Recently in ap·ple Category

I got to play with my friend Nigel’s iPad last night.

Whilst I was impressed by the iPad in general, it was the iPhotos app that blew me away. The pinch an album, inspect, open fully, pinch closed, move on paradigm was brilliantly developed. As you played with it you could see this was how digital photos were meant to be shown almost, and along with how Sky+ changed how I watch TV and the iPod changed how I listened to music this would change how I interact with my photos.

I’ve now figured out what the killer iPad app is for me. I have 30k pictures sitting on my hard drive waiting to be sorted. And they get bigger and bigger every trip, because filtering 1000 ski pictures down to an album of the 30 good ones takes time. I keep planning to get Aperture and sit down to develop a work flow to sort out my photo archive. It’s time consuming though so the archive builds and my photos languish in darkness.

What I wan’t is an Aperture Lite for the iPad.

How I see this working would be as more or less like this * It syncs with a copy of Aperture on my main machine * Aperture then copies a reduced size but highish quality size to the iPad * I then sort, rate, tag and categorise the photo’s into albums * I then sync back with Apeture and all my categorisations are available on the full size pics

Then I can export to iPhoto/Flickr/Smugmug/Facebook etc and actually let people see the photos.

The iPad may almost be the perfect device for this, for me. If a copy of all my pics are sitting on the iPad, I can filter them on my sofa, in bed, in the coffee shop or on the train. I would actually get through the my photos rather than just buying bigger hard drives to store them on. Playing with iPhoto on it showed what a good interface and interaction you can build on the iPad and I can see how this could be done pretty well. Or if Apple does it, incredibly well. When they sweat the small stuff, Apple makes great shit.

That’s it. That’s my killer app.

I’m sure some people would have other killer apps and others would have none. But for me, this would make the iPad a must have.

Although I’ll probably get one anyway. [For probably read absolutely]

A friend of mine used to drive a right hand drive Alfa Spider. It was a ridiculously impractical car, with all the niggles of old Italian engineering. He had to put his work access card on a stick and lean across the passenger seat to get into the office.

But he loved it. Where others saw niggles, he saw character. Where others saw ridiculous impracticality, he saw the coolest car on the planet. Or at lest that he ever owned.

Which is why I have always said “Buy the car you want, not the one that looks good on paper” †. The problem when you buy a car that ticks all the boxes the decision is too logical. So the pleasure or enjoyment you get out of it is minimised but all the quirks still remain. And those quirks can drive you nutty. But when you buy a car for emotional reasons (which can vary from “It’s red” to “It’s a sexy fast convertible”) you overlook those quirks or rationalise them in character, or simply don’t care.

Ever wonder why most car adverts try engage with people on an emotional rather than practical level? No one really cares about how many cup holders a car has. Note also the shift to things like fuel economy and safety as those issues have become socially and hence emotionally relevant over the recent few years.

Which brings me to Apple. Since the return of Jobs (and doesn’t that sound like biblical passage) Apple has more been engaging with people emotionally. From a design level, from a usability point of view, and from inserting itself into the social zeitgeist. Note the passion of Apple converts. It may be written off in the media as fanboys or fanatics or what not, but it’s a sign of a company building products that engage emotionally, and I can bet that Microsoft or Sony would sacrifice virgin coders to the dark forces if they could get it. Or get it back in Sony’s case. Nintendo has managed this too with the wii.

Of course their are cases where this passion can be counter productive. Some people hate a winner. Starbucks suffer from this a lot in the UK (perhaps elsewhere too). Apple gets a lot of people who resent the ‘hype’ (whatever that is) and don’t like apples products regardless of any logical reasoning. Seen often Daring Fileball as a jackass or being taken down by The Macalope

I had an argument with a friend this week on the iPhone. He “doesn’t buy into Apples hype”. Although he did go through 3 Sony MP3 players before now buying a series of iPods and an iPhone. But because he got the iPhone for logical reasons (best phone on the market) the quirks annoy him. And yeah the iPhone has it’s quirks, and bugs. But no more so than any other phone.

However because he has no emotional attachment to the iPhone (because he doesn’t like the ‘hype’), where he sees an issues with ringtones it’s Apple being crap, and not noticed that it’s the record companies or the fact he had the exact problem with every other phone. Where he sees it as annoying their is no drafts folder for texts, I see the fact that I have email that finally works, where he sees no 3G, I see the best mobile browser on the market.

We both have the same phone. But because I ‘like’ the phone and he doesn’t he sees the problems the phone has and I ignore them. I see the features the phone has, the design, and the general increase in use I have had over all my other phones. He never should have got an iPhone and I advised against it. Because it just frustrates him.

I always think you should buy products that you like.

I always think you should build products that people like. That people emotionally engage with. That people are passionate about. All the best websites do. If you want to be the best make sure you people who are passionate about what you do. If you want people to be passionate about what you do, you better be too.

† This may not be true for all people, or people who could car less about the car, as the fact it’s 4 wheels and box to get you from A to B. However most people I have found who own a car have some degree of passion for it, from Ford Fiestas to hand build Caterham Sevens. People who don’t own cars at all (and/or can’t drive) however often don’t get the car thing at all.

I get accused of being a Mac fanboy on occasion. I get friends occasionally go off on how they hate macs (Hi Craig).

I just got a brand new untouched. HP for the office. Booted it up. Have now (2 hours later) have finished installing over 100 updates, and rebooting 4 times. Let me add that's after a few reboots and updating the updating software first. Also I have a box in the corner that keeps flashing and telling me my system might be at risk and my AntiVirus software is out of date. This is a brand new machine.

Granted Vista might be a better out of the box experience, but I've yet to hear good reports on vista, especially on inexpensive hardware.

You can argue pros and cons of machines and their are fair points on both sides. Although less of an argument when you take away familiarity (people generally like what they are used too).

However you cannot, in no way argue that a PC has a better out of the box experience.

Hell you'd struggle to argue that it has anything but a mediocre one. I'd even go so far as to say atrocious. It's border line the same experience as buying a new cordless drill. Which is why people generally view PCs as tools and Macs as something more.

[Update: 20/10/07] - Roughly drafted covers this much better than I do: UK TABLOIDS PICK UP ZOON AWARDS FOR TECHNICAL INCOMPETENCE

The iPhone was announced for the UK yesterday. It's out November the 9th and I'll be getting one, pretty much on launch day if I can. I've been reading about it for months, it solves problems I have, I want it.

Today's press was filled with a stunning array of journalistic incompetence. Or to be fair, one bit of journalistic incompetence that everyone seems to be copying or repeating.

The Metro today for example runs with "iPhone can be yours for a measly £1,259"