handle the notification. The user of the rotating block at the top is also in line with the status bar while a call is in progress while switching to another app. This make the visual user experience more coherent. Stay tuned for a more complete analysis.

How I follow WWDC 2011 Keynote from home

Many of you guys are lucky enough to attend WWDC 2011 according to one of my recent poll. But for an indie iOS dev like me, I can only afford to take a one day brake from my day job to be able to follow the keynote. As of this writing, it appears there won't be live feed of the Keynote. So, in order to be able to get a near real time feed of news, I'm going to select four sources of news to stay informed. First, Twitter. I will be using my lists to filter out relevant tweets than those that aren't: @jfmartin67/applenews  and @jfmartin67/iphonedev.

Next are web sites with representatives attending the keynote.

http://live.appleinsider.com/
This year, AppleInsider is using CoverItLive. In the past, they always had a useful coverage of Apple events.

http://www.macrumorslive.com/
MacRumors is using a automatically refreshed page with new comments at the top. Again, simple web page, light with pictures. Kind of prefer it to CoverItLive format.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/engadget-broadcasting-live-from-wwdc/
Engadget is using a chat room coupled with a web page. I like to have a more critical point of view at Apple event other than MacRumors or AppleInsider.

Stay tuned for more.

WWDC 2011 software only event - what it means

It is now official, WWDC 2011 will take place June 6th thru June 10th. Entirely focused on software: iOS and Mac OS X. Here is why this could prove to be a smart move.

A lot of people thought that Apple would be unveiling new iPhone hardware this year. After all, this has been the case for the last three years. But Apple has nothing to do with traditions. Apple is about disrupting trends. Right now, Apple offerings are much more mature. No matter how you slice it, the iPhone 4 is still and will stay competitive for a while without major hardware update. I can only see minor things to upgrade on current iPhone 4 but this would make the new device look like what iPhone 3GS looked compared to iPhone 3G.

What makes the hardware stand is the software running on top of it: iOS. iOS is a mature OS: since 2007 we've seen major updates to iOS: 2.0, 3.0 and now 4.0. In between these releases, we saw incremental changes mostly to add end user features or support new hardware (iPad, AirPlay, iPod refreshes, etc.). I expect iOS5 to continue the trend of major additions to the APIs as well as end user features. But what is still missing beside a better notifications handling? What does Apple want to show us, developers, that make both iOS and Mac OS X converge? After all, Apple like clear messages. They don't like sending too many pulses at the same time on the market. This is confusing. If they want to send a clear message about something, they may decide to skip a few things for later announcement. Here is the answer: This year, Apple want to offer serious cloud-based services and personal assistant APIs in their platforms. 

There is one thing that we didn't see from Mac OS X Lion so far: integrated cloud-based services APIs. Expect the same for iOS 5. When a company has a giant customer base like Apple does, it can try to build infrastructures and services that leverage upon that. Apple first step was Ping but I don't think they will stop there. They could build on top of this by providing new APIs to interact with Ping. What about opening sync services to sync objects with the next revision of MobileMe cloud services? Steve Jobs said that MobileMe would be a lot better in 2011. Offering cloud-based music storage is one thing but could this be in part through the proposal of new APIs in iOS tied with yet unknown new services on MobileMe? I think so. Finally there is Siri, a company Apple bought a while ago. They will eventually reuse this personal assistant technology into the core of its mobile operating system. That is a no brainer.

As you can see, iOS 5 could bring very cloud centric new APIs that ties together a revamped MobileMe with iOS and Mac OS X. I can wait for iPhone 5. Another great take on the subject: WWDC 2011 may be all software, signaling change in iPhone strategy.

Finally, what is your take on iOS5? There is a poll for that.

Expectations were met, now waiting for iOS 5

The iPad event is behind us. According to my latest poll, expectations were in vast majority around the iPad 2 hardware. Most of you didn't expect iOS 5 preview where a new notification system could have been unveiled. Did Apple delivered? It looks like yes. 

Now that iPad 2 is a reality, all of us now look forward to iOS 5. In that regard, here is a quick poll.