Ever since we’ve hacked our iPhones, we’ve been noodling on themes for SummerBoard.
We’re happy to share six of them with you today, with more to come in the future. If you grab them, be sure to post comments to let us know what you think. Five more after the break…
1 Bit by Jared Benson
Pixels rule. What if the iPhone was released with a 1-bit display? Enjoy this old school rendition. Download it here.
From the Economist this week (edition: 10/27-11/2):
“Another winner from the launch of the iPhone was AT&T, which is the exclusive carrier for the device in the United States. Its quaterly net-profit rose by 42% compared with the same period last year. Around 40% of iPhone subscribers were new customers to AT&T.”
Email sent from a desk does not equal email sent from a mobile device.
When you send an SMS text or chat message people understand the casual, quick nature of the medium, and therefore expect a level of casualness when it comes to spelling full words (u versus you, ppl versus people) and forming complete thoughts and sentences. Just as spoken language is conversational, chat and SMS afford a certain level of laxness.
Email has evolved. There was a time when typing in all lowercase (hopefully you never typed in all caps) was normal enough for email. But since it has become the mainstay of corporate communication, it has dressed up accordingly. Although emoticons occasionally find their way into corporate emails, cute misspellings and abbreviations don’t.
New etiquette is needfully emerging. How do recipients know you’re sending an email from a device versus your desktop? When I’m writing a note via email from a mobile device, to a work colleague, must I type in complete thoughts and sentences? Must I capitalize and punctuate?
When I first saw Apple’s “Sent from my iPhone” default signature I thought it just let me show off my cool quotient with an iPhone reference. What they really did was create a disclaimer: forgive the typos and the informality.
(I thought about actually posting this from my phone, but blogging requires a certain level of formality that I wasn’t prepared to take on with a mobile device. That would be more appropriate for my microblog.)
The context versus consistency debate is not new, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be over. 37signals adds another argument to the context pile…
I read this interesting (short) article on 37signals.com concerning Apple’s placement of their new iTunes icon on the iPhone home screen. Given that the western world reads from left to right, users would expect this last icon to appear on the left side, right?… Not so says Apple, here’s why:
Read Context over Consistency at 37signals.com.
Although it’s something that the common person might not notice or ‘get’, it shows that the Apple UI folks are never asleep at the wheel and that they spend time thinking about the small details and their resulting implications. Don’t just do things automatically because tradition says we should or because the technology says it should be that way.
You’ve probably had this experience:
The iPhone stands out strongly as an exception. It definitely passes the 2 week test criteria: a) you love it more after 2 weeks than you did when you got it and b) you can’t remember life before it. (Okay, so I’m exaggerating that last point.)
This iPhone tip goes out to those of you following the growing “Life Hacks” movement - gaining back precious minutes of your life through efficiency practices.
We’ve all been stuck in meetings that we wish we could get out of. Well, fortunately His Steveness has designed something handy into the iPhone which will help us reclaim our lives so we can get back to doing what we _really_ want to be doing. If you have the foresight, try this before attending your next meeting:From the main menu, select Clock then Timer. Use the wheel interface to set your interval (How much of this meeting are you willing to endure?), set your ringtone and hit “Start.”
Attend your meeting. Go ahead and shut your phone down (read as: Hit the hardware button on top right) and set it on the table next to your notebook, printouts, etc. and act as interested as you can in the meeting. Resist the urge to check the timer - don’t worry, it won’t let you down. When the timer reaches zero, it will wake up your iPhone and play the ringtone. To anyone glancing over at your iPhone, the combination of idle screen wallpaper and ringtone will look convincing, even to a fellow iPhone user.
Grab it shortly into the first ring, give it a quick glance, and apologize to those left in the room.. “Sorry, I gotta take this…”
There has been a lot of press and commentary on Apple’s iPhone. Deservedly so. From what has been presented thus far the iPhone is a sleek piece of hardware and software engineering as only Apple can produce it. Whether the iPhone is revolutionary, expected or somewhere in between, the discussion has focused primarily on the device’s features and interface. Much less has been said about the implications of Apple’s iPhone business strategy. Since the iPhone was announced on January 9, my thoughts have turned to the decisions that Apple has had to make in order to enter the wireless market and what may come in the wake of the iPhone’s June 2007 launch.
Why iPhone?
Apple’s decision to get into the wireless device business is not surprising. Since the launch of the iPod 5 years ago, Steve Jobs has touted the connected experience where all Apple devices and services work and play seamlessly with one another in one glorious digital ecosystem. Since the mobile phone has become the one device that no one is ever without, despite the fact that nothing about the wireless experience is very good, it was only a matter of time before Apple got into the game. “Everybody hates their phone,” Time magazine quotes Jobs as saying, “and that’s not a good thing. And there’s an opportunity there.”
Uncharted Territory
Having decided to get in the game, Apple’s most significant decision is to be a manufacturer only rather than a manufacturer + MVNO. This is curious since Apple’s brand is largely based on its control of the end-to-end consumer experience. The MVNO route would have allowed Apple to maintain the most control over the end-to-end iPhone experience, clearly important after the ROKR fiasco. However, it would also have taken Apple into uncharted territory as a wireless operator. With iPhone v.1 Steve Jobs has decided to take the path with the fewest risks and stick with what he knows Apple does best.
“Cool, no hard hard keys!” versus “Are you kidding? No keyboard?”
First, I’m not deluded enough to think the iPhone is the holy grail of devices. They have a lot in their favor in the US, but they don’t have a smooth ride like they did with the iPod.
If you read the US blogs and tech papers, the iPhone is best thing since the personal modem. Glowing headlines like Apple Waves its Wand at the Phone, where David Pogue equates Apple to a fairy godmother, to “It’s Expected, but it’s Stunning” from the SF Chronicle.
But if you read what the Europeans and Asians are saying, this is cool, but not worth all the hype. Russell Buckley even says it’s just a music phone. Then there’s the LA Times story: “In Japan, Barely a Ripple”, which is saying that all these features (plus mobile payments) have been available in Japan for 2+ years already. (But come on, they haven’t thrown out cumbersome soft keys in exchange for full-face, multi-touch screens, have they?)
So, what is it? Is it just a music phone?
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Got Windows Mobile? Don’t fret, you can be cool like Steve Jobs too.
If you’re like me, perhaps you bought that Motorola Q for its slim form factor, only to find that you no longer have the sveltest handset on the market anymore. Well look no further; you don’t have to switch to Cingular in June after all. Simply enable this handy iPhone theme on your Q (or brand new Q Pro) and be the envy of all.
Before you get your hopes up, those nifty icons are just for decoration. Its Windows Mobile; you didn’t actually expect them to work, did you?
The theme does provide one-click access to your messaging options. [Not available for download.]