October 22nd, 2008

What the iPhone says about user experience

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:54 am

Categories: Experience, iPhone

Tags: Software, Apple iPhone, Tools & Techniques, Web 2.0, Management, Internet, Ryan Stewart

It turns out the iPhone is pretty damn popular. Those of us following the digeratiy scene could probably have told the analysts that but even these numbers are impressive. 6.892 million iPhones sold in the quarter for a total of 12.992 million and more importantly, it gave Apple a revenue boost to the tune of $806 million. Not chump change by any stretch. And what made iPhone arguably the greatest gadget of a generation? The user experience.

Sure the multi-touch stuff is great, and it adds, but the iPhone is a nearly flawless device from the silicon to the software. It’s exactly what most people want in a phone and it helped show that the vision of “one device that does almost everything” was actually possible. Some of that is good hardware engineering, but largely it’s due to software and how that software links all the pieces. Look at how easy it is to sync the iPhone with your music, photos, or applications. And how easy it is to purchase those things. That’s good software design.

When you nail the user experience, you go mainstream and you make a lot of money. Web 2.0 has given us a ton of great building blocks. Social networking, the web as a delivery mechanism, real time collaboration, the cloud - all of those things really started becoming realities during the Web 2.0 boom. So from a technology standpoint, we’ve established a good baseline. But in order to really make a difference you’ve got to put a better experience on it. That’s essentially the promise of rich Internet applications. And as more and more companies pour money and resources into design, you’re going to start seeing real, tangible dividends in terms of user adoption and revenue.

Web 2.0 came along and turned software on its head. The software business is having to rethink how it does things. And as part of that transformation, design and experience are taking center stage. With the plethora of design-centric software development platforms out there, it’s never been more fun and interesting to build software. It’s one reason why I’m excited about RIAs and also why it’s great to see the iPhone do so well. If you put the design time in, you are going to be more successful. Keep that in mind as you’re looking to build the new generation of software.

July 10th, 2008

iPhone 2.0 and all kinds of little mobile RIAs

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:39 pm

Categories: Apple, Mobile-Web, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Mobile, Rich Internet Application, Mobile World, App Store, Web 2.0 Player, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

I generally break RIAs into three categories: browser-based, desktop, and mobile. After playing with the iPhone 2.0 firmware, checking out some of the applications, and going through the experience in the iTunes store (one of the best RIA examples out there), I’m pretty convinced that the iPhone is the best mobile RIA platform out there.

The mobile world is incredibly fragmented. That makes distribution, development, and everything in between much more complex than it should be. The iPhone is far, far from open, but with that lock comes an ease of use for both the user and the developer. Developers know exactly what the platform they’re building for can do and users know that the applications they download are going to work. The App Store is by far one of the best delivery mechanisms for mobile RIAs and even though I haven’t actually paid for any applications yet, the built in monetary possibilities are good news for developers. And because Apple already has the processes in place to do monetary transactions, this was basically no cost to them.

The applications also show a lot of diversity. The typical Web 2.0 players are there (I grabbed a Facebook app, the Yelp app, NetNewsWire (which I love). And there a number of game and other productivity tools. From a developer standpoint it seems like it’s fairly easy to create a consistent look and feel between both web properties and native Cocoa applications. That’s a powerful draw as brand continuity becomes more important.

I was a little skeptical that all this would work and as a user and Adobe evangelist I’m still annoyed that there is no Flash on the iPhone, but Apple has a great RIA platform on their hands. Everyone out there with mobile platform ambitions should take a note. Now I just can’t wait for iPhone 2.0

June 30th, 2008

Is designing for the small screen more fun?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:29 am

Categories: Design, Device Central, Mobile-Web, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Desktop, Application, Mobile, Mobile World, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

I have completely fallen in love with my iPhone. As far as I can tell it comes as close to the perfectly designed device as possible and it seems like I’m discovering cool usability aspects all the time. Things like when you get a text message with a phone number or email address you get a little blue arrow that lets you email/call or add that to a contact. Doing that on my Blackjack is a pain. And it got me thinking. Is designing for the small screen more fun than designing full fledged applications on the desktop?

Part of me wonders if that was one of appealing things of first moving to the web browser. Creating desktop applications was always kind of tough but customizing them was VERY tough. You were basically stuck with the same component set that everyone else was. But in the browser you could do whatever you wanted. You could get creative with new kinds of UIs and you could basically make components and applications look however you wanted them to look. The browser had a lot more freedom than desktop applications.

On devices it seems like we have even more power to get creative and less room to work with. Instead of thinking about how an application is going to look on a gigantic monitor we only have a small screen. Which means we have to focus on the user interface. We have to design applications that fit a bunch of information into a tiny screen. It’s kind of a fun design problem. The iPhone software nailed it and I think the plethora of iPhone applications out there do a pretty good job as well. My favorites are the Facebook application and the Brightkite application.

As mobile platforms become more mature, I think the payoff (gigantic numbers) and intrigue is going to make them a first class design environment. More designers are going to want to work in the small space because of the freedom and creativity it provides. That means we’re going to need good, solid design tools for the mobile world. Adobe has been doing some of this with Device Central but I think there’s still a long way to go and that it’s anyone’s game. Designers tend to be very sticky and it’s hard to get them to switch from what they know, but a really good design tool targeted at the mobile world could possibly do that. I think in some ways the mobile world is the Wild West of design and there’s no sheriff in town yet. In fact, I’d say we’ve barley got a town. That means there’s lots of opportunity for money in these parts.

March 25th, 2008

Does the iPhone count as a "desktop"?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:41 pm

Categories: Apple, Rich Internet Applications, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Desktops, Hardware, Ryan Stewart

This week I wrote a letter to the desktop welcoming it back. Then I got an email from one of my long time commentors asking if the iPhone counted as a “desktop”. Sure it’s not a desktop in the traditional sense, but in the application sense, it might be. This article about Microsoft looking at ways to create iPhone applications seems to help support that thought.

The iPhone is unlike any other mobile device partly because the general experience, both user and developer, is so similar to a desktop. We’ve already seen a lot of Ajax-RIAs created specifically for the iPhone. It has rich media capabilities, and while I haven’t spent much time with the SDK, I assume application developers can take advantage of some of those.

So the iPhone has some native, desktop-like traits. Should it be included in the desktop conversation? What do you think? Are iPhone applications going to be counted as RIAs?

March 6th, 2008

RIA News Day - iPhone SDK, JavaFX on Blu-Ray

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:15 pm

Categories: Apple, JavaFX, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, SDK, Rich Internet Application, Blu-ray, Ryan Stewart

While the RIA digerati are here at MIX there’s a lot of other stuff going on in the world of rich Internet applications. The iPhone SDK was releasedY and it looks like Apple is making one heck of a platform play. The apps that they showed off look really cool and they’ve managed to transcend the device from phone to something that’s very compelling for developers. Could this be Apple’s RIA platform? Quicktime, HTML, JavaScript and Cocoa/Cocoa Touch?

Also in the news today was some information about JavaFX and the Blu-ray specification. It turns out that the Profile 2.0 spec for Blu-ray adds a networking ability so you could start building things on the players creating an interesting living room development model. What makes it interesting for Sun is that JavaFX is part of the Blu-ray spec so if you get networking support and JavaFX support some creative Java types could go to town.

Interesting day all in all for RIAs.

March 4th, 2008

Adobe, Apple and Microsoft all talking about rich Internet applications on mobile devices

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 6:22 pm

Categories: Adobe, Apple, Flash, Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Adobe Systems Inc., Web, Nokia Corp., Mobile, Rich Internet Application, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mobile Device, Advertising & Promotion

I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about Flash on the iPhone and first and foremost it’s because I love my iPhone and I don’t think that the web experience is complete without Flash. Today Steve Jobs was quoted in the Apple shareholder meeting as saying:

The full-blown PC Flash version “performs too slow to be useful” on the iPhone, and a mobile version called Flash Lite “is not capable of being used with the Web,”

I obviously can’t speak to performance issues on the iPhone for the desktop version of the Flash Player version but Flash Lite has a long history of enhancing the web with Flash content on mobile devices. In fact, some of the slickest devices on the market like the Nokia N95 and Sony Mylo are shipping with Flash Lite. We’ve got a lot of partners, 450 Million flash enabled devices out there and we’re looking at 1 Billion devices with Flash by the 2010. Consumers and device manufacturers want to capture the rich Internet application wave on mobile devices and when you look at the numbers, 450 million people can’t be wrong. That’s strong demand for a better web experience no matter how you slice it. I’d even go as far as to say that the web experience isn’t complete on the iPhone until some kind of Flash support is added. This commercial is a great example of that.

The last couple of days have been interesting for Adobe and rich Internet applications in the mobile space. First we hear Microsoft is working with Nokia to put Silverlight on one of their phones Nokia is also partner for Adobe in mobile and has Flash Lite pre-installed on more than 70 handsets including all S60 devices. Now this from Apple. Over the next few months be on the look out for more interesting developments in this space……not least from Adobe.

December 20th, 2007

Looking back at the years most popular posts

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:41 am

Categories: AIR, Adobe, Apollo, Finetune, Flash, Flex, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Rich Internet Application, Post, Adobe Flex, E-mail, Online Communications, Ryan Stewart

Every year ZDNet sends out a list of our most popular posts. This is based purely on pageviews so it could have been a particularly witty (or deceptive) title or just something from a big news day. It’s always fun to look back and since pageviews are a good metric, hopefully I can copy these more next year. So here are my top five posts with the beauty of 20/20 hindsight.

The top 5 new features in Flash CS3 - Ahh Digg. This article was Dugg 738 times and most people just wanted some news about Flash with the CS3 release because Photoshop got all the love. Maybe when CS4 comes around I’ll be able to do a top features of the RIA-centric products.

Adobe Flex goes open source - Interestingly enough this also got Dugg and had way more Diggs at 1320 but fewer page views. This was my favorite announcement of the year because I think it helped Flex get a lot of momentum. I’m going to be touching on this tomorrow but one of my predictions was that Flex would be the primary RIA technology this year. In my year-end review I went with “no” but I got a lot of email feedback about that and I’ve got a followup.

Wall Street Journal: Flash is coming to the iPhone - iPhone and Flash were bound to be pretty popular topics and I think a lot of the pageviews for this are from search terms. I posted this back in January and we still have no Flash on the iPhone which is a big bummer.

Samsung’s Flash based iPhone killer - I don’t have one of these but maybe I should have picked one up while I was in Japan. It has all the multi-touch goodness of the iPhone but the UI is all done in Flash.

Finetune - The next generation of online music with Apollo and Flash - Finetune is still my favorite AIR application and it was my 5th most popular post. Since that post they’ve been really busy with a Wii version and improving both the browser version and the AIR application. I still think it’s a great example of what the Flash Platform is capable of; being able to reuse code and create experiences on a number of touch points.

So those are the 5 most popular posts this year. Digg was responsible for two of them and any time I mentioned the iPhone I got more hits. One thing that surprised me was that it was all Adobe-centric news (even before I joined Adobe). The 10th most popular post was The scoop on Silverlight for developers which I wrote back in April. It will be interesting to see how the mix changes next year. The past couple of months my page views have been either down or steady so either I’m getting boring or there are just a lot of places to find RIA information now (probably a bit of both). It’s a good sign and I’m looking forward to trying to stay ahead of the curve.

July 11th, 2007

Building Rich Internet Applications for the iPhone

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:14 pm

Categories: Ajax, OpenLaszlo, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Internet, Internet Application, Ryan Stewart

So we don’t have Flash or Java but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of cool ways to build Rich Internet Applications for the iPhone. The fact that we have a full implementation of Safari means that there is a lot of browser power on the iPhone. As I’ve gotten deeper into AIR and done things like training session with the team from Ext, I’ve gotten a lot more respect for what Ajax is capable of and how fast Safari is. The success of iPhoneDevCamp showed that there is a ton of interest and a lot of smart people already working on apps. So what can you do to build RIAs on your iPhone?

Right now a lot of people seem to be using Joe Hewitt’siUI JavaScript framework that is pretty cool. From what I heard it was used to build a lot of the apps at iPhoneDevCamp and it was behind the recently released Digg iPhone version.

OpenLaszlo, which has been around the RIA world for a long time, added support for DHTML/JavaScript in OpenLaszlo 4. That meant that the iPhone was a logical jump and they demoed an OpenLaszlo application that ran on the iPhone. So with OpenLaszlo you can build Flash applications, DHTML applications and now iPhone applications all from the same basic code base. That’s pretty compelling.

Thanks to Jason for the image

July 5th, 2007

Mossberg says Flash coming to the iPhone

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:48 am

Categories: Adobe, Flash, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Video, Plug-in, Mossberg, Ryan Stewart

An interesting tidbit today in Walt Mossberg’s new column, Questions about Apple’s iPhone. In the article he runs down a series of questions about the iPhone including:

Question: If the iPhone’s Web browser is so good, why can’t it play video on Web sites I visit?

At launch, the iPhone version of the Safari browser is missing some plug-ins needed for playing common types of Web videos. The most important of these is the plug-in for Adobe’s Flash technology. Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months. However, a separate program included on the iPhone can play a limited selection of videos from YouTube, and the phone can play videos you purchase from Apple’s iTunes store, and certain videos you create yourself.

If Walt is correct, that’s great news. I haven’t heard anything from the Adobe side about it, so I can’t comment on its accuracy, but if I do hear something definitive, I’ll let you know. JD has the same take that I do. If you want to see what the current Flash-less iPhone experience looks like, Bill Perry has a very detailed writeup, with screenshots.

February 8th, 2007

Samsung's Flash based iPhone killer

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 4:44 am

Categories: Flash, Mobile-Web, Rich Internet Applications, iPhone

Tags:

I just caught this on Tux:Tops, but it looks like Samsung is coming out with an iPhone killer that runs Flash as the user interface. Akihabara News in Korea has the main info as well as some beautiful screenshots.

The phone is the Samsung Ultra Smart F700 and it looks like it has a full touch screen along with a QWERTY keypad. The UI is all Flash and supposedly it has Full HTML Browsing. Not sure if it's running a flavor of Flash Lite, though I would assume it is. It looks like Engadget has some info but no mention of Flash. It makes me kind of pissed that I just spent money on a new phone.