So. The iPad. Cool, eh?

What, you don’t like it? Think Jobs under-delivered in his keynote? Thinking your tiny Dell netbook can do all that and more, even if you have to crouch to look at the screen and glue your hands together to type?

Yeah, I know. Tablets with full 9.7 inches of ultra-sensitive touch screens are so common nowadays. I mean, these things can even play HD video without crashing their way to reboot, yeah, that’s common too. And the interface? Pssssh, I’ve seen Excel worksheets looking better than that iCal view. And all that starting from $499? Gee, what were these guys thinking.

Seriously, people, get a grip. I don’t know what kind of mystic arcana you believed Jobs would unveil in his keynote, but really, are you that close-minded to think that the iPad is common and overrated? Have you seen many tablet PCs nowadays that look and function as cool and intuitively as the iPad looked in that intro video?

And don’t get me started about the lack of Flash support; seriously, who cares¹. Oh I know – Flash developers care. Look, my fellow developers, I admire your skills but seriously, seriously, don’t you ever think that maybe it’s the time to expand your skills a bit if you want to hop on the bandwagon?

Most developer complaints I’ve heard are based on the loose axis of “yeah I know I could do that and more with Cocoa, but I’m confident with my current set of skills and I don’t want to learn Objective-C”. This is wrong and you know it – this is as if PHP developers absolutely refused to dabble on Ruby & Python because they’re “happy with their current set of skills”. We’re called developers for God’s sake, don’t you think we should develop our skills every now and then?

The iPad is not made for you and me, fellow geek. It’s primarily targeted to people that are still afraid of interacting with PCs, those that don’t have a clue about drivers and web apps and Wi-Fi setup. And this is exactly the kind of people that won’t buy a Linux netbook, dear Open Source zealots – because as much as Ubuntu has made Linux user-friendly, there’s still much filling that shows between the seams.

One could argue that I’m a total iPad fangirl and everything above is the fruit of my utter fangirlism, but I assure you, I’m not that much of a fanatic cookie. I’ll probably don’t even buy the first generation iPad. But I’ve seen people getting it so wrong on the interwebs these days that I’ve collected a massive amount of ranting fume.

¹ Yeah, I know Farmville fanatics, you’ll have to stick to your netbooks to sow your corn, but I don’t really care about you to be frank.

One of the newest kids on the productivity (or as all the cool kids call it, GTD) field is The Hit List, a polished task management app from PotionFactory, the mama of Voice Candy and Tangerine!.

Having used (for just a bit) a ton of task management apps, both on Windows and on Mac OS, I can tell if one of those buggers is gonna be a hit or not. And this, my friends, is a direct crossé to the jaw of procrastination.

Things? I never quite got used to it. Sounds illogical, but it never managed to fit my workflow. I didn’t like the way it handled tasks and projects and ‘areas’, plus it stayed in beta phase for too long.

OmniFocus? I would love it. If I was Merlin Mann. I’m a quite simple-minded girl and OF was just too much for me.

iGTD? Anything with “todo” somewhere in their name? You name it, I’ve tested it. Nothing worked. So I’ve settled with TaskPaper and all its simple-text, cross-platform goodness. I use it everyday for simple lists, but I wanted an application to keep track of greater projects and complex to-dos. Enter The Hit List.

It’s sexy (even in its public beta incarnation), it’s pleasant to use, it makes you wanna do things, cross them off your list and then add some more (actually, I don’t think that’s a very good side-effect, but whatever).

What I loved:

• Getting around using only the keyboard. I cannot remember myself ever learning all the shortcuts of an application, but I’ve quickly mastered THL ones. It even has a ‘game mode’, where you can move tasks around with W, A, S, D. Support for vi and emacs text shortcuts included. Quicksilver-like “Go To…” functionality. What’s not to love?
• Nested tasks. Yes, at lasts, a task is not just a single action, it’s a tree. Thank you.
• Tabbed view, so handy and card view, which lets you focus on one task alone, adding notes at will. Perfect for brainstorming.
• When you finish a task, a pleasant sound greets you. That is one of the things that makes you wanna complete more and more. Excellent work in visual and aural cues.
• The overall level of polish, given the fact that it’s still in beta (I cannot get over Things prohibiting me from dragging stuff to the sidebar).

I have heard many people comparing The Hit List to Things, but this is like comparing your sexy new girlfriend to your interesting-looking, but pyjama-wearing ex. Yes, THL is a polished task management app like Things, but fares better in almost everything in my starry eyes.

Be sure to download it and give it a go if you’re into it. And check the default Learn The Hit List project for more insight.

* If you don’t get NKOTB, jesus. I’ve gotten way old.

Because they are.

I have a black/grey Griffin Nu Form case for my iPhone 3G, bought some months ago, along with one for Stelios. Both cases are now broken, in exactly the same place: just below the top left corner.

I know I’ve never dropped the phone so far, I don’t put it in my pocket, and 90% of its idle time, the iPhone is lying around on my desk or being securely tucked in one of my bag’s pockets. I don’t treat it hard nor I remove the case often. Then why is it broken, all of a sudden?

I should add that the included screen protector is kinda thick and moves a lot around, creating little Newton rings below and making the screen very hard to read sometimes. But I digress. I could live with that if the damn case would not break so easily.

I’m not pleased with this purchase. I’d like to replace my case (I have now gone back to a simple silicone one) but I don’t know of any quality but not wallet-draining cases. Any ideas?

As every web worker I know, I already have a collection of screenshots scattered around my iMac HD. I never felt quite good about it, really; I needed a way to gather all inspiring bits from here and there to a single system, simple and trusty enough to make me use it all the time.

So far, I’ve tried stuff like Skitch (I hate the non-Apple interface, so ugly), a combination of Snapz Pro X and Flickr, a combination of some random Firefox add-on and a trusty folder in my Finder, Curio (which is a great alternative to Microsoft OneNote but kinda of an overkill for this job).

Nothing really felt right. What I really wanted was something like iPhoto, but for screenshots.

And then the fine folks at Realmac software went ahead and released the public beta of LittleSnapper. Let there be light!

Easy screenshots through shortcuts, websnaps (full web site archives actually), built-in browser, DOM targeting (this is COOL), organize photos through collections and smart folders, tagging, rating… What more could a poor designer ask?

Well, some simple stuff:

• Tags autocomplete. That’s a must.
• Some way to view untagged stuff. I tried creating a smart folder for this, but there was no option for “tag is empty”, so…
• An easy way to share through e-mail and upload to my service of choice. Like, one-click easy.
• The option to copy LittleSnapper tags to Spotlight comments. My PIM of choice, Together, already has that and it’s way convenient.
• Small but an annoyance: LittleSnapper icon, please stop jumping up and down when I’m saving a websnap, thank you very much.

Give me those and I’m sold, Realmac.

I really think that even in version 1.0, LittleSnapper is the absolute screenshot tool for every web designer who happens to work on a Mac. And it has a decent jingle to it that makes you use it again and again – always a factor of oomph for every Mac app.

Try it now, people!

You’ve seen this truc before: most sites avoid labels altogether in intuitive, small forms (login forms are a premier example), placing the label contents into the text fields itself, using a pale class to denote that it’s “help text”.

The text is then reset when user focuses on the field, without him doing anything apart from clicking on it. All is good. Sun is shining. Users are happy, we are happy. Or are we?

Oh come on, you know you always have something in the back of your head that keeps nagging you: what if the user – God forbid – actually forgets what the helpful pale text is about? What does he do? Focus on another field to reset the value and get a brief glimpse of it?

Pfffft! Lame.

So what does Apple do? Setting the standards*, again.

I’m referring to the spiffy login form of me.com.

The Apple design robots use two states to make sure the user never, ever forgets: one, is the well known and abused classic pale class (color: #808080).

However, when a user focuses on the field but does not proceed into writing, the label is still there, a bit paler (opacity: 0.42) but still there. So the user starts writing without ever losing the field from sight.

Clever! Will use this approach in future projects.

* Online MobileMe sucks though, Apple. Fix it plz, kthnxbai.

Say what you want about the iPhone – its battery is not as bad as most people complain. At least, my iPhone battery is not that bad.

I can easily go from 2,5 to 3 days and more without charging the device, just by using some common sense.

If you want, apply those rules and check if your battery condition gets better:

• Disable 3G, Bluetooth and WiFi when not needed. A no-brainer. When you keep WiFi on, it always tries to find a location for you to connect to when you’re fiddling with the phone – why? Just keep them all off and switch them on as needed.
• Don’t expect your battery to last long if you’re always checking out apps and games on your phone. That’s quite normal too, tipping and tapping and pretty graphics drain up battery.
• Music and video are not that bad about your battery as you think – I always listen to music when at work and I check out my anime episodes when in bed and it’s not that much of a drag.
• If you find that your battery is reducing too radically to be normal, it’s usually a stuck process that’s doing it – I’ve had it once. Just restart the phone and it’d be fine.
• Follow normal circles of charging. Don’t let it dry too much, don’t let it over-charge. And remember: just because it informs you of 20% and 10% battery it doesn’t mean it needs charging right now! It can easily go some hours after that, with proper use.

To be frank, I would really like a faster way of switching on the wi-fi than the current one – or even better, I’d like that handy “Select WiFi location” window to pop up every time I try to access Internet without being connected.

That would be neat and it would alleviate the grind of passing through screens and flipping pretty switches.

Following some common sense, I’ve had over 2,5 and (max) 3,5 days on a single charge. However, I don’t talk or text that much and my usage patterns are most probably different than yours. This is not a “disable them all features to save battery” post, I never restricted myself from doing stuff just because they’ll drain the battery.

Feel free to experiment and share your experience and tips in the comments.

A light dose of healthy geekery and cute imagery for this Friday night.

Check out these icons:

These stand for the Coda Plug-in Creator and Coda Plug-in Samples & Source Code respectively. Got it? Code is the seed that the watering tank can help grow.

Doesn’t that make you feel all fuzzy inside? Or is it just my Friday mood?

Well played, Panic.

P.S. For those Mac-loving web designers hiding under a rock these days, Coda has launched its 1.6 version that adds plug-in support to it – you can also add your favourite Textmate bundles! Take that, Espresso.

I usually never ever check out products competitive to one I’ve bought myself – I’m sensible enough to understand that user experience varies widly and that, for example, not every “iPhone killer” around will replace my iPhone in terms of user satisfaction.

But with the release of the Android phone and the persistent efforts of a dying company to produce high quality phones, I noticed something, for some users (like me) important, for some others totally trivial.

One thing that these phones copy is the horizontal usage mode that iPhone and many many cellphones before it have. However, I only see this as dry repetition, as it was not copied well, in my humble opinion.

A simple thing was not taken in mind: buttons & orientation.

On the iPhone, we meet one simple round key. You hold the phone up, sideways, upside down, and the orientation and form of the key does not change, it always looks the same.

Check out the Nokia 5800, though. It has three horizontal bars for keys. Simple enough. But turn it around and you have, ehm, three vertical bars, one under another?

Even worse for the G1, which also sports some icons on its main keys, namely a home icon, a return (or looks like it) icon and two call related buttons. With the exception of the call related buttons, which can be interpreted almost the same at any orientation, the other buttons look mightly awkward when in horizontal mode:

It may look totally trivial, but as these functional keys will be used in both modes, it’s not actually that trivial.

I’m one of those people that have trouble with space and actions when changing orientation on a machine and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I imagine it’d be highly awkward (awkward, not difficult per se) to handle these keys in horizontal mode.

That’s one point off, for me.

Almost 30 days ago, I became the happy (and kinda broke) owner of a black iPhone 3G, 16GB. I’m not that much of an enthusiastic consumer, I bought it and that’s it – only a tweet betrayed my purchase.

I decided that the best time for me to write an obligatory iPhone post was this. 30 days after my purchase, things should be quite settled down, I’d have a solid opinion on the matter. And that’s true.

Some clarifications first:

• Vodafone does not want you to have a non-contract iPhone. They won’t let you have it, the end, no matter how much you flap your money under their nose. The best solution, if you’re not into iPhone hunting, is to inform them that you want one for a contract, and then suddenly “change” your mind.
• The 2.1 firmware update was what 2.0 should be.
• The battery life is not as short as advertised – with moderate use, it can go on for 2.5 – 3 days. Quite an accomplishment for something with such a large touch screen and a constant “TOUCH ME NOW” factor.
• No, I haven’t jailbroken it yet. I still don’t see the point, given the kind of my usage.
• App Store is such a sweet way of distributing applications, but I want trials. Lite versions do not cut it.
• No, anonymous friend, I don’t care that I don’t have video / MMS / SMS report support. I can live without it, really.

All in all, the iPhone is a sweet, sleek piece of mobile sex. Fangirlism aside, it’s the sexiest and simplest mobile phone I’ve seen and used and that’s a fact.

Now, the obligatory list of my favourite iPhone apps. Or rather, those that I find the most interesting or useful:

Air Sharing. Indispensable – essentially, it turns your iPhone into a wireless hard drive. Sure, WiFi is not the most secure or stable ways of handling data, but it works and it made my iPhone a 16GB portable disk and I’m happy.

Twitterrific. I’m an avid fan of Twitterrific on the Mac – I hate all others Twitter clones. For me, Twitter = Twitterrific, and the iPhone interface is really cool too.

Shazam. Impress your friends by identifying even the most obscure song mixes – I did.

Things. I still find the Things to-do organization system a bit queer, but it’s the simplest and most efficient way to add tasks on the iPhone (and keep then synced with the iMac), so Things it is.

Aurora Feint & SoD. Two awesome adventure / puzzle games, the first free (and social!), the other paid. Seriously, gaming on the iPhone is real fun and I can’t wait to see what else the App Store has in stash for us.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my little phone. Never had the crashes problems or keyboard lag that other iPhone owners suffered, so 2.1 was an update from heaven for me.

It’s a pretty thing, but I’m not all obsessed with it, I don’t check it for scratches all the time, I don’t wipe up its smudges all the time, nor I secretly get it with me at bed at nights and lick it.

It’s simple, it’s nice, it’s functional, it really works, that’s it. Get one, if you can – if you can’t, it’s ok! Get another phone.

Just don’t go around saying that your HTC is soooo much better than my iPhone – you have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re not talking functionality here, we’re talking user experience, and iPhone is all about that.

I’m a recent Mac switcher.

The trick was done with the iPod nano I got as a gift for my graduation back in 2006. Since then, I’ve bought my first laptop ever (a Macbook, 1st gen), replaced my ageing PC this year with a shiny new iMac and recently bought an iPhone 3G.

Am I an Apple fangirl? No.

I just happen to love Apple products. Really love them. Not all of them, but most.

When people ask me “Hey, why should I get a Mac?”, I shrug. I don’t know the answer. I just tell them that they improved my quality of life, and that’s proof enough for me.

How can an Apple product change a life, you ask? A step at a time.

Get simple with an iMac

You get a thin as stick iMac, no buzzing boxes with whirling blue LEDs, no cable mess, nothing. Just a keyboard, a mouse and a screen. The archetype of a computer – I happen to love this.

The iMac helped me discover I don’t need a mess of things to make my life better. God knows how much life clutter I threw away during my Mac switch. Simplicity even in features and so-called “specs”.

Get efficient with a Macbook

It’s insane how much work I’ve done (and keep doing) working on a Mac. For some weird reason I’m 10x efficient when working on a Macbook – not to mention more content and at ease.

At first people stare and you and wonder, how on earth can you do work on a Mac? They are all bells and whistles, right? Well, right. They just make your efficiency go turbo too at the same time.

Get greedy with an iPhone

Is greed a virtue? Yes it is, if you learn not to settle for anything else than a sexy cellphone that even by lacking features, it made all other “smartphones” pale in contrast.

You work hard, you strive to learn, you never settle down with what you already know – hey, you need to pamper yourself sometimes with a piece of sex, why not?

Get patient because hey, MobileMe is down again

MobileMe is by far the most buggy Apple thing I’ve ever used and I don’t recommend it to anyone not patient enough. The web interface doesn’t work almost half of the time but hey, at least syncing works most of the time.

Will I go on and rave and fill the internets with my endless rage? No. I’ll just wait till things settle down. I paid for it, yes, but it’s not that I’ll lose my temper because something does not yet work as expected – then I’d have to get anger management classes with what I see daily.

So the Apple way of life is not for everyone. I don’t go around preaching my way of working and having fun, I just like the way it goes. If you wanna try it too, just start small: an iPod, some iPhone, or even a Mac mini should suffice.

So why you should get a Mac? Still don’t know. But they made me happy alright.

apple, macbook, imac, iphone, ipod, mobileme