One of the things that I hate the most about the iPad is that Apple's
strategy seems to divert developer's enthusiasm and resources towards iPhone
OS and far away from proper operating systems (Mac OS X).
And here we are...
I have seen already this happening with other applications. Intaglio, for
instance, used to be a fantastic graphic illustrator. Its latest version
(more than one year old) has severe bugs. Instead of fixing them and
improving their great software, the developers concentrated on making an
iPhone version.
I don't want to sound negative: I would love to use iPad one day, but I just
don't think it is good enough yet.
Best.
Daniele
On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:09 PM, JiHO <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:25, Christiaan Hofman <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > I am pretty sure that a combo of citation management, PDF management, PDF
> viewing, and PDF annotating is really not possible on a device like iPad
> (and certainly not iPhone). We came to the conclusion that this was not even
> feasible on a normal computer or laptop without compromising too much.
> There's a limited number of keyboard shortcuts and menu items that you can
> offer, and the choices for those are very different for a citation manager
> and a PDF viewer/annotator. This is the reason we went for separate apps.
> With much less interaction you're much more restricted in what you can do,
> so you need to be much more focused on a single feature, you can't work with
> menu items and keyboard shortcuts. PDF organize + viewer/annotator can be
> combined, but citation manager would be a different app. And lots of
> functions of BibDesk are really not appropriate for iPads at all.
>
> I think the situation on the iPad vs. a laptop/desktop computer is
> made very different by:
> - the kind of interface you have
> - the lack of file system (which, as a side note, drives me nuts: why
> is it impossible to save the PDFs I view on my iPhone through Safari?
> Anyhow, back to the point:).
>
> So on OS X you have menus and keyboard shortcuts as the main means of
> interaction; and those are unique but also (mostly) static for each
> app. In this situation the solution of having separate apps for each
> task and switching between them through the file system (save a file,
> open it with another app) is how you do things.
>
> On iPad/iPhone, there is no menu and the UI can therefore completely
> change inside the same app. Once example is the new book reader: there
> is the shelf, aimed at choosing your book; there is the reader, aimed
> at flicking through the pages; and there is the bookstore, aimed at
> buying books. All those are three completely separate tasks, with
> completely different interfaces. Essentially they are three different
> apps, but the lack of access to the file system prevents you to have a
> bookstore app which would store an eBook that you could then double
> click to file it in your library or open it in the reader. It has to
> be all integrated in one app. Whether you think this is a good thing
> or not is probably a matter of taste and proficiency with computers,
> but in any case that's the way it is.
>
> A BibDesk + Skim equivalent for the iPad (and I think it could even
> also work in the iPhone, UI wise) could work in a very similar way:
> - opening the app shows your library with a list of records
> - taping an item allows to edit its details (similarly to an address
> book card): author, title, but also group etc.
> - taping a PDF icon either in the list or in each items details opens
> the PDF reader/annotator
> - taping a search icon brings you to the web / a search interface
> i.e. three different apps in one.
> This, of course, is wishful thinking. I would love and definitively
> have a use for such an app but I understand that it represents a
> tremendous amount of work and that it basically means restarting from
> scratch code-wise. Given the business model of the iPhone/iPad,
> charging for it wouldn't make as much difference on it does on the
> Mac: most good apps are shareware on the iPhone while many apps are
> excellent and free on the Mac (BibDesk being a prime example).
>
> JiHO
> ---
> http://maururu.net
>
>
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