|
|
|
10 Jan 2007
iPhone: a MicroContent device?
Naturally the blogosphere is falling over the iPhone as a revolutionary device. Many see it as much more than just a mobile phone or even a smartphone. And even the words PDA, etc. are not used for this device. It is seen as new kind of computer or portable.
Much will however depend on the openness of this device. Can one add new applications? How easy is it download (Micro-)Content? What are the synchronisation possibilities? Etc. But let's have a look at the device from a MicroContent point of view.
On the 'desktop' one sees the applications that are available. The most important ones are always available at the bottom (phone, mail, web, ipod). Interestingly the difference between applications and widgets has gone away. Or maybe everything is now a widget (or applications). The widgets were already very much oriented towards MicroContent, so this gives good hopes for the future. One could see each widget/appications as a tool to access some kind of MicroContent. There is a good hope that it is easy to port current widgets to this device and might only require a change of widget window format. I prefer to see the applications on this device as widgets as the interface and interaction will (and must) be much simpler than standard MacOSX applications. Note that the iTunes application is called here an iPod (widget).
Let's go through the widgets that Apple shows on their web-site:
- iPod - this 'widget' allows the user to view audio and video. The interface is a mix of an iPod and iTunes. On the one side there is the hierarchical view (artist->album->song) and smartlist. And on the other side one sees the cover view from iTunes. One now also sees the cover when listening to music (when the iPod is not in the background). I see no mention of podcasts in the audio section. There is however a section in the video part of iPod. As this 'widget' looks so much like the iPod, I assume that one has to synchronise with an iTunes application wirelessly (or a dock only?)on the network. I guess that implies new version of iTunes as well;
- Phone - there are a few MicroContent pieces in this 'widget'. The first one is the Address Card. Just as the iPod this a one pane per page metaphor with View- and Items-panes. And there are smartlists for Favorites and Recent contacts. I have no idea where the contacts come from, so I assume a synchronisation via with a PC. The other MicroContent Type is the Voicemail, which is innovative. The voicemails seem to be downloaded automatically to the iPhone. It uses a simple List-view with controls to listen to a voice mail;
- Texting/SMS - One can see this as a MicroContent Type with one message per Item. This 'widget' arranges the Items as a conversation with a single user, which is a great idea. Now it looks just like IM. The 'widget' uses a similar interface as the iChat application;
- Photos - the 'widget' to view images. It uses a grid-view for Items-pane. In the View-pane one can zoom in or out and assign an image to a address card (contact);
- Web-pages/bookmarks - the web-browser with bookmarks as MicroContent Type. Looks pretty good. I do not see how the bookmarks can be added and managed;
- Mail - A nice mail application, with integration with the Contacts. It supports attachments (enclosures). This 'widget' supports a two-pane view (Items_View pane);
- Maps - interestingly they created this as a separate widget. This Google Earth here. It supports location Items (called bookmarks). It also integrates with Locations published by Google, which are presented as Lists;
- Stocks - a copy of the widget on MacOSX;
- Weather - a copy of the widget on MacOSX;
- Calendar - no information available on this 'widget';
All in all MicroContent is well present on the iPhone. One sees a good integration between the various 'widgets'. What I miss is a RSS widget. I can imagine good support microformats in iPhone-Safari, so that one can extract and add events, cards, etc to the corresponding 'widgets'. I hope that it is easy to ad widgets. I would like to see a TV-guide widget, RSS-widget, but also something like MarsEdit. However the amount of typing should be limited on devices with small screens. Many questions remain. But now that the device is in the open, I hope that widget developers get the change to prepare more widgets before the launch of the device. (update: is does not seem to be third party extensible)