If like me you love quicksilver, and can’t live without it, you probably running across the internet trying to find out why the site is down. So here goes the salvation (thanks to the guy responsible for that):
Quicksilver and it’s plugin are available, just download install quicksilver and unzip the plugins to the /Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/ folder
Well, I was reading the frankstein review in Gizmodo and I was surprised (or not) by people reactions to one comment from the reviewers :
“It’s easier to find stuff on leopard than on Vista”
people were REALLY pissed off, saying that Vista’s search was incredible and that it was not right to say that. I think people lost the point. Is really not about the search but actually about 2 new features: The cover flow and quicklook integrated into finder.
This “small features” actually provide you a “visual” glance based search that no metadata based engine can provide you. I was already happy flickering through my backups looking for things and when a suspect appears I can just press space bar to see if is really what I want.
People appears to : 1) misunderstand the comment, 2) forget about our physical capabilities: We can just flick pretty fast across our files and if something that resembles (in case of pictures, presentations, pdfs) appears when can just slow down and fine tune the search.
Why I think that’s very important? Simple, I believe there’s a lot of people like me out there, that sometimes has lost images (no names, tags, nothing) lost ppts, that you can’t just remember any information to search for. You are just “trying to figure out what you really want” and this ” visual search” not only gives you this but also helps you find things there could be lost. Of course this does not replace a conventional search, but the search result in Leopard gives you this view also only in the results so you can combine a regular search with a glance search.
Killer. Incredible focus on find and browse your stuff. Incredible focus on keeping things organized.
Along with faster, and a bunch of small details that solved a lot of annoying issues, that’s how a define what I like in Leopard.
Ok, so I took the chances (actually I read all reviews) and decided to try leopard. All data backed up, everything set, I prefer the clean install (always) and one hour later voila, I have Leopard running.
It does indeed feels faster, and I like the additions (spaces, stacks, the new finder etc) but one thing bothered me a lot: I was not able to read my addressbook backup file ; /
Let’s see how this cat goes over the week, and I will try to post a brief summary of what’s really good about for people with profiles that a similar to mine.
And as pointed by Marcelo, here goes my screenshot :
Well, I think I will need to remove the boo box :( the keyboard is ok and of course makes things easier. the proximity to the screen was not as bad as i thought, but for my small hands is not as confortable as it will probably be to bigger ones.
lets how this evolve with the physical keyboard
cannot express how happy i am to see the upload button enabled again :)
Warnings: This is a very long and personal review*. I don’t go into the issues like closed to applications, locked, or those that people are tired of reading about.I look to the device in my daily life and why it’s going to be replaced by the old one. So you can start reading it, and if you decide to go on, just click the keep reading button.
detail: I’m not saying here that the Nokias (that I compare the iPhone with) are flawless. Actually they have so much faults that I ended up using the iPhone. Small RAM, sluggish UI, hidden multitask, confuse IA, confuse configuration, long and wide road for simple features are also problematic in the S60 devices, but they actually are great as phones, and you will understand that the “change” is related to a series of critical failures.
Another forgotten detail: I now have both versions available, and I’m aware of the 1.1.1 news and the critics still valid for that version too.
Well, now after a while really* using the iPhone as my daily phone I got to one conclusion: for me, it sucks. Not hard, but it sucks. The reasons to that conclusion could be a little to “specific” for an user (me) but at some point an clarify IMHO where Apple screws nicely the device. I will let clear here that the review is based on a kind of user (me, multitask, music oriented, internet user, cares for UI speed and so on)
It’s also clear to me that fan boys (and not that much fan boys) can start flames about this problems being small, or any other apologies, but the fact is that Apple is far from being perfect in the product itself, but it’s for sure the best marketing company in the world. People accepts the product’s fault and worst start to blindly advocate for it. Come one people, if you want Apple (and the whole industry) to improve, the first thing to do is complain.
So, I’m a tech guy, or a early adopter and I really like to use one device. It’s convergence time right? Sure it is, and from the fact that I’m a interaction designer I cannot say anything less but “omg, this is amazing” in the matters of the UI. While it still has a lot of problems its simply a really advanced, state preserving, no-need-to-teach how to multi-task ui, that as far as I can imagine was simply the result of a lot of research about: What do you think is boring or could be better on your phone?
I know it’s in the beginning, but being quite honest: it’s quite poor and confusing ui :/ the way screens relate to each other is completely odd.
But come on, it’s a open device… so it will for sure evolve into something great in the future.
N810 image view, but you can also see the new task navigator, and a much better theme
This morning I saw the pictures of the brand new Nokia Internet Tablet on engadget. I was quite happy with the industrial design. It looks so much better than the N800 and it’s delightful to see the series evolution. Also the theme looks a lot sweeter than the previous “glowing” one. Of course not everything is heaven and looking from the pictures I can start talking about things that could be messed again in this released :
1) Camera looks again facing straight there on the left. This put the user in a not so comfortable position for video calling. You either tilt the device a little bit to the side or you try not bothering and do the call a little bit to the side your self. (can be a charm, come on)
2) Looks like the bevel framing the screen still high enough to bother a full finger usage BUT looks like wider.. so can be easier to you! Yeah!
3) The fullscreen keyboard with that HUGE backspace button still there. :/
4) The keyboard is really to close of the upper part that slides up. It’s not so easy to type on that :/ [4]
5) Still no centralized synchronization / media optimization software.
But of course good things:
1) Looks like at least some basic 4-way + 2 or more buttons gaming will be possible (while demanding a little bit of dexterity)
2) The whole body looks just a lot more compact and a little bit thinner than the n800 without that quasimodo hunchback. Cool.
3) if there’s really a built in GPS I’m on it (read my iphone review to understand more. Actually I will change to a link once I publish it)
4) The docking position appears to go even lower. That’s great for watching movies on today’s very very reduced user space on planes
5) The arrows (so criticized) were replaced by a small list (drop down menu) icon, and it’s not only on the application title, showing you that the menu is there, but also the same picture in the full qwerty keyboard.
6) That’s also nice to see: simplified (tray) and more lively(task navigator) not Tango-styled icons, in menu and also for the system tray. Thank you! and sorry but TANGO SUCKS (not the project, but the icon look and feel. 100% dull)
So let’s keep also an eye on this, and while this doesn’t come out check out some real life pictures from gizmodo : 1234
And for sure the comment that was more then expected:
“An internet and media tablet with 2GB memory and 4 hour battery life for $479? Yeah, I know you should be able to get that a little cheaper, but whats the advantage over an unlocked 16GB iPod Touch for $399? Yeah the keyboard is nice, but the iPod is much sleeker, better battery life, MUCH better storage, I imagine better UI for media stuff…” Click here to compare size with the iphone
He’s right in the better media UI, a lot more storage, a better browsing experience(only if we exclude flash) more battery. But he should also consider that :
exclude flash what is not possible nowdays in the web, so the N8xx series gives you real web.
You get a real GPS, not some “mockup”
You get a more flexible platform in sense of each kind of media and a good number of supported third party application
**you’ll get Canola 2.0 that will for sure be enough to satisfity the ipod UI need =) ***I wish***
So, I would advise the following : if you like tweaking, and is a power user, Nokia may suite you better. If you praise good UI experience and a descomplicated but “locking to certain applications” desktop to device experience you should go the apple way.
About Canola, we cannot say if the tearing problem is going to happen until we have a device, but if nothing was changed on the hardware side will be really sad :/. Apart from that it will be quite good to use the slide keyboard, maybe the smaller frame on screen, clean design, brighter screen, and of course an updated, optimized version of the Maemo platform.
Well, for the first time I will totally disagree with people comments on the latest announce from s60. It doesn’t look (based on the movie) like a iPhone rip off. It looks a lot more like nokia and builds on top of s60 to offer the touchscreen people were expecting to have on s60. Before that only the 77xx phones had touchscreen on the Nokia portfolio but they didn’t see too much light =)
What I think stills a little bit too close with the iPhone is the concept phone shown, as you can see in this second video:
(the video also show the availability of sensors, and the most important : flash lite 3 with video support : rocks hard)
As far as I think the “home” button is crucial (instead of a enigmatic menu “icon” button) again, making it rounded and with a white circle can draw too much bad attention to the device.
Again, Nokia is “reacting” quite well to the critics made to it’s industrial design. Look at those announced Xpress music phones :
This guy in particular is so sexy (you need to hold one in your hands to understand better) that there is no particular reason other than bad feedback to Nokia use any of the key design elements on the iPhone at least in a particular first touch based model.
Another thing that keeps me thinking is : how Nokia is going to provide a very good stylus & finger driven interface. If you say that you’re going to support fingers and stylus one thing is a hit : every single thing should be accessible by the finger (as it needs to be bigger) and of course you can easily replace the finger by the stylus (and use some n800 pressure tricks to pull down the correct keyboard for the task). BUT please the whole ui should REALLY take care of these small details to do not fall in the N800 problem : Some things are finger driven, and react like that and others aren’t. They are simply “stylus” only and they will be quite hard to use without one (system tray etc). Apart from that the shown interaction of pop down menus also can be quite complicated for a main screen menu. Unfortunately there’s one thing about touchscreen devices: you need to use the whole screen to give users options in a high level menu. It just doesn’t make sense to organize them in pop down menus, and expect the user to : select, scroll and then select again in a list that gives you a little bit more probability of pressing the wrong option. (Of course this is based on a low quality you tube video, but it’s my impression as ui designer).
Look how small this list is for a real world finger interaction
I really want Nokia to do one thing right: The phone part. “One hand calling” shouldn’t even be there because it’s not a must it’s mandatory on any phone. Even the iPhone with a “crap” phone part do that. So how Nokia can prevent some of the worst iPhone errors (like at least 2 touchs to go back to the phone in the first version, fixed on the second part), bad call log (no distiction between missed, incoming and out calls ) - (more on the review). Nokia already has this on the phones, so it’s time to just put on even better use.
Apart from some comments, I Really like the flip the phone thing to silencing it, but if I was granted the permission to copy one thing from the iPhone (or from the phone who did it before) it would be simple switch for silence. This is truly a great feature from the iPhone, and makes me pretty happy just to switch it instead of pressing the power button (on top of my n95), if it locked I need to unlock it first, then press power button again, then comes the menu, I need to go down a few times and press select. It’s just too much effort to do something that should be as simple as switching a button.
Apart from that, one detail funny when thinking of Canola was the scrolling screen. If you observe well, there’s a selection, that keeps itself there while the list is scrolling, and then “magically” moves to a touched item. While I understand the goal of “hey let’s put a selection here to allow the user to browse with a 4-way rocker, I also see the design complications of such choice, specially when you are using fingers and have a lot of selection based screen transitions. So just for a notice, we killed that on Canola (sorry hardware guys) you’re a really going to make some lcd pretty dirty.
So, it seems that the market leader is fast on the track to regain the position as UI ruler in the mobile world, and I really expect that this turns out to be the best thing the iPhone did : Woke up the incredible UI sense that Nokia left back in the navikey era.
Why I cheer for that? Expect to see my full “ok, after using the iPhone here’s my review” post about why the iPhone is a INCREDIBLE (but crippled) internet tablet, but a really, really poor phone, a crippled ipod, and a particularly bad communication device, and why I really want a up to the iPhone-UI for a Nokia device.
So, cross fingers and let’s cheer for a whole industry improvement on the UI side.
ps: A observation goes to the fact that the video is almost 60% of the lady running on her life and only 40% or less of UI action. I know Nokia wants to make clear : That it is not stopped waiting, and that the older video is not really the UI plan, but the video just looks again a little bit like a placebo. A fake or vaporUI just to calm down the ones who are asking for a “punch” back from Nokia. Nokia knows how to do it, and will do it in the right time given the actual scenario. Round 2… fight!
update (also in comments) to the “do we need stylus & finger driven ui”:
“I also think so, BUT as there is a demand for finger, there’s also a demand for stylus based(or I will supposed there is because I don’t have any data on that).
I know that a lot of people gets quite upset with the fact that your screens goes REALLY dirty when using fingers. Come one.. I have an iPhone and a N800 and they both are really dirty. So there’s no real way today of keeping your screen clean unless you use a stylus (but other problems arise from that)
So After physical feedback, the killer think will not be a UI will be a screen with some crazy advanced nano technology that keeps things clean =)”
This guy in particular is so sexy (you need to hold one in your hands to understand better) that there is no particular reason other than bad feedback to Nokia use any of the key design elements on the iPhone at least in a particular first touch based model. 
