“For years I stuck with my iPhone, not because it was the best phone on the market, but because of the app selection. It’s absolutely second to none. But every year I watched a new version of iOS announced with a slew of new features I didn’t care about, while core functionality (flaws and all) was left virtually unchanged.

“Meanwhile, I watched from afar as Google was iteratively improving Android into the open, flexible, intuitive OS that it is today. I recently made the switch from an iPhone 5 to a Nexus 4 and I haven’t looked back. All the things that bugged me about iOS were non-issues on this new platform. I found great substitutes for all my favourite iOS apps and even adopted a few new apps that were missing on iOS. Sure, there aren’t dozens of options for each individual app, but the quality of the top apps available today is really impressive.”

“For the first time, I’m looking forward to Google I/O more than WWDC this year to see what’s next for Android.”

From Jason Sallis.

I’m not talking about skeuomorphism, which is a poorly-understood concept anyway. Probably any good touch interface is skeuomorphic by nature: this is not really a page under glass that you’re sliding around in Safari or Chrome.

Nor is this about the spectrum that lies between totally flat design and extreme texture realism.¹

Where I see Apple losing ground is in those areas which are really key to a user interface in the post-PC, touch-driven era. For me, that’s largely not about color, texture, shading or even icons(!).

Rather, interfaces succeed or fail on the basis of organization (of the whole), layout (of the immediate view), typography, responsiveness, constancy² and accessibility. By “accessibility” I don’t mean only access for the impaired, but access to the features or information the user needs at any given moment.

So while Apple’s graphical surfaces continue to outshine the competition’s in attractiveness, its interfaces could be falling behind in other areas.

One of the most important issues of accessibility for modern touch devices is the virtual keyboard. It’s an interface we use constantly: for searching the web, for sending a message, for entering a password, for adding an appointment to a calendar or for adding comments to a photo.

As it stands, I’d rate Apple as holding a solid third place in keyboards. While it’s fast and responsive, offers user-definable shortcuts and includes a sometimes helpful, sometimes maddening autocorrection system, the iOS keyboard has changed very little since the iPhone was released in 2007. (Text fields did gain copy and paste, which are both helpful and maddening in other ways.) Meanwhile, keyboards in Android and Blackberry have pushed ahead with predictive auto-fill capabilities. These systems hone in on what your most likely next word is, and offer to let you insert it with a tap or gesture. Since typing on glass is never without some frustration, requiring fewer taps means fewer opportunities for aggravation.

Andy Ihnatko switched to Android in part because of its superior keyboard offerings; while Ars Technica concludes “the BlackBerry 10 keyboard [with its flick-up-to-autofill feature] is one of the best virtual keyboards we’ve ever used.”

Good for Android and Blackberry 10. But it’s not just text entry where Apple is falling short; text editing remains remarkably painful on iOS. Having to fat-finger the insertion point into the hairline space between two letters so you can remove an unintended capitalization is a recipe for exasperation — and the need for doing so comes up multiple times a day. There are good ideas out there for how iOS editing could be improved. So far, Apple hasn’t shown much zeal here.

There are accessibility issues beyond the keyboard. Toggling wifi or bluetooth connections and adjusting brightness remain points of annoyance on iOS. Switching apps on iPhone requires a clumsy double-click on a button that was never engineered for that purpose. And even on the large, pixel-rich display of the retina iPad, there is no way to load a social stream alongside a live video (as I’ve wanted to do during political debates) or keep an online article handy while writing a response to it.

These are all interface issues that have been addressed to one degree or another on other mobile platforms.

Sharing data between apps, or between devices, remains a profound hassle. Using a photo from one app in another usually requires the ridiculous step of saving it to a third app — Photos — first. And if you want to move that photo to another device (or to your Mac), well… I hope you’re a Dropbox user, because Apple can’t help you.

Nothing here represents a problem beyond Apple’s ability to solve.³ Instead, what we seem to be seeing here is an example of Ed Catmull’s adage, “Success hides problems.” Apple continues to be monstrously successful across nearly every one of its product lines. If the iPhone 5 is the world’s best-selling smartphone and the iPad is the leader among tablets, what can there be to fix? My fear is that at some point these little niggling annoyances — each minor enough when taken on its own — will cease to be worth putting up with as a whole. If these are all solved problems on other platforms, customers will start to wonder why they have to keep tolerating them on an Apple device.

At that point, it’s already too late.

Apple does many things exceptionally well. Its industrial design and hardware engineering aren’t in danger of being eclipsed anytime soon. But competitors are chipping away at its lead in user interface. If Apple means to stay at the top of the mobile market, it needs to start closing these gaps.

In version 2.x, one could tap on a category — such as “Bakery” or “Health & Beauty” — then choose from a list of all known items in that category. As you can imagine, I never bothered with this approach. Instead, I used the search field. Start typing the name of your needed item, and Groceries would offer suggestions that matched your query. Tap to add the correct suggestion, then instantly start typing out your next item.

It was a fast input system, but there was room for improvement. Accessing the search field took one more tap than I preferred, and adding any information about the quantity needed (such as “2 dozen” or “1 gallon”) required backing out of the add-grocery mode and messing with the item you’d already added. Usually I just didn’t bother with quantities — too much trouble.

Enter version 3.0: autocompletion has now taken center stage. There are no categories to dig through — hitting the add-item plus sign button instantly lands you in the search field. Noting quantity is now integrated right into the grocery query. Typing “mil 2q” will offer “Milk (2 qt)” as the top hit. One tap adds both the item and its associated quantity. There’s no more backing out of the list-making process to add those details.

In my view, it’s hard to argue this isn’t a better system. It’s faster and requires several fewer taps per item. But the grocery-shopping public doesn’t agree. Since the release of version 3.0, Groceries has been hammered with 1-star reviews, and its rating stands at a positively-depressing 1.5 stars as of this writing.

What happened?

Incredibly, it seems quite a few users actually preferred digging through those old grocery store categories. They didn’t use the search field at all! And for those items which made the list frequently, they relied on the “Favorites” category to get at them without all the scrolling. Suddenly, that innocuous Update All button has completely changed the grocery game on these shoppers, and they are none too happy about it.

In the end, I don’t know how the update could have been better handled. There’s so much that’s better about Groceries 3.0, it would have been a shame to forego those improvements for the sake of maintaining the status quo. But one can understand why users who’ve come to rely on a particular interaction would be frustrated when that interaction changes with little warning. As Mike Hay suggests, this may just be an issue with how the App Store handles major updates. A user can be completely surprised by a strange, new version of an app; and she has no way to roll back to an earlier version.

I hope users of Groceries won’t give up on the new UI too quickly. It’s clever, easy to learn and more efficient once one gets the hang of it. It may be that Ms. Teutschler, the developer, can address some of the criticisms by adding a Favorites category back in somewhere. Meanwhile, I recommend you go try it out. If you come to it without preconceived notions of how a grocery list app should work, I think you’ll be very pleased.

Not every Pixar movie lends itself to extended discussion, but in my opinion two do: The Incredibles, and now Brave.

Based on its trailers, I think many of us were expecting Brave to deliver a typically American story: bold heroine rejects the outmoded strictures of her time, meets resistance, ultimately triumphs and leaves everyone else a little wiser in the end.

That’s not Brave.

This is a good thing; because once you think about it, that typically American story is not especially sound. Though we conceive of ourselves as individuals, we necessarily live in society. We have to contend with families, neighborhoods, governments, workplaces, schools, teams, industry associations and more. We don’t usually get to pick and choose which society’s rules we want to abide by. In fact, we almost never do. We can at best nudge them in new directions, very slowly.

But this freedom to “nudge” reveals a profound degree of responsibility. Because all these societies are made up of us, they can only be of our making. As children, our instinct is to refuse responsibility for anything we did not “directly” cause. As adults, we begin to comprehend just how much of the world is on our shoulders. As we learn from another Pixar movie, the first rule of leadership is “Everything is your fault.” But it’s also the first rule of adulthood.

I do not operate every vehicle on the highway. But I take advantage of and contribute to a way of life that depends on the automobile. Thus, traffic congestion and air pollution are “my fault.” I don’t employ underpaid third-world workers, but I buy the products they assemble. Thus, their situation is “my fault.” Maturity may be nothing more than embracing a wider and wider view of what ought rightfully to be considered to be my responsibility — including responsibility for institutions we did not choose and might never have chosen given the opportunity.

This is Merida’s journey in Brave. She must move from a position of “It’s not my fault” to “This is all my fault.” She begins with rejecting the fabric of her society (made very explicit in one of the film’s central metaphors!), but ends with both embracing it and nudging it along.¹ Merida’s tale is much more interesting than the mere iconoclast’s journey, because her story is ours too. Like Merida, we have to learn how to become our best selves within a wider society. What does it mean to be brave within that framework? That’s the question Pixar has put to us here.

(Besides offering food for thought, Brave is exciting, beautiful and touching. You should see it.)

I floated the idea on Twitter and gauged the interest level. There seemed to be some, so I packed my copy of Dominion — counting on other gamers to flesh out the supply.

We were going to need the help, because once a time and place were set (June 13th, 8:30 in Bil Moorhead’s luxurious hotel suite), word spread. At its height, Game Night saw over 25 attendees — not a massive party by WWDC standards, but certainly bigger than any social event I’ve organized. Dominion supports only four players. This could have been bad.

Fortunately, a number of guests showed up with games in tow. Ash Ponders brought Backgammon and Katrina Montgomery (who stomped over everyone in Dominion). Michael Fey showed up with Munchkin, which kept the bulk of the guests entertained. And Don Synstelien provided Cosmic Encounter, perhaps the only “true” board game featured that night. Big thanks to everyone who helped out — Game Night would have landed with a thud if not for you.

Will there be a WWDC Game Night 2013? Possibly. If you made it to WWDC 2012 you know how incredibly difficult tickets are becoming to get. There’s no guarantee I’ll make it back next year. But if I do, I’ll be bringing one game or another.

Dominion in progress. Katrina, on the right, was the winner by a mile.

Munchkin was able to entertain a small crowd.

Cosmic Encounter is a good game for making friends… and enemies.

Web standards wonks are hashing out a new standard for serving the appropriate version of an image given the resolution of a user’s device. Unfortunately, that single standard has turned into two competing proposals, feelings are hurt, etc.

If we’re going to improve web images, these two assumptions seem sensible to me:

1. One should modify the <img> tag as little as possible. Web designers know how the <img> tag works. It’s not the most elegant thing imaginable, but it’s familiar. We should work with what we’ve got.
2. The new syntax should be as compact as possible. <img> tags get used a lot. Anything that gets added to <img> could potentially need to be added to a page dozens of times. We should save ourselves some keystrokes.

Let’s look at the contenders. First, the offering from the Responsive Images Community Group, the <picture> element:

To me, this looks like a pain. It requires the new tags be wrapped around every <img> element which needs to be made responsive (likely all of them). The <source> has to be spelled out for every alternate version. And while the “min-width” and “min-device-pixel-ratio” syntax matches that of a media query stylesheet, in a media query stylesheet these need only be typed once per media type. With the <picture> element proposal, those queries will need to be added to every image.

Below is the version Apple suggested, “img set.” And let’s just acknowledge the elephant in the room: iOS retina devices are the entire reason this conversation is going on. Giving Apple’s proposal a little extra weight may not be unreasonable.

Hey, this looks pretty compact by comparison. It only requires a new attribute on the familiar <img> tag. Think about that: it’s just one tag. (I count four in the alternative, excepting the closing tag.) Using “w” and “h” for width and height is unusual in web development but easy enough to remember. To me, this looks like a winner.

(Update: it’s worth noting that both specifications are still in flux and at least in the case of “img set,” some of the components may be optional. Imagine the following:

Now that’s nice.)

One of the arguments in favor of the <picture> element is that its syntax more closely matches that of the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements. But this is a bad comparison. It’s fairly rare for video or audio to be embedded in a page more than once; while a single page, again, could contain dozens of images.

Whether or not Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata ever referred to Apple as “the enemy of the future,” the sentiment is sound — casual gaming, so recently the key to Nintendo’s “blue ocean” strategy, is increasingly an iOS affair. And having all but abandoned the “hardcore” gaming market this past generation, Nintendo is left with very little room to maneuver.

As I see it, Nintendo has three options; and none of them easy. The first and, I believe, worst solution is to abandon hardware and transition to becoming a software-only company. It’s true that gaming properties like Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid and Pokémon are probably Nintendo’s best assets and could sustain a substantial game company. But without the hardware platforms along for the ride, I doubt software alone could fuel the Nintendo we know today. That way lies diminishment, and should be regarded as a last resort. Sega serves as a strong warning against this approach.¹

The second, slightly better plan is to confront the Xbox head-on. In fact, Nintendo has hinted it may be looking to do so with the beefed-up graphics capabilities of the Wii U. But graphics are a technology problem which is relatively straightforward to solve. Nintendo’s real handicaps against Microsoft are cultural: Nintendo does not value developer relations or online connectivity and Microsoft does. Core gamers want expansive third-party libraries and dead-simple online multiplayer; and Nintendo has a long track record of failing badly at providing either with its platforms.

The third option open to Nintendo is the most interesting and the riskiest: go after Apple on its own turf. Create a true, standalone tablet device that takes advantage of Nintendo’s strengths. Such a device — call it the “Nintendo iDS” for fun — would certainly require a world-class browser and support for the usual mobile standbys (like text messaging). But unlike the iPad, the iDS would feature integrated buttons and analog circle pads to make even the most “core” of gaming experiences possible.

It may sound crazy, but it’s not so far from what Amazon is attempting with the Kindle Fire. And Nintendo has a few tricks up its sleeve. As with the 3DS, it could design the iDS with a 3D screen and slider. (I’m not big on 3D in general, but if it makes sense anywhere it’s on a gaming platform.) Games could be temporarily shared with non-owners for multiplayer matches, as Nintendo already allows on its handhelds. But more than anything else, the iDS’ big feature would be one-tap access to both classic and brand-new titles in the Mario, Zelda and other franchises.

Do I think Nintendo will actually try to produce such a device? No. Nor do I expect them to get over their cultural handicaps or transform into a software-only developer. Nintendo will stick to its console hardware guns as long as it can; and it has the cash to be stubborn for quite some time. But the gaming industry is changing dramatically. Sooner or later, Nintendo will have to change too.

I think it’s a pretty good discussion. Go have a listen.

I gave up on Image Capture and used Dropbox. But if you’ve used Dropbox for this purpose, you know it involves several steps: launch the app, tap the Uploads tab, tap the add button, tap the photo, etc. etc. It works, but it wasn’t convenient enough.

I wanted something instantaneous. Fortunately, Ryan McCuaig was able to point me in the right direction. Follow these steps and you, too, can experience painless iOS screenshot sharing on your Mac.

Ensure all your iOS devices use Photo Stream

On each of your iPads, iPhones etc. check iCloud settings in the Settings app. Photo Stream should be set to On.

Locate the Photo Stream in the Finder

Since the user’s Library folder is now hidden by default, I can’t just give you the file path. In the Finder, option-click on the Go menu and hit “Library.” Then navigate to Application Support > iLifeAssetManagement > assets > sub. In the search filed, type “png”; then select “Portable Network Graphics image” from the popup.

Save the Search

Click the Save button under the search field. Give the saved search a name like “Screenshots.” Leave “Add to Sidebar” checked.

This ought to be the end, but it’s not. For some reason, this particular saved search acts up when accessed from the Finder sidebar (at least on my version of OS X). Sometimes it works, sometimes it returns zero results. The fix for this is to add it to the Dock instead. Hit up the contextual menu and do that.

(Note: a few folks have told me they don’t have “Add to Dock” in their contextual menu. Your alternative is to navigate to your Saved Searches folder in your Library folder — again: in the Finder, option-click on the Go menu and hit “Library.” The saved search you created should be in there.)

I recommend also removing the saved search from the sidebar via the same menu.

Now, you have a live-updating folder of all PNG images that arrive on your Mac via Photo Stream.

You’ll probably want to set this to Sort By > Date Created.

No, you won’t need to have iPhoto running for this to work. Take some screenshots on your iOS devices and they’ll automatically start showing up in this folder. Just keep in mind that a retina iPad screen can take a little bit to make its way through iCloud.

(If you wanted to get especially clever, you could add in pixel height and width metadata to filter screenshots from each device type into its own folder. The trick here is that those will vary with device orientation, so you’ll probably end up using a Raw Query — something like “kMDItemPixelHeight == 2048 || kMDItemPixelHeight == 1536” for retina iPad shots.)

The knee-jerk reaction is to mock the public’s grasp of global warming, but that misses a more fundamental truth: that in any contest between the “tyranny of the urgent” and gradual, imperceptible change, the urgent wins. Every time. Even if the most strident of alarmists are completely right, it’s a vain hope that you could ever get a world of very busy humans to work together against such a slow, creeping, inconspicuous phenomenon. They can’t see it.

Rather than go on about global warming, concerned people should make their case based only on immediately observable consequences. The argument should be: Air pollution is observable (just visit L.A.) — so let’s reduce emissions. Trash overload is observable — so let’s reduce and recycle. High gas prices and Middle East volatility are observable — so let’s keep going with hybrid engines, wind farms and other technologies.

Global warming will always be a chimaera for most people. That chimaera may even exist. It doesn’t matter. Find another approach or stop wasting your time.

Or don’t. Really, I have more important things to worry about.