One of the things that bugs me about iOS is Apple’s real-world design. It makes some of its apps akin to real-world items, and so you get a leather-bound calendar for iCal or a virtual book for iBooks. The idea is to presumably assist people in how to use something by providing something they recognise.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t really work. Virtual items with virtual controls don’t perform like their real-world counterparts. You don’t have a scrolling panel in a real calendar, for example. The design often doesn’t follow through to the details either, which is particularly apparent in iBooks. That app sits its ebooks on top of an image of an open book, but the image never changes as you read, never updating the number of pages beneath the one(s) you’re viewing. Therefore, what could potentially have been a useful indicator of where you are in any particular volume becomes detrimental (because the eye makes the assumption you’re not making progress, and iBooks then has to provide an alternate—software-oriented—progress bar), and iBooks therefore manages to feel less book-like than Kindle. Amazon, of course, does away with design garbage, instead just giving you the content and a few ways to adjust how it looks (in terms of font styles).

A further problem is addressed by Ben Brooks at The Brooks Review. In Don’t Mimic Real-World Interfaces, he talks about how instead of realism, software designers should be striving to take full advantage of the power of computers, providing new solutions to problems, rather than aping ones built in the real world decades ago.

Ask any person who has used Soulver for Mac or iOS if they think Soulver was difficult to figure out—it is leaps and bounds better than any other calculator app, yet it doesn’t look like any other calculator app. It took me all of two minutes to figure out how to work the app and to realize just how much better it is. What Soulver did was not try to replicate the beloved HP 12c, instead they rethought what a calculator app was to be—and how it should be designed if it is only made for use on a computer, from day one.

It is what calculators would have been if they were invented at the same time computers were, instead of what we have with most calculator apps.

I totally agree with this. Soulver is a fantastic app, like a ‘back of an envelope’ that does the sums for you. Instead of being a virtual calculator, it’s a little bit spreadsheet, a little bit text editor, and quite a bit of power under the hood that you can choose to use or not. If you’re a beginner, you can simply paste lists of values (such as a shopping list of items and prices) from emails and other documents into the main pane and it’ll work out a total (without you having to laboriously remove related text, which also removes the context from your calculations). If you’re happy going deeper, you can work with operators, currency conversion, and mathematical functions. You might argue that Soulver lacks that initial point of recognition (“This is a calculator?”), but it enables you to do commonplace calculations a lot more quickly than you can in typical calculator apps for Windows, Mac and iOS.

In a related article, Brooks also looks into iCal and its resolute desire to stick with real-world conventions and simulated paper, rather than rolling in more dynamic design ideas from GTD apps that would benefit everyone. Given the absolutely hideous iCal UI (Ars Technica) in one of the latest Lion builds, I don’t suspect anyone at Apple shares Brooks’s opinion, nor his taste.

(One possibility, of course, is perhaps the design is intentionally hideous. There’s a full-screen button on the new iCal, to make it a proper full-screen app, in the same manner as iPhoto ’11. If people are so offended and distracted by the torn paper and horrible fake-leather toolbar, perhaps they’ll be more likely to explore the new mode.)

A nice piece by Stu Dredge over at The Guardian, on Amazon’s Appstore terms. The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is warning devs about Amazon’s pricing fluctuation, which will enable it to pay developers either 70% of the purchase price for their game, or 20% of the developer’s List Price, whichever is greater. The IGDA’s concerned, because:

Some developers will probably win in this scenario, but some developers – most likely, those near the bottom of the list – will lose, not gaining enough sales to offset the loss in revenue per sale.

And Amazon also reserves the right to make a game free that’s selling well, to which the IGDA responds:

This sort of promotional activity may attract consumers away from competing markets and into Amazon’s arms. But it might actually represent a net loss for the developer, which was already doing quite well and didn’t need to firesale its game at that moment in time.

Yeah, well, tough. This is how things are in Amazon-land. I know of a couple of book publishers who ended up going under because Amazon kept discounting products to the point that they effectively lost money, but Amazon’s not fussed, because it knows there are a lot of other publishers—and customers also flock to where things are cheapest. It won’t be any different for Android games and apps.

From a personal standpoint, I’m not terribly keen on Amazon’s terms, though. The rush-to-the-bottom on Apple’s App Store is bad enough, with games discounted within days of going on sale. While Apple’s managed to ‘train’ iOS users to buy stuff, they’ve also set an expectation that games should be dirt-cheap (something not entirely helped by giant publishers like EA and Gameloft doing regular fire-sales); and while I like games being more affordable (rather than being 30-quid cartridges), they don’t really need to be just 59p. But at least on the App Store the dev has a choice—Amazon’s terms are a little off in that regard.

Still, Amazon’s the one company that could really give Apple strong competition in the app/tablet/smartthing space, and so despite its iffy terms, I’m excited to see where it takes things.

Good grief. While everyone’s still reeling from the shock of Lenovo’s 23-inch tablet and the non-shock of dual-14-inch-screen tablet Kno quietly passing, Kyocera’s seen its chance to fight hard to top the Bonkers League Table of Touchscreen Stupidity.

As anyone paying attention to the smartphone battle between iOS and Android will know, it’s often a fight between usability and bullet-points. Apple hardware and software is designed to be easy to use, but is somewhat locked-down, and so Android and its hardware partners regularly respond with a list of exciting specs and bullet-points, typically offering ‘more’ in a number of areas that geeks and engineers care about, to best Apple’s shiny toys.

We’re thinking that with the Kyocera Echo, there was a discussion that went along these lines:

“We need something to beat the iPhone. What can we do to be one-up on those guys?”

“Other Android phones have done more speed, more RAM, more installed and impossible-to-remove third-party apps, so we can’t do any of that. What’s left?”

“What about… screens?”

“Genius! The iPhone’s only got one screen, so we’ll clean up if we release a device with two!”

And so (probably) was born the Echo, a device Katherine Boehret on All Things Digital says:

may turn out to be a niche product

No kidding. The device is a fat little bugger, due to the dual-screen nature, and it’s also awkward to get it into dual-screen mode. Worse, though, is this little nugget of information:

only seven of the phone’s apps work in the mode that runs an app on each screen

So even Nintendo DS-style arguments don’t really work here. Instead, you have a device where you can get:

• a slightly bigger screen with a huge black bar across the middle of the content
• a standard-sized screen, hiding the other within the device’s bulk
• ‘Simul-Task Mode’ on seven (count ’em) apps

Sounds great.

Now, where’s my damn 12-screen Android phone? That’s sure to be a winner!

According to TechCrunch, OMG IPAD KILLAH Kno is dead. This will come as a huge shock to crazy people, who genuinely thought the massive 14.1-inch stylus-operated tablet (available in expensive $599 single-screen version or WHAT WERE THEY THINKING $899 dual-screen) would topple Apple’s iPad, despite Apple’s device working rather well in an education environment.

Still, the Kno guys aren’t fussed, because, apparently, it was always about the software and platform-agnosticity. CEO Osman Rashid said:

We have accelerated our 2012 strategy to 2011. Our long-term plan was always to support multiple platforms.

“No, really—honest,” he didn’t add, unless you read between the lines—lines positively bulging with sadness and delusion.

Still, it’s early days yet, and there’s loads of room in education for strong software. So what’s Kno’s next move?

Although Rashid wouldn’t confirm which platform Kno would support first, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be the iPad.

Because supporting the leading tablet would be really stupid.

Kno’s software centers around using a stylus, not your fingers. “There is no real concept of a stylus on the iPad,” says Rashid.

This is probably because humans by default come with ten perfectly reasonable styluses attached. That said, there are things like the AluPen. Of course, you’re pretty much screwed if you’ve based most of your software around stylus (read: fiddly) input, eh, Kno-guys?

“The current iPad is mant [sic] for the finger.”

Actually, it’s meant for direct manipulation of content, without any abstraction layer. The mouse cursor was always a nice idea but a terrible concept from an intuition standpoint, since you have to be taught to use it. But even a stylus is a poor content manipulation tool compared to a finger—again, because you need to be taught to use it.

He hopes this will change. “We hope Apple over time sees the value of a stylus in education because kids do need to learn how to write.”

Rashid favours teaching kids to interact with content rather than manipulating content. By contrast, I think writing is overrated, and is something fewer and fewer people bother with. I don’t debate that it’s a skill that children need to learn, but I’d sooner have a child immersed in solving maths puzzles rather than first having to grasp manipulating a pencil and laying out the sums; I’d sooner have a child immersed in finger-painting (real-world or digital) than battling with a fiddly paintbrush.

They can sort out their penmanship later.

Bloomberg reports on Acer’s “Windows PC for the iPad generation”. It’s very exciting:

You’ve never seen a personal computer quite like this one.

Ooh. Exciting!

Acer Inc. (2353)’s new Iconia 6120 Touchbook has many of the features you would expect from a full-sized laptop: an Intel Corp. (INTC) i5 microprocessor, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows 7 operating system, a 14-inch display.

Ooh. Exc– Actually, less exciting, because no-one cares about specs these days, but, hey, Windows 7 and a 14-inch display, so I’m sure for a cutting-edge competitor to a long-lasting iPad, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG HERE. (SPOILER: Something will go wrong.)

It’s also missing one feature you would expect: a keyboard. In its place is a second 14-inch touch screen. Need to type something? A full-sized virtual keyboard, complete with touchpad, appears on the bottom display when you lay your palms on it, to be used and then dismissed when no longer required.

Translation: Acer saw the Nintendo DS and thought “man, that really needs to be a whole lot bigger and run Windows”. But, hey, the DS worked. It worked really well. So this dual-screen thing might not be entirely stupid, and a 14-inch screen’s certainly big enough to get a full-size virtual keyboard under your fingers. Clearly, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG HERE. (SPOILER: Something will go wrong. Quite soon. Just wait a bit.)

The computer, which is available for order now and shows up in stores later this month, costs $1,199.99.

Ah. Well, I guess if we ignore the iPad’s price-point being a fraction of that and even the MacBook Air being $200 cheaper, that’s not too bad.

It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds

And 2.2 pounds compares very favourably with Apple kit.

It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds

Oh. So twice the 13-inch MacBook Air and more than four times heavier than the iPad? THINGS HAVE STARTED TO GO WRONG!

Typing on the glass takes some getting used to, though it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had expected […] My biggest problem wasn’t with the keyboard but with the trackpad, which is so small that my finger kept sliding past its virtual edges.

IT’S GOING WRONG! WE CAN’T STOP IT!

While there’s no tactile feedback when you land on a virtual key, as there is on some smartphones, you can hear an audible “click.” It’s a nice idea, except that there is a noticeable lag between hitting the key and hearing the sound.

IT’S LIKE NO-ONE’S EVEN LISTENING ANY MORE! IT’S ALL GOING WRONG!

The biggest drawback is the battery. The two touch screens suck power like a vacuum cleaner, and even Acer’s claim of three hours on a full charge may be on the high side if you’ve got the screens set to bright and are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Moreover, the battery isn’t user-replaceable, so you’ll tend to find yourself tethered to an electrical outlet.

IT’S ALL GONE WRONG!