The Present.

Apple has cracked open a door of possibility with the introduction of Siri. It’s not the first interface to accept voice as an input, but it might be the first to do it in a way that’s both accessible to the casual user and popular enough to matter.

Those who are quick to dismiss Siri as a gimmick cite the aforementioned functional limitations, the awkwardness of speaking aloud in public places, and the latency and artificiality as compared to science fiction’s portrayal². These are all true. Many features of the iPhone are unavailable via Siri. It would be weird for someone in an office or on a bus to start talking to his or her phone. (Weirder than the Bluetooth headsets people already use?) Needing to wait for Siri to transmit and fetch data from a distant server, enunciating with excruciating precision, and finding oneself at the beck and call of those chipper beeps can be disenchanting. Yet what are these but the pains of an infant technology cutting its teeth in a world of mature graphical user interfaces? Should we reject voice-driven user interfaces a priori, scorning the possibility of hardware and software improvement?

We have, right now, a useful tool and a tantalizing glimpse at what is possible. That’s more than enough for me.

The Future.

The immediate future looks clear. Apple will continue to refine the Siri experience by removing obstacles and adding features. The foundation appears to be in place for long term growth. I have had few issues with Siri understanding my speech, and that seems to be the common experience.

What we all want to know is: how soon can Apple open the app floodgate? It’s a bewitching notion. The iPhone before apps was revolutionary. The iPhone after apps, indispensable. Can the same be true of Siri?

A Hypothetical Scenario for Siri-alizing Apps.

First, let’s give Siri the ability to open apps, something that it can’t do right now.³ “Siri! Launch Tweetbot.”⁴ Tweetbot appears on the screen. Because we’re smitten with this Siri thing, we want the ability to perform actions in our current context.

Consider what happens next. Since Tweetbot saves my state automatically, I’m looking at my “Sports” Twitter list. From this screen alone, I can: Change the list I am viewing, open the compose tweet screen, refresh the list, search the list, switch accounts, select a tweet as the target for additional actions, switch to my mentions, direct messages, starred tweets or profile, or view replies to a tweet. That’s one screen, and I probably didn’t even provide a comprehensive inventory of available actions.

“Refresh tweets” might be a perfectly adequate synonym for the pull-to-refresh mechanic we’ve become accustomed to, but what if I want to interact with a specific tweet? Should a “cursor” appear on the screen indicating the  currently active tweet? Of course not. Tweetbot, like every other native iOS app, has been designed with touch as the foremost interaction method.⁵ By attempting to force voice input into our current graphical conventions, we’re in jeopardy of the same errors game developers have routinely made in attempting to port joystick-based games to the touch environment. What was developed for one input, especially if the input was properly understood, is inappropriate to varying degrees for us in another. Furthermore, within this scenario, we have created for ourselves both the non-trivial job of replicating all screen functionality as voice functionality and restricted what we can do with voice to what we can see on the screen.

What’s the Alternative?

As much as I would like to see Siri become a tool for users willing to spend the time necessary to learn the interface,⁶ Apple appears to be determined to create something else, something that hasn’t really been done before: a conversational user interface. You state a command, Siri complies (if possible) and provides feedback. It’s a much longer, more tedious process, but it might be the only one that can actually work without extensive training.

So what should Apple could do to truly embrace voice-driven user interfaces? First, abandon the traditional concept of applications. In the world of Siri, applications are incidental. Data sources matter, commands matter, natural language parsing matters—applications are the occasional byproduct of asking Siri to perform a task and having that request fulfilled. The appropriate paradigm is services.⁷ Instead of registering applications, developers would register a Siri service with Apple. The end user would navigate to a special section of the App Store that housed only VUI services. It’s Newsstand for Siri!

Maybe Tapbots wants to make a Siri service. Services (unlike applications) are able to be used instantly (within Siri) by simply stating the service name plus the desired action. There is no launching a service. “Use Tweetbot to read me my tweets.” Siri answers, “I am loading your latest tweets.”⁸

Once Siri begins reading the tweets, we should expect her to pause after each tweet to allow us the opportunity to respond. Unfortunately today that means pressing the microphone button on the screen. If Siri is to achieve its true potential, we’re going to need to be able to invoke it by just saying “Siri!” and, nearly as importantly, we need to be able to interrupt it.⁹

At this point we might say something like: “That’s funny. Let’s star that tweet.” Behind the scenes, Siri is magically parsing my cryptic human language. As we’re in the Tweetbot context, Siri knows to interpret these commands against the Tweetbot provided options. “Star” plus possibly a dozen other words can perform the same action. It might also accept “like”, “favorite”, “heart”, “save”, and more. It’s also going to need to understand the word “that”. For Siri, “that” can mean a lot of different things. Here it’s critical it means “the thing we were just talking about”. It also needs to ignore “that’s funny.”

What happens if Siri doesn’t understand? Well, at first Siri should probably break out of context to see if there are any alternative means of fulfilling the query. If not, Siri already has error handling, she says, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand”, or some such euphemism.

Back in the narrative, we’ve starred the tweet. Siri either continues to read the tweets automatically or needs to be re-engaged by us. Let’s be explicit, “Siri, resume reading the tweets.” “Resume” or “continue” should always restart the previous task. Siri moves on to the next tweet, but by this time we’re bored. We say, “Read tweets from my sports list.” The keyword “list” needs to be interpreted as a Tweetbot command. The name of the list needs to be processed, but at this point, we’re right back where we started. Even a slight variation, however, could have radically different results. What if we said instead, “Read tweets about sports”? In that case, Tweetbot might query the Twitter API for the tag “sports” or it might even have a dictionary of sports-related terms if the data were pre-structured.

Reality.

Voice-driven user interfaces were fantasy or science fiction at best. Now, we have one that works reasonably well within a narrow enough context. Even better, Siri is available on the computer we carry with us all the time rather than the one sitting on a desk. Yet, for now, the magic actually takes place not on this pocketable device but instead on battalions of servers in a distant data center. The delays we experience while using Siri are crucial. Audio files of the sounds recorded by Siri as we uhm and uhh our way through asking her to do us a favor need to be shipped across the Internet, processed into her best guess at the words we intended to communicate, submitted to her vast database for comparison with all possible ways we could have asked her assistance, and, eventually, offered back to us as a discrete action she is able to take on our behalf.

That Siri works at all is a tribute to modern advancements in processing strength, power consumption, and network speed and ubiquity¹⁰. That Siri is not yet the omnipresent, omniscient, omnicapable Computer of Star Trek is in all likelihood a difference in scale not kind. It is not unthinkable to imagine a future only a few years from now in which a device the size of the iPhone can remove the quirks and sources of friction we currently experience. With better batteries, more storage, faster processors, smarter algorithms, and speedier connections, it may not guaranteed to happen, but who will deny the realistic possibility?

This is a revolutionary interface. We’re not going to get by using our hard-earned graphical instincts. The Herculean task facing Apple is educating developers on how to write a Siri service. Making Siri work with Apple’s internal services was no doubt difficult—as evidenced by the frequent down time and the relatively few available features. Enforcing this level of conceptual change on external developers is almost unimaginably hard. It may not even be possible. Apple may decide to keep Siri in-house indefinitely, slowly expanding the available services. I could live with that. It already makes my life much easier in many ways. But I know we’re all just dying to see the full potential realized. For that to happen, Apple need to unleash this force by enabling third-party development. The only way this works, however, is to conceive of it as a completely separate interface not handicapped (or propped up) by the existing iOS interface paradigms of a home screen, little icons representing applications, gestures and the rest. The new interface is the Siri voice and what can be shown within the Siri application. Applications are now simply services of Siri. And Apple is going to need to drill the concepts of VUI into developers who have never dreamed of such a thing. Remember the HIG? That’s going to be big again. Just like the release of the Macintosh required developers to learn and accept GUI principles, Siri redefines what it means to use a computer, and that means grokking VUI from the ground up.¹¹

1. That, and the new cameras. The iPhone is the only camera I use. With two tiny kids, the camera comes out a lot.
2. See TNG, among others.
3. Application launching is something of a middle ground for me. While I believe Apple is most interested (and ought to be) in unleashing speaking and listening as a peer experience to looking and touching rather than voice as simply an alternative for your finger, I expect them to make small compromises in that direction. Essentially, there’s no reason voice shouldn’t make the whole experience richer rather than living in a one-dimensional ghetto.
4. Where by “Siri!” I mean, “press and hold the home button until Siri launches.”
5. Apple’s incredible accessibility achievement with the iPhone notwithstanding.
6. Like Quicksilver or Enso.
7. Incidentally, services are the one thing I want more than anything else on the iPhone today. Developers have hacked around this with custom URL structures, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.
8. While it’s important to be generous in what Siri can accept, certain components are essential to accomplishing the desired task. At minimum, we need to include the name of the service (Tweetbot, “subject”), the intended action (read, “verb”) and the object of the action (tweets, “direct object”). Other modifiers can also be supported.
9. This is no small challenge. Our phones would need to be constantly listening for this keyword which is battery killer. At this point, we’re basically talking about the including all the computational power of Apple’s data center in a hand-held device. We’re not even close.
10. Or have we now moved from ubiquity to invisibility?
11. I have chosen to focus on what I believe Apple may have in store for Siri and, also, what the perfect voice user interface looks like. It’s entirely possible that many good or at least interesting VUIs could be designed to supplement the traditional graphical user interface. Unfortunately, companies can generally only really go in one public direction at any given time. Perhaps Google, Microsoft, RIM, and HP can take up the gauntlet for bringing innovative voice features about in other ways.

For the past year, beginning even before the incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign for the GoPano Micro¹, the EyeSee360 team has been working around the clock to create the best hardware and software possible. We were fortunate to have a role incubating the video sharing site as well as the EyeSee360 company site, the Shopify-based store for buying GoPano products, and the official GoPano iPhone app for recording, sharing, and viewing 360° videos. If you have an iPhone, you can download the app now to view the videos.

To say we were thrilled to work with a local company making unique, exciting products for the best phone in the world would be an understatement. We are eagerly looking forward to seeing the GoPano platform improve as the tools for making 360° video are made available to everyone. The first time you are able to simultaneously capture your kid blowing out the candles and her grandmother’s reaction you’ll be sold on the appeal of omnidirectional video.

It’s not often you get a chance to participate in the early stages of what has the potential to revolutionize an industry. We are grateful for the opportunity and pleased with the result.

Check out this 360° video of the Pittsburgh Penguins warming up. Click and drag to view the video in all directions.

1. The GoPano Micro was one of the most successful projects in Kickstarter history, and the most funded iPhone project ever.

Hmm. You do have an iPad, don’t you? Have you ever noticed the eerie similarities? Glass surface, brilliant backlight. In the spirit of the-best-tool-is-the-one-you-have-at-hand, we’ve co-opted the iPad into a portable tracing table and tossed in a few extra features for good measure. Adjustable grids, circles, angles, and even a French curve.

Say hello to Full Stop’s first iOS application: Traceable. Get it now in the App Store ($1.99) or head over to the official product page.

Air Jordans.

If you’re an American male born between (roughly) 1972 and 1982, Air Jordans were the preeminent adolescent emotional touchstone. For a period spanning the late-80s to mid-90s, they were inescapable. Demand was not limited to black or white, urban or suburban, rich or poor…demand was universal. Nothing matched the feeling of walking into school sporting a crisp new pair of Air Jordans. They were a status symbol without equal. You were king for a day. At least.

The topic sparked a debate on the Full Stop Skype line. While I was busy reliving my adolescence via Twitter, Nate just didn’t get it, and the disconnect was easy to diagnose. Combined with his admittedly fritzy cultural radar, he simply missed the window. I’m 31, he’s 25. I’m a sneakerhound, he’s not. I’ve had six pairs of Air Jordans¹, he’s had none. I struggled to find an explanation that made sense to him until, grasping for analogies, I came up with this:

“Air Jordans were the iPhones of their day.”

From that point, it all fell into place.

It’s not a stretch to draw parallels between Nike and Apple, two American companies light years beyond their competition in technical innovation, product performance, industrial design, advertising, brand loyalty, and a litany of other intangible metrics too numerous to mention. But what happens when we dig a little deeper? See if any of this sounds familiar:

The flagship product inspires a frenzy, where anxious fans wait with breathless anticipation for the annual launch day, obsessively debate specs and features, then descend in hordes on their nearest retail location to snap up every available unit. The product lives at the absolute apex of tech, taste, and consumer lust, and crosses the threshold from “esoteric object of desire” to “cultural icon coveted by the teeming masses.” Its bleeding edge features are recycled back into the rest of the product line. It is always referred to by its proper name, while competitors are lumped into a single generic category.

The company’s most visible representative is the defining pitchman of his era. Brutally uncompromising, he leaves all rivals with little doubt about who won the game. He disappears for long stretches during his prime, often under curious (some might say mysterious) circumstances. After him, advertising is never the same. It’s hard to imagine a future once he retires.

The chief designer is the real star of the show. An elusive man who is anything but a household name², he single-handedly redefines the aesthetic trajectory of an entire retail market many times over.

There’s no shortage of corporate lessons one can draw from the connections Nike and Apple share, and considerable success is to be had by studying their respective playbooks. But to bring this back to our original portrait, what does it say intrinsically about us as designers and technology enthusiasts that even as children, our visceral response to a consumer product was so strong that more than a decade after it was last relevant to us, we’re still discussing our nostalgia? And what of Apple? Could it be that our adult obsession with Apple filled the void left by our childhood obsession with Nike? I can say with utter certainty that my awareness of Nike and the Air Jordan line as a design inspiration were immeasurably influential in my later career choice, and that Apple’s march to dominance began right around the time that Michael Jordan retired. The question is, who’s next? Who will be the next company to elicit such a response from design-minded consumers? What mythical product will we be waiting in lines at the mall to buy? And what will inspire today’s children to become tomorrow’s designers?

1. IV, VI, VII, XI, XII, and XIV.
2. Tinker Hatfield for Nike, Jony Ive for Apple, in case you were unfamiliar.

Exploring the source reveals Apple estimates 1,386,948 apps download per hour. If that doesn’t change, Friday, January 21, 2011 will be the lucky day.

Also of interest, check out the counter sprite. I’ve cropped it for display here as the original image is over 6,000 pixels tall:

I started messing around with the app more as an experiment than anything else, until it occurred to me that I might have in front of me a real solution for free, unlimited text messaging. Sure, apps allegedly providing that already exist, but they’re buggy, poorly designed, and don’t provide a dedicated number like Google Voice.

After a few weeks of testing the app, I’m close to pushing all-in and canceling my AT&T text plan. I may even start the unpleasant process of updating my friends and family on the new number. Consider this, then, my official pros and cons list for anyone considering running Google Voice as their primary number on an iPhone.

Why not?

Okay, to be fair, there are many reasons why Google Voice is something to fear rather than embrace. If we’re going to do it, we should at least take an objective look at the potential consequences. I see two major categories of Google Voice + iPhone issues. The first are fears about what may happen; the second issues with the current setup. Let’s take each in turn.

Fears.

Is Google going to force me (or people who call me) to listen to ads? This may be my biggest concern, so I don’t want to dismiss it lightly. ReadWriteWeb reported on this possibility a year-and-a-half ago. Given that it hasn’t happened yet, I’m inclined to believe it won’t. Still, you have to wonder how Google plans to make money from this service. It can’t be cheap to buy up all those numbers, handle the infrastructure, etc. It’s not out of the question that they keep running it at a loss, but that doesn’t sound sustainable to me. If Google begins injecting ads, I’m out. Immediately. I’d rather pay than be, at best, inconvenienced or, at worst, utterly creeped out.

Which conveniently brings us to, Will Google be listening in? Not according to their privacy policy. Still, it has to be stored / cached / archived somewhere. With great accessibility come great … privacy concerns? I really don’t know. What I do know is AT&T or any other cell phone network could just as easily store your conversations, so unless you’re ready to give up modern conveniences, you might as well get used to absolute privacy being a fleeting notion.

Or, Will Google start charging for the Google Voice features? If it was any other company, I’d say chances are yes. As an ad-based company, however, Google has shown nearly complete unwillingness to charge for their products. They give away entire operating systems on that principle. Aside from Google Apps for your domain, I can’t think of single instance of Google charging for a product. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but my prediction is targeted text ads in the Google Voice interface is ultimately what we’ll see. I’m not looking forward to it, but it could be a lot worse.

So will I ever have to deal with an outage, like Gmail had? Yes. Google Voice has been down several times. I know, none of us wants to be stranded without phone service or unable to make an important business call. It’s a real problem. One that will prevent people from taking Google Voice seriously until its resolved. Still, at this point, you have your fallback number to make calls — at least until Google VoiPce is unveiled.

What about Apple? Will they kick Google Voice out of the store or prevent new features? Until just a few weeks ago, this was not only a fear but an actuality. Thankfully, Apple has backed off their hostile position. After using Google Voice for a few weeks, though, I can understand their initial reasoning. I’ll get more into that when I discuss issues with Google’s implementation, but suffice it to say having Google Voice on the iPhone is both a usability headache and competitive concern. My gut feeling, though, is that Apple won’t try to stuff the horses back into the bag or herd the cats back into the barn. What’s done is done. Google Voice on the iPhone is here to stay. My bigger concern is that if Android begins to “win,” Google will allow the iPhone app to stagnate. If that is realistically the worst case scenario, I can live with it.

If all else fails, Google offers the ability to port your number away from Google Voice for no charge. You can always run sheepishly back into a traditional carrier’s welcoming arms.

Implementation Concerns.

A combination of Apple policies and Google user interface and programming errors make running Google Voice on the iPhone less than perfect. To be clear, the Google Voice app is far from bad, but you know with greater leniency on Apple’s part or more attention and taste on Google’s part, it could be something amazing.¹ That said, here’s where the Google Voice app doesn’t quite stack up:

Two places for everything. Somebody sent you a text message? A missed phone call? A voicemail? You’ll need to hit both the Google Voice app and the native Phone and Messages apps to be sure you have all your bases covered. From what I hear, Google Voice can hook into the native Android calling and texting applications. I can’t see Apple ever taking that tack. If you want to avoid doubling up, you’ll need to convert to Google Voice full-time, which means …

Worse everything. Running Google Voice exclusively is like living in a tiny Android bubble in an iPhone world. Text messages can take multiple taps to be marked as read, the app launches slowly and occasionally will hang or crash completely, and, as a rule, things are just less pretty, responsive, and well thought out. Again, it’s not bad, it’s just … less good.

Yep, you’re still using minutes from AT&T. If you thought you could get away with some kind of data + wi-fi only VoIP experience, we’re not there yet. Google Voice uses your cell phone provider’s minutes. It’s not so much a bug as it is a missing feature. As far as I know, you still need a voice plan from AT&T just to get data, so there are problems with that approach on both ends of the spectrum.

The voice menu dark ages. Call screening is a nice feature, but activating it with a voice menu is a frustrating step backwards. First, when you receive a call, you either you get a real number (but don’t know they’re calling your Google Voice number) or you get your Google Voice number (and don’t know who’s calling). Next, when you answer the call, you need to hit 1 to accept the call or another arbitrary number to initiate one of the remaining features. You know what would be nice? Programmable software buttons.

Outgoing calls appear in normal Phone app as strange numbers. If you’re not ready to commit to a monogamous Google Voice relationship, using the Phone app is going to leave you squinting at various Google intermediate numbers used to connect you to your eventual destination when you make calls through Google Voice. It’s an annoyance that you can either live with or switch to Google Voice completely. For my part, I might just be ready to go Google 24/7, which seems like as good a reason as any to embark on a tour of Google Voice’s advantages today and potential advantages over the next few years.

I’m ready. Tell me why I should love Google Voice.

Okay, I mentioned the unlimited free texting, right? Give your Google Voice number to your friends, and cancel that ridiculous $20 per month AT&T text plan. I expect this notion of separate charges for text, voice, and data eventually to be forgotten like a bad dream, but we’re still living it right now. Until AT&T and Co. wake up, grab a Google Voice number and enjoy a few extra apps per month or whatever it is you want to do with your newly-found discretionary income.

Enhanced call control. With Google Voice, you get a virtual secretary to filter your calls, asking each unknown caller his or her name, ability to enforce Do Not Disturb hours, and handful of ways to be notified of missed calls and voicemails. For me, these features are useful, but I’m more excited about what might be as the technology matures than I am about the current crop. The only one useful to me today is call screening for unknown numbers.

Text or call from anywhere. Wrap Google Voice in a Fluid app, and, voilà, you are now texting via a dedicated desktop client. As someone who enjoyed connecting his AIM handle to his cell phone number, I can tell you that typing a message on a computer keyboard and having it land in someone’s SMS inbox is not only magical, it’s, uh, a whole lot easier.

Potential Advantages.

The big wins today are free texting, the ability to interact with your Google Voice number and history anywhere via the browser, and a smattering of additional call filters. For me, those are enough to warrant re-structuring my phone usage to make Google Voice primary. If you’re still on the fence though, watch for these features. I can’t promise they are coming, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

• VoIP. Right now, Google Voice is no phone, no calls. Competing with Skype by allowing calls using the Internet rather than the cell tower seems a given someday. With Google Talk already in the fold, it’s presumably a business question and not a technology one.² Update: Lex reminds me you can already make Google Voice calls without using minutes, just not through the Google Voice site. You’ll need to install this plug-in and use Gmail.
• Useful call and voicemail transcripts. Advertised as a feature, transcripts are more of a joke. Getting every third word correct is a recipe for disaster. If the technology can improve, though, I see a lot of utility in archived transcriptions.
• The coup de grâce for me would be the ability to add multiple Google Voice lines per account, thereby enabling separate personal and business lines.

The iPhone and Google Voice. A Reasonably Happy Marriage.

All is not connubial bliss between Google Voice and the iPhone. There are hiccups. Application oddities, service failures, unfulfilled desires, and latent fears. Yet with a native application capable of push notifications, Google Voice is a real alternative to AT&T’s onerous texting fees. It’s a powerful tool; one which has the potential to finally crack the gouging cell phone oligopoly. For that, and a few extra bucks in my pocket each month, I’m willing to take a chance on Google Voice.³

1. This pretty much defines the Apple v. Google dynamic. It’s tempting to imagine Google’s fully-featured, cloud-first mentality with Apple’s design chops. I’m not sure we’ll ever get that exquisite combination, but both appear to be making in-roads into the other’s territory.
2. Though, one wonders, if Apple might not play games again with the approval process. One never knows.
3. Just know that I’m fickle and could switch back to an all-Apple experience just as quickly.

Abigail. Age: 27 months.

A wunderkind if I do say so myself, Abby is under the false impression that the family iPad is, in fact, her iPad. She scoffs at the notion the iPad battery should last more than a day of standard usage. Hobbies include:

• watching Kipper, Daffy Duck, Thomas the Tank Engine, Veggie Tales, and Pixar movies streamed flawlessly via Netflix.
• intently attempting to play Canabalt, Harbor Master HD, Flight Control, Angry Birds, Trainyard, and The Incident.
• raucously playing the piano, the drums, and the xylophone, splashing the pond, watching the fish swim, and filling imaginary refrigerator after imaginary refrigerator with colored, stamped, and smudged virtual canvases.
• happily dominating games of concentration and jigsaw puzzles.

Most endearingly, she giggles at scores of videos automatically synchronized from my iPhone of slightly-younger-Abby crawling, walking, running, jumping, and generally cavorting about.¹

Least endearingly, she routinely drops, bumps, and generally slimes the iPad’s glorious glass and metal exterior. I am, however, happy to report it is none the worse for the rather significant wear.

Lest you find my first-hand account exagerrative, I present video evidence:

Abby messes around with Trainyard.

The tour-de-force, a practically infantile 20-month-old Abby demos her entire iPad repertoire.

Susan. Age: 24 years.

Bearing our second child for most of the last year, Susan had ample opportunity to appreciate the benefits of a light-weight, touchscreen computer², so when Abby wasn’t monopolizing the iPad, Susan snatched it up.

Anecdotally, I think we’re talking 30-60 minutes per day roughly split among general purpose reading, socializing, gaming, and utilities — to be more specific, browsing Facebook, taking her turn at Words with Friends, researching recipes, killing time with Angry Birds or Trainyard or the latest game of choice.

For Susan the iPad doesn’t so much carve out new functionality as make existing tasks easier, more convenient, or more fun.

Me. Age: 25 years.

The iPad allegedly being a gift for my birthday in May and my much asserted love of the form factor, the concept, and the execution notwithstanding, I actually get by far the least time with it.³ I console myself by reaching for the ever present iPhone for reading and gaming or the MacBook Pro for anything else. That said, when it is my turn, I don’t fool around.

The iPad is a champion reading device. I love leaning back and cracking open Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, Twitter, or Safari aided by the invaluable Readability. I could devote entire posts to the genius of Reeder and Instapaper in particular, but their success speaks for itself.

Most of my iOS gaming happens on the iPhone, but the additional screen real estate makes gaming on the iPad feel luxurious when I do get my turn. A shockingly high number of game creators seem to be unable to grasp the incongruity of using joystick based games on a touchscreen device. Those that emphasize instead the tap / gesture / draw / tilt dynamic are thoroughly fun and, not surprisingly, dominate the app store.

A younger me, or a me in a different situation, would no doubt take greater advantage of Netflix, iTunes, Pandora, and a dozen other applications that simply make sense to offload to a personal computer that isn’t a laptop and doesn’t come with the concomitant baggage. We all have our burdens to bear.

The Rabble.

Despite a fiercely cultivated life-long misanthropy, I do sometimes play host to friends, usually during NFL RedZone, or find reason to leave the house and lug the iPad along. On these occasions, depending on the exact nature of the family / friend relationship, the iPad user will fire up photos and videos, try his or her hand at a game, take in the latest viral video on YouTube, or, frequently, check fantasy stats. All in all, about what I anticipated.

When not in use, the iPad rests invitingly on the coffee table patiently awaiting its next pilot who, inevitably, finds delight in its friendly, intuitive, rich charms.

What Does it All Mean?

So. After six months of — and I kid you not — nearly constant use, what conclusions can we draw about the iPad?

Conclusion #1.

I’m going to put this in bold so you don’t miss it: the iPad is the single greatest form of child entertainment ever invented. It’s intoxicating. Movies and television on demand (thanks, Netflix!). Games, games, games, and — wait for it — more games. Apps that exercise every motor skill from eye-hand coordination to color and sound identification to problem solving skills. Educational material ranging from newborn to … well, we’re only up to 27 months, so, I’ll let you know. Bottom line, this thing is comfortable for a kid to hold, practically indestructible even sans case, tantalizingly tactile, incredibly fast, responsive, and intuitive, and infinitely expandable. Look, I know I’m gushing, but for $499 the budget iPad occupies more of Abby’s time than the rest of her toys combined. Case closed.

Conclusion #2.

As a family room computer replacement, the iPad isn’t there. Lack of individual accounts is, while perhaps not an oversight, a seriously limiting factor, as Jeff noted upon its release. If you compare it to a desktop computer, you’ll inevitably be disappointed by the workarounds necessary to get photos on it, to print things, to compose long strings of text, to do, basically, more than one thing at a time. These are all legitimate concerns and unfortunate sacrifices. Yet this is at best a forced comparison and at worst a dramatic misunderstanding of the future of computing. Tablet computers are a) a new and exciting medium that should not take their cues from a fundamentally different medium, one in which you have a different posture, use different inputs, and naturally have different expectations and b) still in their literal and figurative infancy. Grunting about the iPad’s inability to (currently) program new applications, display windows side-by-side, and rescue kittens is shortsighted.

Putting my prognosticating pants on for a minute, I see a future where a handful of tablets (and phones) litter the house doing admirable touch-based work by day and docking snugly to a big screen, keyboard, and mouse by night.⁴ One shared computer just isn’t enough. Now that the technology is cheap enough to make this dream a reality, I see no reason it won’t be one soon.

Conclusion #3.

The iPad isn’t a replacement for dedicated gaming consoles and handheld devices, Apple commercials to the contrary. It is a fantastic gaming platform, but it excels in precisely the opposite vectors as traditional, controller driven systems: direct manipulation, asynchronous play, interstitial time filling. The iPad has some wonderful games, and I’m looking forward to playing many more in the years to come. Games like the ones mentioned previously. As long as quick-twitch, button-mashing games remain fun to play, however, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft will continue to rake it in. If you’ve ever attempted to “mash” the glass while playing a shooting or sports game, you know what I mean. If you’ve ever attempted to use a “joystick” on a touch screen, you know what I mean.

Conclusion #4.

Handing the iPad from person to person is indeed every bit as easy and enjoyable as I speculated it would be. There is almost⁵ no digital precedent for this type of shared computing experience and no conceivable limit to the opportunity it presents. Why buy Taboo when you can download it and never lose the pieces? Why struggle in vain to master a poorly conceived controller with scores of tiny hardware buttons when you can just tap a video on the iPad and watch it on your AppleTV? Why deny yourself the simple pleasure of handing your spouse / child / friend the iPad and saying, “look at this”? If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

Let’s Put a Bow on This Thing.

I’d say the iPad leaves me speechless, but it clearly doesn’t. I can (and have) gone on for thousands of words discussing its substantial pros, its few but frustrating flaws, and its impact on computing both now and in the future. If you’re not convinced it is worth $499 today, you will be someday, and, hopefully, you’ll look back at this post and smile knowingly at the truths contained herein.

1. Naturally, she is also immensely entertained by videos of Abby watching videos of Abby.
2. Can you say “contraction timer”?
3. Have you heard the one about first world problems?
4. If we want to get really crazy, maybe each will be biometrically identified and connected to files and preferences stored online.
5. If you laughed at Surface simply because it was from Microsoft, you missed the point badly. The iPad, the iPod Touch, Surface, the Wii, Kinect, et al are mere harbingers of the revolutionary intersection of ever cheapening electronic components and decades of user interface research. Don’t even get me started on ubiquitous Internet connections and video transmission. The technology Rubicon is being crossed.

Tips & Tricks.

I’m the type of person who avoids reading reviews about movies and games lest they spoil my experience. But that’s me. Maybe you need a little help. Here’s what to do if you’re having trouble:

• Get stuck on purpose. As long as you’re stuck, you can’t get hit from above. Wait until a black balloon arrives, then shake to free yourself. You’ll make up all the ground that you were losing while you were stuck. Jump lightly a few times to convince the game you can’t get out.
• Keep stuff above you. A corollary to getting stuck on purpose, find a crack and duck underneath. Stuff falling from above you is, naturally, the most dangerous part of the game.
• Options are key. If you are out and about, don’t get trapped in a canyon. Try to stay on top of things so you can always move quickly left or right.
• Snag those power-ups. There are a crazy amount of extra lives and power-ups in this game. Make things easy on yourself and grab as many as you can. Those extra lives will come in handy.
• Get the helmet, but don’t use it. The helmet keeps you safe, but it destroys anything that falls on your head. You’ll need that stuff to get to the top, so try to avoid getting hit.

Modest Proposals.

A few minor tweaks that would make the game more challenging and user-friendly.

• Multiple simultaneous games. We’ve got at least two regular iPad users and several more guest users. The ability to have more than one game saved would be a boon.
• Saving progress mid-level. It seems odd that exiting to the main menu would reset your level progress, but that’s the way it is. Maybe just needs clarification.
• Difficulty meter. As is, The Incident is essentially a casual game for casual players. An easy way to amp up the difficulty would be removing or thinning the available power-ups. Another would be to increase the penalty for getting trapped. Make it tougher to use that protective bubble or impossible to avoid balloons while in it. Bottom line: The Incident is currently stuck on easy. Let’s see options for difficult and hard-core. It wouldn’t be difficult to add that setting to the menu and dial a few game properties up or down.

Last, kudos to these guys for creating a game that takes advantage of the iPhone’s native functionality rather than attempting to port a traditional style of gameplay. Shaking, tilting, and indiscriminate tapping are winning moves. The Incident might not have perfected iOS gaming, but it’s a shining example of how to do it right.

The Story in Which Adobe is the Hero.

Flash has been rightly lauded lately for filling in the gaps of the web experience. Per Jonathan Snook:

Between then and now they’ve managed to offer useful features such as cross-domain requests, local storage, binary sockets, multi-file uploads, and shared objects. On the animation front, there are 3D effects, inverse kinetics, and pixel bending. On the streaming side, there is support for multiple codecs, full-screen playback, and dynamic streaming. Flash also allows for screen, audio, and webcam capturing, as well as peer-to-peer connections.

Even a Flash skeptic as zealous as myself has made frequent use of Flash video players and Flash-assisted fonts. One hardly need the many sites that would have been impoverished without Flash. The world would be a sad place indeed without Hulu, YouTube, and Gimme Friction Baby.

This aggressive technological approach is a sign of a healthy, engaged company. A company that, rather than resting on its much-ballyhooed 99 percent market-penetration laurels, chose to innovate. After all, it had software to sell.

Which conveniently brings us to Adobe’s fatal decision, the decision to listen to the wrong people — their customers.

The Story in Which Adobe Does the Right Thing and Gets the Wrong Results.

Readers of The Innovator’s Dilemma will recognize the hallmarks of a story that has been told many times.

Adobe, like any good company, provided the features and capabilities demanded by their customers.¹ In this case, Adobe’s customers are web developers who buy Flash software, and perhaps more significantly, the clients served by those web developers.

Said clients wanted smoother and more sophisticated animations, better accessibility, multimedia support, exotic 3D effects, enhanced realism, real-time capability, and more. Flash (and entrepreneurial web developers) delivered.

What has been achieved with Flash is in many cases astounding. The richness of the experience should in no way be underestimated. Yet this very list of features has doomed Flash, for up from the depths has slunk a competitor, HTML5.

It’s About to Get All Disruptive up in Here.

It’s hard to fault Adobe for not seeing HTML5 coming. After all, who here heard of HTML5 before last year? Adobe’s customers were no doubt clamoring for more advanced functionality not less. Hulu for example is a Big Deal™ and the <video> tag isn’t close to being ready to handle the demands of a company looking to embed ads and track conversions. You know who is ready though? Personal video sites that don’t need anything fancy. Individuals who just want to embed a video for their friends. In short, most people.

The same is true for every other upcoming HTML, CSS, and Javascript feature that you can name. HTML is quickly reaching parity with Flash for the features that matter. When that happens, you know which technology gets selected? You know which technology Hulu will adopt? The one that works for the greatest number of people. It’s past time to start counting mobile users in that conversation.

HTML5′s primary advantage is that it works on mobile devices (of the iPhone class), while Flash … doesn’t.² Like any market leader, Adobe likely had a strategy in place for this scenario. Perhaps they called it something inspired like “Flash Lite.” Their failure to execute compels me to believe Adobe as a company did not (and most likely still does not) see the mobile market as a life-or-death situation. They should.

It must be tempting for Adobe to believe that because the current HTML5 implementation is David to Flash’s Goliath — it has half the features, a quarter of the reliability, and none of the history — HTML5 will never catch up, to believe that because it is low-fidelity, cumbersome to wrangle and test across browsers, and utterly incapable of approaching the ceiling established by the elite Flash sites, HTML5 is in every way inferior to Flash. It is, almost. HTML5 is inferior to Flash in every way … except the ones that matter over the next 10 years.

It is true HTML5 cannot do now what Flash can do. This is, as I have labored to make clear, not a problem. Their capability curves are about to intersect at the point where HTML is “good enough.” HTML5 is tantalizingly close to handling every situation web developers encounter on a daily basis. While Flash is busy moving upmarket on the desktop with bigger and better features (as every armchair Flash jockey is quick to assert), HTML5 is happily snatching up the bottom tiers. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Flash slideshow, and I suspect neither can you. If you need a dozen photos to animate in a fixed area, you use Javascript. Doesn’t seem like the death knell of Flash, right? It is. Flash developers sneer that they never liked doing slideshows anyway. Well, they probably don’t like doing video players, charts and graphs, or simplistic games either, which is perfect because soon they won’t be.

Adobe is thus being squeezed in a most uncomfortable fashion. HTML5 is encroaching on Flash’s traditional territory from below³, and the iPhone’s native applications (and anti-Flash policy) are preventing Flash from retreating upmarket. It must be terrifying.⁴

1. Except not their Mac customers, which complicates the “good management” theory. Their failure to identify Mac as the predominant web-developer platform going forward and thus failing to address significant performance problems with Flash and UI problems with their development suite has angered key constituents and potential allies.
2. Flash is, shall we say, late to the mobile party. Word is that Flash will be ready soon, but it’s already been three years since the world changed. Three years is an incredible head start for mobile HTML development on one side and native application development on the other.
3. HTML is rising up  thanks in part to the talented Webkit team that Apple has wisely chosen to allow to work independently of the main company. Webkit is, as they say, killing it. Not only have they have been rapidly implementing the CSS and HTML specs, they’ve been defining new features like CSS Animation. While nobody will confuse HTML5 plus CSS and Javascript with Flash today, Apple has apparently found it robust enough to use it as the foundation of their iAd platform.
4. Time will tell if Adobe can maintain a handhold on Android, et al. But one wonders given the monkey-see, monkey-do nature of other companies (see App Store / Android Market) if Flash will even be able to hang on there.