erraticwisdom: The iPod Touch

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I’ve had my iPod Touch for a good week now and am absolutely loving the multi-touch experience. To say that the iPhone/iTouch UI is revolutionary is a massive understatement. In its first entrance into the mobile OS market, Apple has leapfrogged years past its competitors and leaves my Windows Mobile-powered Motorola Q in the dust. Switching between the obnoxiously unresponsive Q and the smooth scrolling and animation of the iPod only makes Apple’s product more brilliant.

Recent advancements in hacking the device mean that my iPod is now the greatest PDA I’ve ever used. The TIFF exploit-based jailbreak method (while not as straightforward as the iPhone’s options) was fairly simple to produce and I now have all of the iPhone applications such as Mail, Maps, Notes and a functional Calendar running perfectly.

However, the device is not without its niggles and I wouldn’t be a UI designer if I didn’t point out a few of the most obvious:

Application state preservation – There does not seem to be any universal standard for state preservation in applications when a user returns to the home screen. In YouTube or Photos, a click of the home screen means you’ll start from the beginning when you reselect it. For Music and Safari, the application remembers your status.
Touch alternative to main button – The touch interaction becomes so natural that it can be a bit disconcerting to switch to the tactile button when returning to the home screen. It would be nice to have a touch alternative to the home button always showing somewhere.
Excessive animation – I hate saying this because the effects are so smooth, but sometimes the animations can be a bit disconcerting. For example, if I click a link in Mail, the Mail app zooms out, then Safari zooms in, then the current Safari page zooms out to display the “tab” navigator, then a new tab slides open and zooms in before the clicked link starts loading. The animations are lovely, but I have to wonder if simpler switch with a “Back to Message” button would be easier.
Application crash notification – Currently, when an application crashes on the iTouch (most frequently, Safari, when it encounters a resource-intensive page), the device just returns to the home screen and says “nope, nothing out of the ordinary happened there” (well, maybe not the second part). It would be helpful if the iPhone/iTouch would somehow acknowledge that the application had indeed crashed.
Easier “Breadcrumb” navigation – The current breadcrumb navigation design on the iPhone/iTouch only allows the user to move one level at a time. However, I usually have at least a couple nested folders in my Safari bookmarks and it can be a bit cumbersome to step back through each level. A more breadcrumb-like navigation system that listed the full path to the user’s current level would make this easier. Something akin to what is done on Leaflets would be ideal.

Have your own iPhone or iPod Touch? Feel free to describe any UI problems you’ve encountered in the comments.

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At: 10:47:50 PM
On: October 14
In: Personal
By: Tom Fadial

Comments

I don’t personally have an iPod Touch but I can absolutely relate to your fascination with the device by me enjoying my iPhone. Absolutely nothing compares to it and I constantly get challenged by others with the recently release Curve.
Jorge Quinteros

Oct 16, 05:19 PM #
I just got a touch today, as I’m in Canada and can’t have an iPhone yet. As you say, the smooth transitions are great initially, but they get old fast. There are a lot of times when you’ll do something and have to wait for it to catch up. The other thing I would have liked to see is basic audio controls, as this is foremost an iPod. If I’m browsing the web and just want to lower the volume or even pause the song, I have to switch to the home screen and go into music to pause it. This might be better as a physical button for those times when you just want to reach into your pocket and pause the song. Aside from those, its light years ahead of the competition. Maybe the next version will have bluetooth.
James

Oct 16, 10:40 PM #
Jorge:
I know, the thing is just a blast to use!

James:
I don’t know if it’s documented anywhere officially, but with the iPod Touch and iPhone 1.1.1 and above, you can double tap the home button and get a music player pop-up that lets you adjust the volume as well as prev/next/pause buttons.
Thame

Oct 17, 12:16 PM #
That is very interesting. I do not have my own and I don’t know anyone who has it, and I am now greatly intrigued and must see this.
Tom Martin

Oct 23, 09:26 PM #
That’s awesome, I wish they didn’t hide the quick player tip so well. I broke down and used jailbreak to see what the hype was about. The new app I use the most: minesweeper. Jailbreak seems to be more useful for the advanced crowd with command-line knowledge. I think the full-featured applications are waiting for the SDK next year. I vote for mail.app.
James

Nov 5, 02:07 AM #
hey, i wrote some tips on improving the iphone/ipod touch interface on my blog…

the main point was the camera, it takes too many clicks to actually take a picture. my idea is a home button hack where click hold home button opens camera. and release, shoot.

also, coz I’m a nerd drooling for the SDK open possiblitites, I wrote also about the apps I wanna see on iphone/ipod touch

BTW nice redesign, I didn’t know your blog before, but I just subscribed to it. keep up the good work.
Nicholas Frota

Feb 4, 02:12 PM #
The iPhone is far from Apple’s “first entry in the mobile OS market”, in fact it created the market with its “Newton” device which was a clunky brick but did something that had never been done before: put a computer into the palm of your hand. Everything from handheld PCs to PDAs to electronic book readers to modern, feature-rich cell phones are derived from the Newton, more or less. The iPhone/iPod Touch are simpy refinements of what Apple started back in 1993.
Paul

Mar 25, 04:51 PM #