This sick obsession by iPhone designs

[DaremoS]

By the way elements are distributed in a Cowon D2 screen, lots of newcomers will thing on a iPhone replica (I mean this of several square icons (4 or 5) in 2 rows)... nowadays all touch-screen devices have the same distribution... and all of them are called "iPhone clones".

[confused] - I ask to all this creative minds if iPhone, or any Apple wonder has capabilities of skinning?

[confused] - If for a moment the creators have think in give their customers the chance of play with colours or design beside of those created by their designer gods.

[confused] - What's the obsession to give Apple stuff al the credits concerning screen design?

Yesterday I put my hands on the expensive iPod touch and what a surprise!!!... watching albums cover in horizontal way I found an effect adopted long time ago by Vista designers that show all open windows floating in the screen that flip when mouse runs over them, which is call Winflip... designer of iPod Touch adopted the same effect but instead of open windows they show Album covers.

As usual all credits goes for Apple for this creation supported by their amazing marketing campaign. But in fact they simply stole the idea.

[Dominic]

Weeeeeeelllllll itunes has had coverflow for about a year and a half now.... vista has been available less than a year..... and I'm quite sure windows borrowed the winflip thingy from linux...

[theRightNee]

also, i believe the winflip3D was to compete with Apple's Expose, a feature available with OS X's previous release, OS X Tiger, when XP had no such abilities out-of-the-box.
Although Dominic I have yet to see a linux distrobution with winflip, it simply is below the level of desktop enhancements that are provided =]
still i have to say vista is a pretty good os, i really enjoy the readyboost feature

not very sure on this, but i do believe that Apple is the first to integrate a multi touch screen, further eliminating unnecessary virtual buttons (such as zoom in and out, and others of the sort)

[DaremoS]

Weeeeeeelllllll itunes has had coverflow for about a year and a half now.... vista has been available less than a year..... and I'm quite sure windows borrowed the winflip thingy from linux...

Good point... [smile]... this demonstrate that everybody is "sharing" creations... Linux then Apple then Windows Vista.

But... don't you agree that all credits have gone to Apple designers?


And what about skinning and user redesign of appearance of players... is Apple involved in something like that? (a question for the whole forum)

[madman]

And what about skinning and user redesign of appearance of players... is Apple involved in something like that?

Check out modmyifone.com and ipodwizard.net for user implemented skins and mods for Apple products.

If for a moment the creators have think in give their customers the chance of play with colours or design beside of those created by their designer gods.

I am not sure many\any manufacturers provide for customization, usually the skinning hacks\mods and apps are created and supported by users.

[Dominic]

Although Dominic I have yet to see a linux distrobution with winflip, it simply is below the level of desktop enhancements that are provided =]

It's not the same, but this is what I was thinking of http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ImW0-MgR8I

[DaremoS]

I am not sure many\any manufacturers provide for customization, usually the skinning hacks\mods and apps are created and supported by users.

We know that Meizu and Cowon have designed their firmwares for allow users to change its appearance, making easy to change background via menu options, putting skins in separate modules to be easily installed in the player. I've see that Cowon have gone further putting also fonts in an special module. That's what I mean when I talk about skinning.

Skinning via hacking firmware as it is in Rockchip/Actions players is always risky, despite that some tools have reduced this risk. I see that in the sites you mention also is based on hacking the firmware. In all this cases the user have also the risk of lose its guarantee or the player.

[Temet]

I also have to admit that I don't understand the fanboy attitude regarding all Apple stuff.
Fortunately, some good artists made wonderful and original themes for our D2 ;)

[goatherder]

It could be (very successfully) argued that there are very few really good skins for any player out there which doesn't borrow from something recently Apple.

The fact is that these guys know how to make things look very good, and to make it get out of your way. I don't see anything wrong with copying those positive aspects of Apple. They may not actually make very good computers once you strip away the pretty skin, and their OS may be even less reliable actually than Vista is now, but dang... it all looks good, and it's all very usable by people who don't really want to get involved in the minutiae of it all. And that's why they get all the press.

The fact that you have to even ask why means that you're a total geek. [toungue]

Personally, I'll gladly take something inspired by Apple if it's as usable and as attractive in use as the iPod is for example, but also improves on something that the Apple device doesn't do well. So far it's always been either-or for me: I either have to turn to iPod for something very usable but also a little dumbed down, or I have to turn to someone like Cowon for something that does more, but is far more irritating in use. I oscillate between the two like a yo-yo depending on my mood. It's been 5+ years and so far there's only one or two other manufacturers which takes usability as seriously as Apple does and that only recently - and Cowon isn't one of them. Here's hoping they pay a little more attention to that in near-future products.

[globiboulga]

Well, agreed with the post above, kudo to Apple to make User designed software. It's all I've got to say. If Microsoft and Cowon did that, they would probably do a lot better. Thing is of course that Apple is now worst than Microsoft when it comes to locking and law-suiting. But that's their competitive advantage and they don't intend to sell to geek.

Looking their software is a way to ensure limited warranty exposures. Could you imagine the number of idiots teens (mmh think girls) who would f*** u* their iPod trying to mod it with the latest J-Lo crap?

Apple are really good at what they do. I took my 3 years old 5 minutes to understand and use my iPhone to scrool through pictures and play with the size. And he can probably make a call by mistake as well ;)

Apple has the ability to kick the industry in the balls at intervals because of their software. Apple hardware is shit, everyone knows that. Nicely designed, but shit. I would never buy an Apple computer. But is that that all manufacturer wait until Apple does something to copy? Why is Sony so pathetic? Why do we have to way for the iPhone interface to have Cowon releasing a flash based UI (I do hope it's an early version of what will happen for the D3/X7 interface). Why does Apple trashed the PMP market while they are only now starting to be active on it? Why did Apple 'revolutionised' the mobile phone market while established companies did little or nothing (and a nokia as a better R&D and distribution network than a Cowon)?

Innovation is not about 'brand new', innovation is about doing something in a new way. And Apple is probably today the most innovative corporation in the world. I wish it'd be Sony. They have way better hardware. Sony is actually a good example of the hardware focus that goes wrong... You pull an MD player. That is brilliant mechanic but low capacity and very 80's way of copying music (cable to your CD player) and Apple comes with an iPod with a large capacity and a funky little screen (thing early nineties) and a nice bundled software to easily copy files. And then instead of thinking interface, you think hardware and you pull a crappy Atrac player. And then you try to catch up with an interface (sonic stage) and you do it really bad (no mp3 support). You lose. And then you repeat the same mistakes over and over again, until you go mp3 and now even dropping Sonic Stage... Back to square one, producing great, dated, hardware...

So here's the receipe:

1 - Think users.
2 - Ban geeks or put marketers around them.
3 - Only implement idiot proof functionalities.
4 - bring one improvement at a time.
5 - Do at least one pretty thing no one else does (hardware - nano - or software - Touch).