Friday, June 28, 2013

iOS 7, mobile computing, "stacks UI"?

Editorial: iOS 7 shows how Apple is leading mobile computing:

"Apple owns the future of mobile devices, not because it has erected a near monopoly market position protected by major barriers...

It just happens that Apple is making the vast majority of all the profits in mobile hardware, software, media and services....

There's a fact that can't be overemphasized: the history of technology has been directed by those who sold the products generating the greatest overall profits and successfully reinvested those profits into innovation. They get to chart out the future, at least until something that's even better at making money comes along..."


This may be a good observation, as long as "innovation" part still works as promised...
But what is really new coming recently from Apple?

I was looking for "Card / Stacks" UI, mentioned as a future direction of iOS UI also...
Apparently it all started from Apple's HyperCard from 1987...


Google Unified "Card UI"

How Google Unified Its Products With A Humble Index Card | Co.Design: business + innovation + design


"Just like index and business cards of yore (or at least the late '90s), Google’s cards are plain, white rectangles peppered with nothing more than a little bit of type and maybe a photo. Are cards the epitome of flat modernism, or are they subconscious skeuomorphism? Even Google’s designers debated this point when I posed the question. Either way, these piles of pixels are revolutionizing the way Google simplifies increasingly deep information. Google’s cards represent the biggest of data in the smallest of packages."

Google Drive for Android updated with card UI and refined scanner function

Google+ adds card UI and larger cover photos to mobile site

Cloud Computing at Google

Cloud Computing at Google


A very informative and interesting presentation.
Google "Cloud" is a quite unique system, designed and optimized for global scale.
Custom hardware and software, focus on uniform response time, errors are planned for,
true layered architecture...

No "data serialization/deserialization": data are stored and transferred as protocol buffers,
and protocol buffers can handle version changes...