De fleste designere og mac-nørder har ventet med spænding på, at se hvad Steve Jobs og co. ville præsentere på WWDC 2008.

Sædvanen tro imponerede de alle Apple-fans – ikke bare med en iPhone der indeholder 3G (så de afhængige af os altid kan tjekke mail) men også med løftet om en lancering i Danmark primo juli.

En masse nytænkende mennesker har været på banen for at udvikle banebrydende applikationer. Apple er sjældent bange for at involvere udviklere udefra og det har bl.a. resulteret i en ultratjekket opdatering af spillet “Super Monkey Ball”. Spillet udnytter iPhone’s bevægelsescensor - man styrer altså spillet ved at bevæge iPhonen.

IPhonen bliver ikke mindre interessant af, at den har fået GPS. Ikke blot kan ejeren nu altid finde sig selv og den nærmeste latté, men også afskaffe bilens GPS og nøjes med telefon, musik og GPS i samme gadget.

En række udviklere har brainstormet på hvordan den nye GPS-funktionalitet, kontaktpersoner og kommunikation kan kombineres på nye måder. Det er resulteret i programmet “Loopt”. Loopt bringer social networking til nye højder – hvor venner/kærester og andre i din telefonbog altid lokalisere dig. Sidder du alene til frokost kan Loopt hurtigt lokalisere dine venner i området.

Forhåbentlig er det en funktion der kan slåes til og fra efter behov, ellers ryger dårlige undskyldninger om “sene aftener på kontoret”, “jeg er ude at rejse” etc. Det rejser naturligvis nogle problemstillinger i forhold til overvågningssamfund, men vi vælger istedet at glæde os over de muligheder det åbner op for…

Som altid er der tænkt brugervenlighed, færre klik og enkelhed i designet af både telefon og applikationer.
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The graf above (Google Analytics - great software) points out an interesting shift in web navigation of today. The 28,87 % is the share of users landing directly on the Home Page of a Danish Trade Union. This means that 71,23% of all users on this Trade Union website skips the homepage and goes directly to sub pages of the site. Earlier on the share of users entering a site through the home page was much greater than today. One of the main factors in this change is the upcoming of search engines such as Google. Now people search for content and is directed to the relevant page immediately.  So why am I writing about this? Why is this interesting? Because this change in user behaviour should change the way we design for web.

Web Navigation 2.0, as I so webish called it in the headline, means that the need for navigational instruments and overview possibilities on sub pages is about to be redefined. I say this because users for the time being have no clue about the total content of a site when entering via a sub page. Besides what information they can get from the global navigation, content navigation and the sub page itself, there isn’t much overview. So I predict that related information, and visualisation of site content is going to be something we will hear a lot more about in the years to come. Agree?

PS. I just found this great example: Apples new homepage. Take a look to the left of the Leopard-box. A great way to offer tons of information in very little space. Try to imagine news, calendar, hot products and vacant jobs on a corporate website in this form. Cool hhm?

Reading Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer a couple of weeks ago, I realised something that really struck me. Designing the Ipod, Apple did no user testing… Since Apples security is so strict, Apple didn’t want to test the Ipod, because there was a risk of revealing what was coming. However testing a user interface that is so new to the users as the click-wheel, would seem to be the only sensible thing to do. Apple chose to rely on Jonathan Ive’ designer skills instead of the users, and you could say that wasn’t such a bad idea. So my question for you:  Is user testing mostly for the unskilled designers?

By Rudolf

iPhone, AppleTV, Airport Express - all hot off the MacWord conference.

iPhone. iPhone..

Apple, Inc stocks will soar.

iPhone, it’s the iPhone!

The definitive keynote experience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8L39UwOS-Y

MacWorld time. The Mac fan community is buzzing with rumors, centered around Steve Jobs annual keynote speech.

A quick roundup on what I expect the keynote to contain:

iTV:
This is already announced, very un-apple-like. My guess is a more thourough presentation of iTV and a release date.
Also expect a release date if it is not immediately available.

Leopard:
Steve will reveal more “top-secret” features with non-technical names to kill off Vista. If any release date will be announced it will probably be late march.

New Macs:
The Mac Pro will be introduced with the new Core 2 Quad processors. The top end models are lagging behind since there is no native Intel version of Adobes Creative Suite yet. Rosetta isn’t all that good.

New Displays:
Apple has discontinued the iSight, and are building it into all its computers, the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini are the only ones without it, so an integration in the Cinema Displays seem obvious.
On top of that rumors have been floating around for more than a year that a Cinema-style 50″ display are in the works.. A perfect partner for iTV.

iWork and ILife ‘07
These are almost too easy. Perhaps the will be bundled to compete directly with MS Office.

One more thing…
The sentence that gets everybody exited. Last year Steve introduced the new Intel line of Macbook Pros, this year chance are that we’ll see one of the following:

iPhone?
Except that it wont be called the iPhone, everybody is cheering for it, but I’m pretty sure its not gonna happen. Why?
http://www.ryanablock.com/archive/2006/12/why-do-people-want-the-applephone-so-much/

I think he is right on all his negative accounts.

Touch-Screen video iPod?
With widescreen players and especially the Zune on the market, Apple can’t afford just to sit tight. An updated video iPod isn’t that far off.
Patents have been discovered with all kinds of touchscreen niftyness. Features should include: Bluetooth, Wifi, Touchscreen.

We will all know next week. :)

/½