In What the iPad 3 really needs: fewer stupid articles about the iPad 3, I report on a couple of iPad articles, one of which talks about competing tablets and argues their features should be welded to the iPad. In the comments, Oliver Mason argues:

While I fully agree with most of your article […] the one thing I disagree is the stylus issue: since I bought an Adonit stylus I can use the iPad to replace paper for just jotting down notes in a way that is not possible with one of the ten built-in ones. Maybe it’s been too long since I did finger painting as a kid. True, it is easy-to-lose, but for me it really made the iPad that little bit more useful. One of the few issues where I think Steve got it wrong.

I haven’t felt this myself when using the iPad, and that’s primarily because certain input devices (be they a finger, a mouse, a stylus, or a joypad) are better for certain tasks. I don’t often jot notes on my iPad, and, these days, consider that kind of writing increasingly a niche activity. What I think’s most important is to get the default right in terms of what the user assumes is required. To my mind, a tablet with a stylus is arguing that the stylus is the best way to interact with the device—something Samsung tried to hammer home in its Galaxy Note advert (TUAW). But in over-emphasising a single-touch pointing device, you run the risk of detracting from what makes modern tablets so appealing from an interaction standpoint: multitouch. Being able to more fully immerse yourself in dealing with content by manipulating it directly is leagues ahead of a layer of abstraction that a pointing device provides.

I don’t doubt that there are some cases where a stylus is beneficial, and there are loads of third-party options available for the iPad that people can add to their set-up if they feel the need. But I think Steve Jobs got this dead right: by default, just you and the device is the set-up that is most intuitive, usable and forward-thinking.

Via Daring Fireball, a couple of app galleries: Android niceties and My Favorite Metro Apps. Android has a reputation for poor, ugly design when it comes to apps, but that’s clearly not the case with these examples, and Metro showcases its slick, modern aesthetic. But one thing struck me about these designs: they all look rather similar, polished, shiny and slick, but they lack character, heart and soul.

I’m a fan of minimal design, and so these information-rich, no-nonsense designs do appeal to me. However, on seeing these apps as a gallery, it makes sense why Apple continues to take a very different route when it comes to interface design, regularly aping real-world items or, at the very least, adding some visual texture to apps. I don’t really like it—iCal on the Mac is, for example, horribly ugly, especially when sat next to the simpler, sleeker Mail—but there’s a certain familiarity and warmth generated by more texture-oriented design that no amount of flat colours, subtle gradients and considered typography will ever bring, no matter how often graphic designers cross their fingers and pray to the god of Pantones.

Via Fraser Speirs, an article by Alan J Reid called Instructional Designers Wanted: No Experience Necessary:

Apple recently unveiled its digital book-authoring program, iBooks Author, and I’m scared.

The last three years that I have dedicated to pursuing my Ph.D. in instructional design & technology, which centers on interactive digital text, have given me a new perspective on the delicate balance that is necessary for classroom technologies to be productive and fruitful rather than novel and superficial. The seemingly endless hours that I have spent reading journal articles, writing papers, reading book chapters, taking in lectures, reading conference proceedings, and reading some more, have left me feeling as though I have earned some sort of badge that licenses me to make qualified observations about new educational technologies.

But that’s just the problem; you don’t need to be qualified. iBooks Author allows any Apple user to design and develop an interactive, multitouch textbook. No design experience necessary.

Reid’s text echoes concerns we’ve seen in practically every single industry where digital has marched (and, sometimes, blundered) in and opened up that particular discipline. We’ve heard the same arguments in desktop publishing, photography and web design, and now we’re hearing it about textbooks.

I can’t deny that user-friendly digital products can make things tougher for professionals, because there’s a line of thinking that ‘anyone can do it’. But here’s the thing: eventually, enough companies come to the realisation that everyone can’t do it. I’m seeing graphic designers I know getting more work of late as companies stop faffing about creating their own botched attempts at marketing material and instead get professional designers to produce it. And online, web designers are once again finding that companies are understanding that, no, the MD’s nephew armed with an old copy of FrontPage isn’t the best way to present themselves to the world. These things are always cyclical, with professions mostly reverting to the pros—or at least those professionals who truly are great at what they do.

But that doesn’t mean we should ever rally against opening up creative pursuits to the masses. The fact that anyone can now make a website, or publish some photos, or—in the case of iBooks Author—create an interactive book is a fantastic thing. It means some people will find talents they never knew they had; others may be able to fill niche gaps that professionals and publishers cannot or will not; and in cases where funds simply aren’t available, I’d sooner someone bashes together a (hopefully) factually accurate digital book with perhaps less-than-optimal design using iBooks Author than have those they are teaching go without.

In short, empowering the masses is great; but there will always be room for good designers for things that need good design.

ZDNet, reporting on how Apple argues Samsung could avoid infringing on its iPad and iPhone designs:

Samsung could avoid infringing on its iPhone designs by not making rectangular phones; not putting the screen on the front of the phone; adding “substantial adornment” to the fronts of their phones; and not having bezels around the screen.

Apple’s suggestions for a non-infringing tablet include, again, a non-rectangular shape, front surfaces that are not flat and that have substantial adornment; avoiding making the tablet thin; using thick rather than thin frames around the screen; and introducing a “cluttered appearance”.

Sounds an awful lot like “maybe you should make the same kind of shit you were creating before you decided to rip off our products, assholes”.

I know I’m not in the majority on this, but I still believe Apple has a point. Its suggestions are ridiculous, but if the iPad and iPhone designs are so obvious, why did no-one bring one to market before Apple did?

It’s also worth noting that Samsung in particular appears to be bearing the brunt of Apple’s anger. Perhaps, as The Verge showcased earlier this year, that’s in part down to Samsung also:

• Ripping off Apple’s packaging
• Ripping off Apple’s device photography and positioning
• Ripping off a bunch of Apple’s iOS icons

In the long run, I’ll be amazed if Apple wins anything. I suspect lawsuits will continue to be flung in every direction and end in a flurry of cross-licensing and bile. I also suspect Apple’s design is so simple and now so ubiquitous that courts will end up siding with rivals that there isn’t any other way these kinds of devices can look and still be workable. But, as noted, this doesn’t really let Samsung off the hook, because it’s gone further than any other company, crossing that line from inspiration to plagiarism.

Hat tip: David Meyer.

I’m late to the party, but I just watched the HP Envy design video. Oh my. It’s a really stunning piece of work that makes me wonder if HP’s designers are suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or whether they’re just delusional.

If you’ve not seen the HP Envy, it’s like a MacBook Pro knock-off made by some dodgy Chinese company, with a horrible volume knob glued to the side and that your kid’s drawn on (carefully, mind) in felt-tip pen. (HP calls these elements ‘colour accents’, rather than ‘a really shit idea that looks horribly out of place and distracts from the otherwise somewhat clean design’ or ‘a desperate attempt to try and make people think we haven’t actually ripped off Apple’).

Some choice quotes from the video:

The first goal was to create a super-clean high-end design, and we did that in the geometry we chose

Presumably by popping to the nearest Apple Store and going “we’ll rip off… that one” and pointing to a MacBook Pro.

The second one was a level of honesty. That was really a key goal.

Honesty that doesn’t extend quite so far as to admit that the design is a total rip-off of something that already exists, natch.

The materials that we used were really true to this core attribute of honesty.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean the materials include “we ripped off Apple and we’re really sorry” being burned into the base of every model.

The last one was really key as we brought Beats Audio into the Envy landscape.

It’s always a good idea when you bring another company into the mix, because that never compromises your design aesthetic.

We wanted to […] visualise the audio and go beyond the sense or the audible sound of the Beats with Envy

“We were told that we had to somehow integrate the Beats Audio branding.”

You’ll notice with the product that we integrated a volume wheel that has what I call interaction gravity

And what I call a large volume knob oddly and intrusively shoved on to the side of a notebook. Still, I guess HP’s research must have shown that volume control was something people needed to mess with all of the time, and that existing media keys for doing so were just too hard for people to understand. Either that or it’s a stupid gimmick, in part demanded as part of the co-branding with Beats…

That is what pulls people into the product to interact with it

Unlike, say, the keyboard and the screen. Or perhaps they have ‘interaction gravity’ too. Man, my pen, which I just used to scribble a note, also has interaction gravity! As does the notepad! And my desk! And my chair! INTERACTION GRAVITY IS EVERYWHERE!

It allows the user a finite control of audio

As opposed to an infinite control of audio, which would be bad.

It feels a lot like a high-end stereo knob […] and it’s something we prototyped time and time again […] so we got this sense of quality

This bit’s at 1:45 and there’s a palpable sense of depression coming from the designer as he says “time and time again”. It’s like he’s trying to scream: “They forced us to improve the knob. Time and time again! THEY WOULDN’T LET US LEAVE UNTIL THE KNOB WAS PERFECT!”

Envy is about the beauty of the details

Details mostly designed several years ago by Apple. Well, bar the numeric keyboard that forces the trackpad to be oddly left-of-centre. That’s detail.

Has that next layer of design when you start to engage it

I have engaged you, notebook! Show me your next level of design!

When you open it up, it’s a little like Christmas

What, in that you thought you were getting something great, but when you open the box you see your aunt’s bought you a fucking Gobot instead of a Transformer?

In that there’s quite a few things inside the product that really draw your attention

Oh, OK. That’s just what I think of when someone mentions Christmas: things inside a product that really draw your attention. Man, Christmas round designer bloke’s house must be a laugh riot.

Colour accents that tie us into Beats Audio

Ah, the next layer of design: a horrible red stripe inside the keyboard. Mmm.

It’s a product that creates envy

Mostly on the part of the design team, who wish they were working for Apple.