Thoughts on Mobile Devices

By  on  
Mobile Device iPad

Whether I'm smug enough to admit it or not, I'm living the iLife.  Over the past two years, I've been rocking both the iPhone and MacBook Pro.  I was recently gifted an iPad and a Samsung Galaxy Tab, only increasing my ever-growing smugness level.  After playing with these new toys for a month, I thought I'd share my thoughts on these mobile devices;  the good, the bad, and the ugly.

  • Mobile devices like the iPad and Tab seem like the first device that had seemingly everything in front of it:  knowledge of what users want on mobile devices, a platform to support those applications, and high demand for them.
  • The iPad seems very, very much refined.  The Galaxy Tab, and other Android-powered devices seem very rough around the edges.
  • At this point, I very much approve of the regulation of iPad and Droid apps via their respective stores;  they're extremely convenient to those non-developer types...
  • ...although I wouldn't mind an easier way for us developer-types to have easier access to non-supported applications.
  • I've not suffered once from not having Flash support on my iPad or iPhone.
  • I don't know a ton about application development, but it would be nice if Apple would allow the frameworks they've been banning.
  • Having an iPhone makes going shopping with my wife 100 times more bearable...as long as my phone is charged before we go...
  • I cannot believe that Facebook does not have an iPad app.  Sure, Facebook's website is iPad compatible, but an iPad application is desperately needed.
  • I do quite like the Tab's pull-down notification pane -- it's a great way to get mass updates at a glance.
  • It was extremely easy to figure out how to delete iPad and iPhone apps...yet I've not figured out how to delete apps on the Tab yet.
  • Switching between the screen and the home / back / search tabs on the tab hardware seems slightly awkward.
  • I desperately want to learn how to quickly make an iPad app.
  • I am hopelessly addicted to Words With Friends.
  • ATT is robbing people with their mobile usage plans.
  • NetFlix is too awesome on iPad -- quality is top notch.
  • CNN, CNBC, New York Times, Twitter, and the Weather Channel have created outstanding iPad apps.
  • With a bit of work, I think Android has a chance at matching Apple's product.   Well, by "bit", I mean "a ton."

Those are my initial thoughts.  Let me know if you have anything to add or if I'm dead wrong!

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

Discussion

  1. Apple has been unbanning most frameworks for the past couple months.

    Flash has even been permitted again as of early September.

    • WTF, where have I been?

      In any event, I still don’t miss Flash! :D

    • I agree there. I don’t miss flash but it’s nice to have the option to use flash to build apps if you want.

      I also have to throw in a vote for appcelerator, it works well and let’s you build some handy cross-platform apps fairly quickly.

  2. Ian

    David, have you touched a Windows Phone 7 yet? I got one for Christmas, and I love it. Much more refined than Android. I know there is that anti-Microsoft stigma, but they’re worth checking out. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on them, if you do get a chance to play with one.

    • I’ve not touched a Windows 7 phone yet. I have no initial hate for Microsoft so I’d be interested to see what they’ve got.

    • emehrkay

      I have and it is a damn decent interface/experience. The device that my office has is solid with a huge screen. My only beef, as a web developer, is that WP7 is the only mobile platform lacking support for html5.

  3. If you want to turn a web app into an iOS app, you can use PhoneGap, or QuickConnect (my choice) to wrap that HTML/CSS up easily.

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickconnect/

    There are a few additional tricks to hide status bars, control scrolling and so on, but a whole heap of your web skills can be used as is. I have an iPad app, a kids’ book called “What Was That Noise?” that uses HTML+CSS behind the scenes, yet plays sounds like a real app. About to be re-tweaked for iOS 4.2, as they changed WebKit’s rendering style and made my page-to-page code slow. Still works, though:

    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/what-was-that-noise/id400069795?mt=8

  4. Vic

    Hi David, you should really have a look at Appcelerators Titanium mobile sdk. It provides a javascript api for native app coding, which is exactly what we web (MooTools) developers would want to use when creating mobile apps. I’ve been playing with Titanium for about half a year now, and it has greatly improved as a platform in that short period and the possibilities are quite sufficient for standard apps. (read no 3d games etc) I think you and the rest of the MooTools developers will really like Titanium mobile, you should definitely check it out, it will only cost you the yearly apple developers account fee (about 100 dollars) to actually create your own apps and run them on your iphone or ipad. (I have tried both, and it is quite nice to play with) Check out their latest KitchenSink code on github (which you can install on your iphone) or simulator for an overview of all the possibilities and please don’t get discouraged by all the negative remarks about their documentation etc, it is in fact quite good and usable for skilled developers like you. Sometimes you might encounter a bug, but that won’t stop you playing with these nice toys. Have fun and a good 2011 ! (greetings from fellow MooTools enthousiast)

  5. CBloss

    It’s good to hear your thoughts on these devices. I have a friend who is very against Apple in general and has an Andriod. It annoys me to no end that he thinks he has the ultimate phone and he harps on my iPhone. I love my iPhone so I just ignore him.

  6. Having also spent some time with an iPad and a Tab lately, I’ve come to a lot of similar conclusions. In particular, AT&T actively neuters the ability to install ‘untrusted’ applications on the tab, which is total crap. I believe I may have to invest some time in rooting it at some point.

    On the whole, my overall impressions:
    * The iPad is a lot of fun. The games are good, reading long articles or websites and such is nice. Great for consumption. However, it’s just too heavy to really take around with me a lot.
    * The Tab is a fantastic companion to all of my Google services. I love reading my email through it, and its calendar setup is really nice. I also vastly prefer the notifications bar to the popups that iOS throws. Feels more like a working mobile device than the iPad, whereas the iPad feels more recreational.

  7. No

    Based on this post, I do not like you. I have decided to not follow your blog.

    ps; you probably have small testicles.

    • Oh dear. It’s an apple hater.

      The thing that gets me apple hatred is that half of them have never used an apple product, they just tried it for a couple minutes and their keyboard shortcuts didn’t work. A very small majority have owned an apple product, and have had a bad experience, but most of them are saying that apple makes bad products purely based on price.

      I own two apple products, and iPhone and an iMac. When I connect to IRC using “Callum-iPhone”, there will always be one person ready to troll me, which can get pretty tedious after a bit. The worst thing about owning an iPhone is the trolls who won’t shut up. As a developer and as a user, I love both the iPhone and the iMac.

      ~Callum

  8. @Ian,
    You are right that WP7 is definitely to be tried .
    You dont get to know the product just be seeing but rather using it ..
    personally i havnt tried iPhone yet .. but looking to try WP7 and Android in the near future :))

  9. Usually I fully acknowledge your “thoughts on …” posts. This is the first time I comment one, because: I don’t see the need for an FB-iPad-App. FB is lightweight (as long as your client performs JavaScript), fast and surprisingly easy to use with a touch device. In most cases native apps are needed, if the “overhead” for (displaying) meta data messes your downstream … but FB is just … crisp :)

    (personal impression: if I use FB in safari it is much faster than the iPhone app)

    • I’m with you there, to an extent.

      Feature-wise, I like what the FB app brings to the iPhone, in the sense of being able to check in and upload a picture straight from the device and whatnot, but at the same time, it’s buggy in a way that the touch.facebook.com site isn’t. I can actually go back more than 20-30 status updates in my stream on the website without it glitching and resetting.

      What I’d really like: The FB Android app on iPhone/iPad. It’s a much more stable experience, and it just feels better. It’s really the best mobile FB app, IMO.

  10. chris

    Well said, I agree completely. I also want an easier entry point to developing ipad/iphone apps. there seems to be a super geek wall(objective C) I wont ever get over. Maybe a super geek could help somewhere?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!