Archive for May, 2008

Schmap for Mobile Safari

Published on May 26, 2008 1 Comment

Schmap.com City Guides and Local SearchTUAW had a post on a new city guide type website targeted to iPhone and iPod Touch users, Schmap. Schmap does a lot of the basic city guy type stuff, quite well I made add, but the thing that got my attention was the interface.

When you view information about a location holding the device upright, you get the typical information such as phone number, address, etc. However, when you turn the device 90ยบ into a landscape orientation, the website switches into a split-screen display, with a map of the location on the left and information on the right. Mobile Safari can feed data on device orientation to the website you’re viewing, and this is the first developer I’ve seen really use this information in a big way.

This got me thinking about the future of device interfaces. We’re no longer just looking at button presses for application interaction. We’ve got so many more forms of input at our disposal now. Device orientation, touch, multi-touch, sound, ambient light, geographic location, acceleration… and these aren’t limited to the iPhone/Touch. Macbook Pros have all of these senses too, even though they’re not all natively reported by the operating system, yet.

I think, in the very near future, we will be flooded with devices that have new and natural forms of input. I’m still amused by the fact that when I’m trying a new application on my phone, and I’m trying to figure out how to do something, shaking the device is actually a logical thing to try.

Apple Keeps Ignoring the iPhone’s Bluetooth

Published on May 11, 2008 3 Comments

Jake Jitchener (aka Kitch) made a twitter post tonight that reminded me of an issue that I brought up back in October of 2007. Apple’s iPhone does nothing to interact with Mac computers through Bluetooth, and has still issued no updates to fix the issue.

I’m not talking about new features that would take time to code, I’m talking about features that already exist in the Mac OS, and work very well with other phones. Address Book on the Mac already has the ability to pair up with a Bluetooth phone to place calls and show CallerID information on-screen. This doesn’t work with the iPhone though, it lacks the required profiles. I’m sure that these profiles could be added with a software update, but I can’t figure out why they weren’t there to begin with. Apple is normally so good at selling a whole solution of products that work together seamlessly, but the iPhone seems to work outside of this philosophy. (For instance, we still can’t sync Notes or To Do’s?) I hope Apple gets its act together with the 2.0 firmware update.

You can buy software (BluePhoneElite 2 by Mira Software) to at least use your Mac as a headset for your iPhone, very handy if you keep your phone docked at your desk. BPE2 is $25.