DigiHunter

Apple user interface facing tough challenges by UCI

Aug 26, 2008 16:39

Apple seems to be getting great profits from the App Store lately, without input on various software developments which can make the iPhone or iPod touch more attractive and useful compared with other devices because of thousands of developers doing this jobs for Apple and sharing in the profits. I know Apple took a bit of profit from this, but you can easily count out how this cycle brings the company a huge amount based on the number of apps downloaded.

Now, App Store has been out to market with the iPhone 3G. So what's the key selling point for the iPod touch and iPhone?

Most of you could say the touch user interface or multi-touch input or the accelerometer.

In my opinion, all those three features are equal to the user interface. This got all our attention when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone last year. Many of Apple's competitors are trying to catch up on their UI, but this requires close co-operation on the OS of portable devices. For portable devices that use WinCE or Linux OS for their base, you can imagine the differences between Windows and Linux compared to the Mac OS.

However, this situation is getting changed after Adobe released Flash for portable devices. Those manufacturers have started to integrate a Flash user interface to their products and allowing end users to insert or apply their own created contents to the devices.

Many talented designers and software developers are starting to create their own user interface for their own usage, but most share those outcomes with other users via device forums.

I saw most of the MP3 or portable media players supporting UCI to cover their weaknesses on the user interface designs and allowing some users to create the best ones for them.

UCI stands for user-created interface.

I never imagined that Cover Flow can be shown on other devices except for the iPod or iPhone. I saw it possible on the Cowon D2 via its Flash UI. One of the highly talented developers, called Coconut, has created a Flash user interface for the Cowon D2 which is similar to Apple's Cover Flow.

It seems this isn't the final version and he is constantly upgrading his UI. You can check out the two movie clips that he uploaded on the UCC site.

Music interface

Cover Flow


There is a developers forum called Rockbox, which has developed new features including third-party firmware for all the well-known devices. But the user interface is mostly based on a text base. Because they are are more into features than the outlook, this isn't a problem now since I can get various user interfaces from device forums.

It seems manufacturers are starting to open up their source codes and sooner or later third parties will offer their help or support. Well, even if they are trying to hide those source codes, someone will open this up and do as they like to modify it.

UCC (user-created contents), UCI (user-created interface)
What will be the next one?

UCD (user-created design), UCP (user-created price), UCF (user-created feature)???

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