Please steal these WebOS features→

So why was it so easy for me to use the TouchPad for work, but not the iPad? I think it’s because there are a number of things the TouchPad does that make it more suitable for work.

Now that it is becoming increasingly obvious that HP won’t do anything useful with webOS, it’s time to start stealing the things it does well. Here are some of these things.

Lukas Mathis points out all the great things that WebOS does (and there are many) and then openly hopes that other mobile OS’s will steal those features. I really hope Apple is paying attention. That said, I’m still pretty doubtful that (m)any of these will actually be incorporated into iOS 6. [ignore the code via Techmeme]

On Google, Apple, and "privacy"→

I’m not really too interested in last night’s WSJ “scoop” on Google and its mobile Safari practices, but if you want to read up on it, this piece by John Battell is probably the most balanced I’ve read so far:

In short, Apple’s mobile version of Safari broke with common web practice, and as a result, it broke Google’s normal approach to engaging with consumers. Was Google’s “normal approach” wrong? Well, I suppose that’s a debate worth having – it’s currently standard practice and the backbone of the entire web advertising ecosystem – but the Journal doesn’t bother to go into those details. One can debate whether setting cookies should happen by default – but the fact is, that’s how it’s done on the open web.

This is still a pretty young story, so I’m sure more details will surface in time. [John Battelle via Techmeme

The problem with the iOS Home Screen→

The iOS Home screen is conceptually broken. Not “broken” as in unusable, unstable or technically flawed. From an engineering standpoint, the iOS Home screen works. The concept of the Home screen we interact with today is broken because the Home screen wants to be a real, physical, tangible surface while providing access to the gates of the intangible: apps. Apps are data, information, connectivity, presentation, media. Digital content isn’t tangible in the sense that it exists in a physical space, unless you count the atoms and the electrons and the bits that make using an app possible. But that’s a long stretch. The iOS Home screen is based on the concept that app icons are objects on top of it; this has created a series of issues over the years.

I completely agree that the iOS Home Screen is “broken.” It’s less of a problem on the iPhone with its 3.5” display, but the issue is pretty clear on the iPad’s 9.7” display. I’m sorry, but it’s 2012, and I refuse to believe that 20 static icons is the optimal way to present a home screen.

I’m not quite sure what the solution is — I’m personally a fan of widgets despite their tendency to drain battery — but there has to be a better way. I’m secretly hoping that Apple will address this in iOS 6 with a revamped UI of some sort, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. [Macstories via Shawn Blanc]

Clear for iPhone→

Clear looks to be a pretty slick app for managing your various lists. I’ll definitely be trying this out once it’s released. [Vimeo]

Misconceptions about iOS Multitasking→

Fraser Speirs wrote an excellent piece on how multitasking actually works in iOS. Everyone who owns an iOS device should read it:

Let me be as clear as I can be: the iOS multitasking bar does not contain “a list of all running apps”. It contains “a list of recently used apps”. The user never has to manage background tasks on iOS.

For the record, I have a habit of manually killing all the apps in my multitasking bar, but that’s more because I’m OCD — I already know that it doesn’t actually do anything. [Fraser Speirs]

Path only works if you reject those friend requests→

An interesting point by Josh Constine from TechCrunch on how sharing with less people might actually improve the experience of using Path:

Path lets you share things that only people who really care about you want to know, like when you wake up and go to sleep, or when you travel more than a few miles. If you are friends on Path with anyone you might feel embarrassed by sharing that content with, or that you think wouldn’t find that stuff interesting, you’re much less likely to share. The maximum sharing volume likely comes with a friend count of between 3 and 5. As you hit 15, 40, or 100, you’ll censor yourself more, and find less reason to use Path in addition to other services.

I really like Path. It’s clearly similar to the Facebook timeline, only it brings in the functionality of a lot of other services as well. You can post pictures with photo filters (though not nearly as nice as those found in Instagram) or check-in to places (and it even syncs with Foursquare, so you can use Path as your one-stop check-in service) or post “thoughts” (which are similar to Twitter). Oh, and it also has a really beautiful interface to boot. The only thing it doesn’t do (so far, at least) is teach you how to write blog posts without overusing parentheticals (like this). [TechCrunch]

Stamped for iOS hasn’t earned my stamp of approval… yet.

I’ve been using Stamped since it launched yesterday, and while it’s dead simple and beautiful, I wonder whether it’s a service that I’ll continue to use in the long-term. I like that the rating system doesn’t mess around with stars or anything like that; you either like something or you don’t, it’s that simple. I also like how you can rate just about anything — restaurants, movies, TV shows, books, etc. But right now, all I see is a list of things that my friends have liked in reverse-chronological order. I get that you can sort items by type and quickly add things to your “to do” list, but I’m not convinced that’s enough for me. For example, as far as I can tell, there’s not even a way to sort items based on popularity amongst your friends.

I guess what I’m really looking for is an app that will tap into my friend’s opinions to help me find a great bite to eat when I’m out and hungry (or a great book to read when I have some spare time). Or at least an app that will “learn” what kinds of things I like so that it can then suggest things that I might also like. In that sense, apps like Oink and Ness seem like they offer a more useful service than Stamped, though I do prefer the look and feel of the Stamped UI over both of those apps.

Maybe I just need more friends on the service — I’m only following nine people — but at the moment, I’m a bit skeptical. It’s a nice looking app, though, and definitely worth checking out if you have an iOS device. [Stamped]

Jak and Poi for iOS→

A neat little Kickstarter project for an iOS game that takes the basics of Rock, Paper, Scissor and adds a twist. [Kickstarter via Kotaku]

It’s not always about the numbers

One of my good friends is a pretty big Android guy, and whenever we talk about phones, he’ll often get excited about the new dual- and quad-core processors that are “just around the corner.” I’m a geek, so I totally understand the appeal of faster processors, but I can’t help but wonder whether specs even matter anymore.

First of all, “normal” people (read; non-geeks) don’t care about specs. They couldn’t care less about which CPU is in their new phone so long as it works and it’s fast. Having said that, the iPhone 4 has been out for over a year now, and despite running a single-core processor, it has never once felt slow to me. Since the iPhone 4’s release, countless Android phones have come out featuring dual-core processors and much faster CPU speeds. But are these phones noticeably faster than the iPhone?

Well, it just so happens that Anandtech posted some benchmarks today. Actually, the benchmarks were meant to showcase the new iPhone 4S (spoiler alert: it’s really fast), but what really caught my eye was just how well the old iPhone 4 performed against the rest of the field. I’m sure iOS 5 had something to do with it, but the iPhone 4 held its own against the newer Android phones — at least when it comes to web browser performance.

And that’s the thing: what’s the point of these dual-core 1.5 GHz processors if the performance benefits are marginal at best? That’s why Apple has stayed out of the spec wars by refusing to list the CPU speeds and RAM of its devices. It’s not because they tend to have lower specs. Sure, that may play a small part, but more importantly, it simply doesn’t matter. The overall user experience is all that counts.

So while traditional geeks still harp about the specs on all the new Android phones, the bottom line is that they’re fighting the wrong fight: it simply doesn’t matter anymore.

Joshua Topolsky summed it up best in a post he wrote earlier this year on the Post-PC era:

It won’t be a debate about displays, memory, wireless options — it will be a debate about the quality of the experience. Apple is not just eschewing the spec conversation in favor of a different conversation — it’s rendering those former conversations useless. It would be like trying to compare a race car to a deeply satisfying book. In a post-PC world, the experience of the product is central and significant above all else. It’s not the RAM or CPU speed, screen resolution or number of ports which dictate whether a product is valuable; it becomes purely about the experience of using the device.