Editor Chris Phin previews the latest edition of Tap! magazine on YouTube, but along with showing what’s inside, he also provides some thinking on iOS reviews in general:

It actually really annoys me when I see people reviewing iOS apps badly. It’s easy to just read an App Store description and tag on a mealy-mouthed, not very definitive verdict at the end of that.

This is something that I’m finding’s becoming increasingly common. I’ll often see reviews of iOS games and apps that make judgment calls that only relate to a few minutes’ use. In Tap!, Chris notes that we don’t do this (I’m the games editor, as regular readers here will know), spending hours with games and apps, to make sure we provide a verdict that comes from extended use, not just a quick look. In some cases—*cough*Hero Academy*cough*—we perhaps spend a bit too much time on a single product, but there you go.

Still, this isn’t the only thing that annoys me from a Tap! perspective. People still bang on about magazines being rubbish on the iPad (something I wrote about in March) and, more recently, argue the iPad’s corner in terms of content creation. Bizarrely, Tap! almost never gets a mention, despite being a magazine designed specifically for the iPad and that’s actually put together on an iPad and in the iPad simulator on a Mac. (More on Tap!’s creation can be found in this YouTube video.)

It frustrates me that Tap! isn’t more well known, but delights me when I receive feedback from readers, which is almost universally positive. If you own an iPad and fancy checking out Tap!’s reviews, features, and the developer section (by the amazingly talented Matt Gemmell), grab a copy from http://tapm.ag/appedition. Individual issues are three quid, but there are a also a few previews that let you try before you buy.

Via The Loop, Trusted Reviews pits the iPad 3 [sic] against the Microsoft Surface. It comes to lots of conclusions, raving about the Surface’s kickstand and smart cover/keyboard, thinness (0.1 mm thinner than Apple’s now clearly far-too-thick iPad), ports, and specs. There’s just one snag: the person writing the article hasn’t actually used the Microsoft Surface, in the same way that almost every single person raving about the Microsoft Surface hasn’t used one. One of the most telling parts of the Trusted Reviews piece involves comparing the screens of the two devices:

We’re still not sure whether the 10.6in Surface RT will only be offered with a 1,366 x 768 resolution or whether the Full HD res found on the Surface Pro will also be an option

In addition, we’ve no idea about specs, almost no idea about how well the keyboard cover actually works, and absolutely no idea how the device is in extended use.

This might sound like sour grapes. You might well be thinking, “Well, you’re such an Apple fan-boy that you’re bound to slag off Microsoft.” Actually, my increasing hatred for such ‘reviews’ has been exacerbated by my new iPad, but not in the way you might think. Apple’s device absolutely looked the part during the keynote and it is in many ways an impressive device—the screen in particular is excellent. But it gets a bit too warm and it remains a bit too heavy. I still like my iPad a lot and I don’t regret buying it, but it certainly doesn’t live up to the initial coverage online—and that’s something you only realise and can only tell after extended use, not through seeing a couple of pictures online and a keynote video.

And at the end of the Trusted Reviews piece:

It might be too early to call a winner

You think‽

Everyone in the tech blogging sphere, from major publications to anyone with a WordPress install (hello!) is still banging on about the 7-inch iPad, but there remain fundamental problems with the reporting.

A 7.85-inch iPad would work with Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, so devs wouldn’t have to do anything.

This has most recently been trotted out by Joel Bernstein and others but isn’t a new argument. I called bullshit on it back in March, and no-one has changed my mind since. While a device of that size might technically enable well-authored apps to work within a ‘comfortable’ range for touch interaction, most devs design for the current form factor and how that feels, not for specific numbers. Games and apps are designed for hitting targets on a ten-inch device. A quick ’n’ dirty comparison here between an iPad and a smaller version (admittedly, in this case, 7 inches, not 7.85) shows how Apple’s own GarageBand would be affected if not reworked for the smaller form factor. At best, the app would be fiddlier, harder and less fun to use. Couple that with a display that’s reportedly not going to be ‘Retina’ (Daring Fireball said it could use the same display ‘sheets’ as the iPhone 3GS), and you have a device that’s by default worse to use than the larger iPad, requires additional development time for devs, and worse to look at.

Sounds much like the competition, not the iPad.

A 7-inch iPad would be just like the iPod mini.

No it bloody wouldn’t. The iPod mini arrived into a market that only had the original iPod for company from an Apple standpoint. Right now, there are already two existing ‘mini’ iOS products: the iPod touch and the iPhone. A better analogy here would be that a 7-inch iPad would be like some kind of halfway house between the iPod and the iPod mini, an iPod sort-of-in-the-middle, if you will. (And, yes, I get that some—although far from all—people are referring to the iPod mini as an example of Apple expanding the market sectors it aims at, but one can easily argue that retaining the iPad 2 did that, in enabling a lower-priced iPad to be sold.)

Apple has to respond to the growing threat of other 7-inch tablets.

Anyone writing something like this, please either do a tiny bit of research on what makes Apple tick, or do us all a favour and just stop writing articles about tech. Thanks.

Note that I don’t doubt Apple could make a 7-inch iPad. In fact, I’d be amazed if prototypes of that size didn’t exist from day-one in Cupertino (along with a range of sizes beyond the original iPad’s form factor). But if Apple releases one into the wild, it’ll have a lot of questions to answer surrounding usability and quality, and I’d hope there would be something in the device that makes it more than a me-too product beyond it being an iPad.

The one thing that makes me cautious on dismissing the 7-inch iPad rumour entirely (if not much of the writing about the device) is that iPod touch sales are in the toilet and that line continues to decline. Perhaps an iPad mini could be a replacement of sorts—a new, more powerful small(ish) iOS device. Apple’s happily killed products before, to ensure it didn’t stagnate (including the original and popular iPod mini, which was unceremoniously dumped in favour of the iPod nano), but the company has also regularly evolved existing products. So while we could see a new iPad, there’s the possibility the iPod touch will grow a bit, in terms of screen size and/or feature set, and perhaps be rebranded; although the first of those things would still require dev work for fully optimised apps, it could with a Retina display still look really good (if not as pin-sharp as the iPhone and existing iPod touch), although there remains the issue that ‘phablet’-sized devices hardly set the world alight when they came from other vendors.

You might have noticed that Jony Ive recently got knighted, and he spoke to the Telegraph about all things design. Naturally, he was asked about Apple’s software design, including iCal’s nasty stitched UI. He apparently winced a bit, but diplomatically offered the following quote:

My focus is very much working with the other teams on the product ideas and then developing the hardware and so that’s our focus and that’s our responsibility. In terms of those elements you’re talking about, I’m not really connected to that.

Initially, this seems surprising—Apple’s hardware and software people being so separate. However, the perceived clash between Apple’s minimal hardware and increasingly ‘real world’ software interfaces actually stem from the same foundation of usability. In other words, both methodologies are designed to make things easier for users—the hardware should get out of the way, and the software should be welcoming, intuitive and, where possible, familiar. Apple certainly doesn’t always succeed in terms of software UI design, but in aping real-world items, it often gives users a head-start they wouldn’t otherwise have (while simultaneously typically infuriating tech-savvy users).

Quite how Jesus Diaz extrapolated this into What Jony Ive Wishes He Could Say About Apple’s User Interfaces, I don’t know. There’s quite a lot of projection within his piece, and he bangs on about the usual things people (including myself) have banged on about in the past, but it’s clear Apple has fairly set thinking regarding software interfaces, and it’s not about to follow Microsoft down the path of UI minimalism. Sales figures suggest the company’s right, but the way things are—and Ive’s quote—doesn’t suggest Ive himself wants to kick Scott Forstall in the face. It just suggests that Apple’s got what the company perceives as the right person on hardware and the right person on software.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber seems quite convinced about the latest iPhone rumours, which claim the device will move to a 16:9 display, which in portrait will be 9:16. On Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz wrote a rebuttal to this rumour, making salient arguments: no-one’s been screaming for this; the iPhone still outsells other smarphones; fragmentation would be introduced; universal apps would be tough, because 16:9 is further from the iPad’s 4:3 display than the current iPhone’s 3:2.

Of course, some people have been clamouring for a larger iPhone screen, but as far as I can tell, these are the reasons:

• Video would be in full widescreen, without black bars (if not necessarily 720p).
• Bigger screens are better, just because.
• Everyone else is doing it, and, more specifically, it’s what those Android guys do.

These don’t seem particularly compelling arguments to me, and if Gruber’s right in the next iPhone sporting a screen that effectively adds 176 or so pixels to the top of the display (making it 1136 × 640 rather than 960 × 640), you get black bars around all non-optimised apps, and those that are optimised will require more work for developers. Fixed-width apps (i.e. many games, most interactive books, lots of music-creation apps, and so on) will require another bespoke layout. Games that are more flexible (3D racers, say, or 2D action puzzlers like Angry birds that have scrolling levels) will require clever gameplay balancing and plenty of testing regarding any on-screen controls. Even ‘flexible’ apps will require a ton of usability testing and optimisation. In many cases, the ‘extra’ space would be largely empty, because filling it with something important would risk alienating every single current iPhone and iPod touch user.

For more flexible apps, there could be minor benefits—an extra tweet, an extra couple of lines of text—but 16:9/9:16 is sub-optimal for books, magazines, photos and other content types, and so it strikes me as a strange decision. Gruber argues:

I suspect the answer is, why not? The design tension in post-iPhone mobile phones is between screen size (where bigger is better) and device size (where smaller is better). You want a physical device that is small enough to fit easily in your pockets and is comfortable and easy to use while holding it in one hand.

But I still simply say: why?