gadgets

Free The Apple Watch

December 10, 2015 Technology

The Apple Watch was perfectly poised to sweep the industry. It had the goodness of the iPhone/Mac kitty, mainly the apps, the amazing product design and the indisputable quality of the Apple brand. Reasons which are enough for a device like the Apple Watch to own the industry which hadn’t seen much innovation in some time. Some of the early entrants to this arena were no match to the promise of experience and the technology which only Apple could deliver with its first wearable device. Sadly when it arrived it wasn’t the product we had anticipated, it wasn’t an ‘independent’ product. And let me explain.

The rich product basket of Apple including the iMac, the iPod, the iPad, and, the iPhone have existed as sovereign personalities with its own audience. The iPad, iPhone and iPod need the Mac/PC only for syncing content and are pretty much independent devices. Apple with its vast design experience curated an entire domain of great product design with hardware and software. Beginning with the unibody design and later with Yosemite by transforming the skeuomorphic UI with the flat design language. Other features such as HandOff and Continuity, and introduction of Maps, Notes, and Notifications on OSX which brought about a wonderful cohesion of OSX/iOS environments. All this and yet it did not take away the freedom of its users to work independently with these devices. Until the Watch came along. The graphic depicting the Apple devices isn’t honest to the Watch which can’t work without the iPhone.

The Watch as a wearable gadget with a small form factor meant that it would not naturally transition the rich cohesion of experience of the OSX/iOS devices. Although this does not make it an exceptional case when it comes to making it self-reliant within its functions and features. There are other watch devices today which do not need the phone support for offering a better user experience. And sure they may not tote a rich app ‘garden’ like the App Store. For now, let’s free the Watch from the clutches of the iPhone.

Apple’s product design cycle is unclear, if one is to understand that the earlier design iterations of the iPhone and iPad missed some essential features that were common to the devices of its kind. Considering this, the Watch isn’t freewheeling so soon until about a few more design iterations. Let’s hope the wait isn’t too long and painful.

iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – First Impressions

November 16, 2015 Design Technology

With loads of emotions, I had been awaiting the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil launch since Apple announced the breakthrough products in September 2015. The day finally arrived last weekend when I visited the Apple Store.

Disappointingly, my first impression when I held the iPad Pro was it just felt like a normal iPad! It wasn’t anywhere closer to the picture I was harbouring in my mind, of a large sheet of fine glass and slightly bulky device. Somewhere that tweet about the iPad Pro form factor feeling like an iPad Air 2 came true. Or maybe what I was feeling with the iPad Pro was a victory for Apple’s ingenuity in industrial design! Making something as powerful as the iPad Pro and letting the ergonomics sync with the present generation iPads. The new Smart Keyboard as well is a well designed and an exclusive accessory for the Pro. On the flip side we will have to wait for the next iPad Pro version to see the breakthrough 3D Touch technology at work which made the iPhone 6S series special in so many ways.

The Pencil’s story is quite different. I had used the FiftyThree Pencil last year but wasn’t too happy with the pressure sensitivity and the woeful response of the ‘stylus’ on the iPad. It required me to hold the tip in a certain way to touch the screen to draw something. The tip was rubbery and basically the experience never felt closer to a real pencil which I was initially expecting when I bought the product. The Apple Pencil feels every bit like the real stuff. The tip is hard and sensitive and detects the pressure points quite beautifully. It works even when you tilt it. The Pencil and iPad Pro combination is exciting – both are meant to work together actually, and a perfect platform for artists or architects to run their imagination wild. I’m already foreseeing a new genre of digital artistic wave being generated as a result of this innovative product from Apple. Now with Evernote supporting Apple Pencil it’s no doubt a fantastic device for everyone (and doodling takes a whole new meaning). I can’t wait to see what the upgrade for these devices has to offer.

“We didn’t really do a stylus, we did a Pencil. The traditional stylus is fat, it has really bad latency so you’re sketching here and it’s filling the line in somewhere behind. You can’t sketch with something like that. You need something that mimics the look and feel of the pencil itself or you’re not going to replace it. We’re not trying to replace finger touch, we’re complementing it with the Pencil.” – Tim Cook