Most exciting iOS 4/iPhone 4 features for Handelabra

After having the weekend to play with my shiny new iPhone 4, I feel as giddy as when I got my first iPhone, a 3G, almost 2 years ago.  So does this "change everything.  Again" as apple would have us believe?  Maybe not everything, but there are one or two great new features that we at Handelabra Studio can't wait to play with.

StyleAssist

iPhone 4 front facingOn the StyleAssist front, the coolest thing that arrives with iPhone 4 is the front-facing camera.  I can't tell you how many times we've stressed over how frustrating it can be to have to take a self portrait with an iPhone.  The lack of any sort of tactile response to pushing a software button made it a serious case of hit or miss.  The safest option for getting good pictures on a 3G or 3GS remains the same: have someone else take the pictures.  Generally, this will be pretty easy as the best time to take a picture of a new hairstyle is while you're still sitting in the chair when your stylist is right there to assist you. (see what I did there?)  But the front-facing camera on iPhone 4 really makes taking self-portraits super easy.  The resolution is lower (standard VGA of 640x480, see sample), but generally good enough for our purposes.

iPhone 4 rear camera with flashAnother bonus for StyleAssist comes in the form of the LED flash now included next to the 5-megapixel rear facing camera.  While you'll still need to have decent lighting conditions to get a passable front-facing photo, iPhone 4's included flash makes snapping pictures in the dark, well, a snap.  If you look at the sample, you'll still notice some blur, probably related to a combination of slower shutter speed in low light and the shakiness of my hand taking a self portrait in carpal-tunnel mode.  But we'll take what we can get!

The final bonus (from John's point of view at least) is that the camera switching and flash on/off/auto buttons and functionality are completely free from a coding perspective.  As long as we stay out of their way, the base camera includes them automatically.

GAME.minder

Lots of people have derided this "feature" of iOS 4 but we at handelabra are actually a bit excited about iAd, Apple's new mobile advertising network.  The ads themselves are pretty much what apple says they are, immersive and cool looking.  And Given what Apple's doing with the terms of service for mobile advertising these days, the fact is, it's a lot easier to hop on board with iAd than try to figure out what's going to happen down the line with AdMob.  And it gave us a really good excuse to move GAME.minder development up to iOS 4 and not look back.

All in all, the arrival of the 4's, while confusing for non-techies (No THIS is an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.  THIS is iOS 4 running on an iPhone 3Gs.  No really, it makes sense, let me start over...) is a pretty exciting time here at Handelabra.

Now if we can just get a solid date for iOS 4 on the iPad...

Waiting in line for an iPhone 4

Ever since attending WWDC, I've known that I would be waiting in line for an iPhone today. The feeling of being surrounded by a large group of apple fans is like no other. Why yes, I am drinking the cool-aid, thank you very much. What can I say, its 5:30 am. The only other time recently I've been up this early was when my kids were scared by a thunderstorm. Yet, here I sit, waiting patiently for my chance to be a part of the iPhone 4 phenomenon.T-minus 90 minutes!

What is good UI?

No Bad UIWhile most of the information garnered at WWDC is strictly confidential, one thing I can talk about is the fact that Handelabra got a chance to sit down with some Apple interface designers to go over our apps from a usability and UI point of view.  Specifically with regards to StyleAssist, some of the incites reaped were terrific.What we've constantly struggled with while building StyleAssist is the balance between design and usability.  The simple fact is that making a thing supremely usable often times means making it ugly.  This is a personal opinion and I know there are MANY people who would disagree with me.  Yes, usability offers it's own beauty but StyleAssist is meant to appeal to a certain type of person - someone who appreciates a certain amount of style (it's right there in the name, after all).  That being said, the one resounding incite that came from our session was this:

More pictures, less UI.

That spoke to the simple brilliance in this quote:

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -Antoine de Saint-Exuper

It's a constant push and pull between usability, design, simplicity and power.  The goal is finding the right amount of power to make a thing worth using while still being simple enough to remain usable, but at the same time not ugly.  It's a tough row to hoe and it was priceless getting another set of eyes to look at it.  Specifically eyes that have done it before, for a company that often times values usability, design and simplicity over power.

What we needed to do was find the "center" of the app and let the UI design itself.  In our case, the center of the app is pictures.  All we needed to do then was find the smallest amount of UI that would facilitate the functionality we wanted to accomplish.  Only then did we start to "design" those UI elements.  The new look of StyleAssist is, to me, a lot more focused and, hopefully, easy to use.

We'll see when we launch it later this summer!

Decompressing WWDC

Well, I'm home, cleaned up and the jet lag has mostly worn off so that makes it time to decompress. And frankly, I've never felt more like a zip file in my life.Attendees are all under NDA so I can't go into specifics regarding anything beyond the keynote, but I can explain what I mean about a zip file. At around 2pm Monday, apple turned on a fire hose and aimed it at around 5000 developers. It was then up to us to catch as much info as we could. There was precious little time for reflection between sessions, we just needed to take copious notes and move on. I expect it will be several weeks before the entirety of what we learned will be "available to the system" in uncompressed form.

Suffice to say, I feel like Handelabra could have taken 5 people instead of 2 and still missed something somewhere. Between new frameworks, updates to old frameworks, additions to software and hardware, it's clearly a VERY good time to be in the mobile space.

And on the other side of the coin, Handelabra made some fabulous connections with developers working on some amazing new products. I truly cant wait to see what comes to market in the next 2 months.

Thanks to all the great people we met this week! Can't wait for WWDC '11!

Looking forward to my first WWDC experience

I've used Apple products since I was 8 or 9.Every professional job I've had, I've done on a mac.

I even worked for Apple retail for almost 3 years.

But in all that time, I've never attended one of the near-legendary "Keynote Speeches", so to say I'm excited is an understatement. But it's not in a "drinking the kool-aid", "prostrate myself before the Steve" kind of way. Honestly, it's not. (I swear).

What I'm most looking forward to is seeing one of history's greatest marketers in action, first-hand. I don't think that's an overstatement. How many companies out there would love to have the entire internet stop and listen every time you announce a new product? I know I would. How apple got themselves to a place where they can call a meeting and have people start lining up before dawn to participate is the subject of books and beyond the scope of a blog post. But nevertheless, that's what they've done and I can't wait to be there in person.

(ok, maybe just a little kool-aid)

Should Copyright be split in 2?

Copyright over 2I spend a lot of time thinking about the state of copyright in the digital world.  I took a few “law classes for non-lawyers” when I was finishing my undergraduate degree and one focused specifically on intellectual property in the digital age.  I found it completely fascinating.

Quick question, of the following 3 options, what is the PRIMARY function of copyright?  (in the united states)

  • to prevent people from profiting from the work of others
  • to guarantee creators the exclusive right to profit from their own work
  • to promote the open exchange of ideas

Here’s what the United States Constitution has to say about it:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

You may notice the distinct LACK of a mention of profit.  I bring this up because I think we as a society have lost our way with regards to the usefulness of copyright and other intellectual properties.  The term of copyrights, back in ye olden days, maxed out at around 28 years - a 14 year term with an additional 14 year optional extension.  Ever since then, it’s been continuously extended to the point we are at currently which is long enough as to be essentially meaningless for normal people (once you start measuring things in “life of the author plus”, it is essentially meaningless, in my opinion).

So what’s wrong with having such protections?  And why would someone whose work is protected by copyright (the code used in apps) be against them?  It all goes back to the stated purpose of copyright in the first place.

The goal of providing protection to authors for a LIMITED time is to give an incentive to create.  Which then brings us to the question of WHY we want people to create.  I would hope the answer to that would be self evident.  But the idea of these protections being LIMITED is an important one because it creates something that is often taken for granted - the public domain.  If you want to know why Grimm’s fairytales are constantly being remade, or how the novel Wicked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked:_The_Life_and_Times_of_the_Wicked_Witch_of_the_West) could be written without a license from L Frank Baum, you need look no further than the public domain.  This is a magical place where copyrighted works pass on to and become the property of all humanity.  The beauty of this place is that it means that anyone can use them in any way to continue the cycle of creation.

So what the hell am I talking about when I say “split copyright in 2”.  Well I’ve been thinking that maybe we should start looking at the idea of copyright through a whole different lens.  I’m starting to think that maybe we break it into “primary” and “secondary” copyright.

Primary Copyright

Primary copyright would be a lot like how we see it today, but with time limitations more in line with how things started.  Just to pick a number, let’s say 25 years.  In my opinion, if you create something with the goal of profiting from it, and you can’t make that happen in a quarter century, it shouldn’t be the job of copyright law to facilitate it.  Primary copyright would be unable to be transferred (similarly to moral rights - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_(copyright_law)), except with regards to works made for hire or instances of corporate authorship.  This is what leads us to:

Secondary Copyright

Most of what happens in the world of copyrights today is related to licensing.  Warner Brothers buys the rights to Harry Potter, and they alone are licensed to create movies based on the books.  In my vision of secondary copyright, the type of license you can buy is a little different than it exists today.

In keeping with the stated goal that copyright is meant to promote the PROGRESS of science and the useful arts, secondary copyrights would be limited to a shorter period than that of primary, say 12 years.

In today’s world, the book of Harry potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published in 1997.  When will it’s copyright expire?  The answer is, we won’t know until J. K. Rowling dies.  But from that day, you need only wait 70 short years and then book one (and ONLY book one of course) will pass into the public domain.  Do you see what I mean by essentially meaningless?  There’s a decent chance that less than 1% of the people reading these words right now will live to see Harry Potter enter the public domain.

Under my proposed system, the book will enter the public domain in 2022, a good 12 years from now.  Still a decent amount of time for J. K. Rowling to have exclusivity over publishing rights.

And the movie?  The rights for the first Harry Potter movie were secured in 1999 and the movie released in 2001 which would allow that movie to pass into the public domain in 2013 under my proposed system; only 3 more years.  At that time, anyone could copy and re-release the movie for their own profit.  It’s obvious why the studios would hate this idea, but why should we, the people love it?

How about these:

  • Imagine a DVD version of Harry potter that has a joke commentary in place of the actual audio, MST3K style.
  • Or a version that has a video AND audio commentary where you (yes, YOU) pick apart the frame composition by drawing over the pictures to describe why some shots work and others don’t.

Neither of these are legal without express written permission (and a hefty license fee) under the current system, until and unless the item in question is in the public domain.  But there is a key distinction to be made here:

in 2013, when the movie passes into the public domain, the book still has some time on the clock.  You still can’t shoot your own version of the movie based on the book and this is by design.

As I see it, the act of CREATION falls within the definition of copyright, as it is laid out in the constitution.  Sure, there could be a profit motive, but the act of creation itself is why copyright exists.  But the act of licensing is driven by one motivation: profit.  As such, I don’t think it deserves the same level or length of protection.  If you license a work, in search of profit, you get limited time to do so.  If you can’t secure a profit in that time, it’s not the job of the law to provide you with “the long tail”.

Is this proposal perfect?  Doubtful.  But I think it presents a decent first step in swinging copyright back to the track it was originally meant to be on, and away from the current “corporate profit protection statute” that it has become.

Agree or Disagree?