Running something like iMore is a little like the first regular season episode of Battle Star Galactica (2004). You jump, and then spend the next 33 minutes scrambling to do everything you have to do before the Cylons find you 33 minutes later and you have to jump again. It. Just. Never. Stops. When you're not catching news and writing it up, you're working on features or editing or planning future content and features. It's a machine with a lot of moving parts, which means there's a lot to keep track of and a lot to get done. Most of that ends up on the website in one way or another. But once in a while we get to branch out and give you something special...

The iMore app

We shipped it. After several months of hard work and a lot of finger-crossing come review time, the iMore for iPhone app hit the App Store last week. And wow but guys gave it a great reception! From the sheer number of downloads to the incredible feedback we've gotten, you've absolutely knocked our collective socks off. Everyone from iMore, Nickelfish, and Mobile Nations worked really hard on it, so we're thrilled that so many of you like it so much.

We're already hard are work planning out the next version, including iPad support and much, much more. So make sure you get your feature requests in now!

(And if you haven't downloaded it already, it's completely FREE, it's in the App Store, so grab it NOW!)

iPad mini redux

Week before last I wrote a story about the iPad mini, the still-mythical 7.85-inch smaller sized tablet that Apple has in the labs but may or may not choose to release (tl;dr: Apple's a go-to-market company and they won't release an iPad mini -- or any new product -- until there's a compelling and profitable reason to do so). Last Wednesday John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who has excellent Apple sources, said on his podcast that he'd heard pretty much the same and went over his own list of why and why not we may see an iPad mini (or iPad Jr.) soon. Fredrico Viticci of MacStories and Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web weighed in as smartly as well.

The iPad mini, like the iPhone nano, remains something Apple won't do because they can, but will do when they feel they should. When could that be?

Gruber speculated that an iPad mini could be a WWDC 2012, though we're still hearing that, once again, there won't be any new iOS hardware this summer.

Obviously

Speaking of John Gruber, he had an interesting back and forth with Sebastiaan de With of DoubleTwist over the tension between simplicity and obviousness.

These challenges aren't anything new of course, even in mobile. Going back to the Newton, Palm Pilot and Handspring/Palm Treo, Windows Pocket PC and Windows Mobile, there have been app launcher Home screens and simple, zen-like user interfaces. (Palm was famous for "counting clicks" to minimize how long it took to do something with Palm OS.) You want interfaces to be simple and obvious for users, but the focus isn't the simplicity or obviousness, but the users. You match the tool to the job, not the other way around.

When that doesn't happen, user interface, not matter how audacious, how brilliant, gets in the way. When it does happen, when it relentlessly serves the needs of the user, it disappears. There is no tension. There's almost no interface. (Not in terms of chrome or elements, but in terms of friction and cognitive load.)

When Apple (or any designer) succeeds, whether it's with something as utilitarian as Mail for iOS, it's because the UI is so consistent and clear you barely notice it. It's when my 2 year old godson can unlock an iPhone or iPad, navigate to his favorite game or app, launch it, and use it. Well. It's when my mom can discover, download and install, use and recommend apps in a way that encourages and delights her rather than frustrates and shames her.

It's not about chrome or no chrome, buttons or no buttons, gestures or no gestures, simplicity or complexity, it's about balance. It's about usability. It's about accessibility.

Apple is smart about this. iOS has the basic Home screen and that's all you ever really need to use. If you want more, you have the gestures, the fast app switcher, Notification Center, etc. Likewise on the Mac, a Unix geek can live in Terminal, a regular user in Aqua, and a new-to-the-Mac iOS user can easily relate to Launchpad.

When the right elements are in the right place, that's when everything from an OS to an app feels simple and obvious.

Sourcing

Since it's baseball season, let's go inside baseball for a moment. Every once and a while bloggers get stressed over how stories are sourced. We all work really hard on original content and exclusive reporting, and when we do a good job it's rewarding to get recognized by our peers with links back to that work.

iMore clearly and consistently places source links at the bottom of every article, so that readers can quickly and easily find where each and every story comes from (if they come from somewhere else). We also take pains to drive traffic back to the originating source, so they're encouraged to make more great content, and we have more great content to link to in the future.

Some sites and editors don't like that and think source links should be in the body of a post. Since the body of a post can contain 2-20 other -- mostly internal -- links depending on a story, in-body source links can also easily get lost. Often that's not the intention, but just as often it's the result. (It's especially evident to us when sites that repeat our stories get incorrectly attributed as the originator of those stories.)

If the author deserves to be highlighted outside the body, if the date, if the tag, if any number of other meta attributes deserve to be singled out and made noticeable, certainly the source link does as well.

Obviously there are limits and exceptions -- articles with multiple sources, like this one, can't clearly attribute each one in a source field so I'm linking in the body -- but that's where flexibility and editorial judgement are important. It's really the intent that matters. Good sites with good editors will get it right. They'll find the correct source and attribute it correctly -- and every reader will know where every story comes from, be it the site itself or some place else.

Features

Going from inside baseball out, once again we had some great features on iMore this week.

• Best iPhone and iPad apps for Major League Baseball fans: Gary handed us all a hotdog and tasty beverage, and showed us how to get the most out of opening day.
• Weekly Photo Contest: Flowers!: Leanna kicked off our new series of iPhoneography contests, just in time for spring, and entries so far are outstanding. Make sure you get yours in asap!
• How to fix a cracked or broken screen on the Verizon or Sprint iPhone 4: Ally's taking her DIY iPhone repair series to a whole new level. If you're using an older device, she'll absolutely help you keep it going as long as possible.
• Making the right choices: How we designed and developed the iMore for iPhone app: Seth opens his kimono (figuratively speaking!) and explains the thought process behind the new iMore app.
• How to use your iPad in direct sunlight: Georgia and Steph show how polarized sunglasses can be used to more easily see your iPad display in direct sunlight. They also point out it's not the orientation, but how different sunglasses require different orientations to work properly.
• I for one welcome our new Android Instagrammers: There was a lot of angst and acrimony surrounding the arrival of Instagram on the Android platform: It was silly, so iMore brought out the welcome mat and invited them on a photo walk.
• Great Artists Steal: Yours truly weighs in on the difference between being inspired by what came before and using it as a springboard to create something new, and simply copying someone else's implementation as closely as possible.

Recommended reading

If that's not enough to tide you over, here are some great articles from around the web that I enjoyed this week.

• Anil Dash Calls Foul by Benjamin Brooks is the latest in Brooks' excellent series of articles on Readability's business model and the concerns it raises for some publishers.
• Searching for a rational reason to hate a manufacturer's UI by Phil Nickinson tackles the interesting issue of the love/hate relationship some Android users have with manufacturer specific interfaces from the likes of HTC.
• Welcome to iTextEditors by Brett Terpstra breaks down dozens of iOS text editors by dozens of feature sets in an effort to help compare and contrast them.
• How to check for—and get rid of—a Mac Flashback infection by Jacqui Cheng breaks down the first massive Mac malware attack (that we know of), tells you what it is, how to see if your Mac is infected, and what to do about it if it is.
• From the Editor's Desk: Last blog standing by Derek Kessler takes the look at the state of webOS blogs, then straps on his Roosevelt pants and vows webOS Nation has only just begun to fight.
• Four and a Half Years On by Stephen Fry takes a look at everything that's happened in mobile since the introduction of the original iPhone, as only Stephen Fry could look at it.
• Care-taking and The ultimate bucket list are the latest two episodes of ZEN and TECH, which is the most important show Mobile Nations does. There's a lot we can do to help you improve your smartphone or tablet. This show will help improve your life. I can't recommend i enough.

Spinning up the FTLs

And... jump.

The new Apple TV user interface designs, which debuted alongside the new 1080p Apple TV, are actually 5 years old and were originally tossed out by the late Steve Jobs, who didn't like them. This according to Michael Margolis on Twitter, who claims to have "implemented much of the AppleTV 2.0 UI years ago".

The comment was made in response to Aral Balkan, who asked, "Wtf happened, Apple, did a rainbow throw up at one infinite loop while having sex with a designer from Samsung?" Margolis added, "The new home page UI makes me cry."

Thanks, though most of the product is the same. I also don't like the top-bar-navigation on the app store UI.

Fun fact - those new designs were tossed out 5 years ago because SJ didn't like them. Now there is nobody to say "no" to bad design.

Margolis closed out the exchange by saying, as far as he knew, "that whole team has left/been replaced".

Seth Weintraub from 9to5Mac checked into Margolis on LinkedIn, and found him listed as both former Senior Software Engineer at Apple, and Professional Hobbyist, AppleTV. He's currently listed as iPhone Software Connoisseur at Massive Health.

The new Apple TV user interface has been somewhat controversial, with some liking it and believing it hints at a future where apps can run on the Apple TV as they do on other iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. Others feel the icons are inelegant and poorly organized.

However, citing the lack of Steve Jobs being there to say "no" to bad design is somewhat specious. Some of the user interface decisions made by Jobs were just as controversial, including pinstripes and brushed metal on OS X, the new iTunes icon, and the skeumorphic trend on iOS involving plush leather, green felt, and various shades of linen.

Update: It occurs to me that 5 years ago was iOS 1 (iPhone OS 1), which consisted of a Home screen interface with nothing but a collection of static, unorganized, unorganizable icons. The ability to move and organize apps on the Home screen wasn't added until iOS 1.1 in January of 2008 when Apple created Web Clips (web app icons on the Home screen). Jobs obviously okayed the iPhone UI, and later evolutions thereof. Since you can't directly interact with the Apple TV like you can the iPhone and iPad UI, however, it's not quite the same.

Personally, I'd prefer some hierarchical organization -- News, Sports, Videos, etc. instead of just all the icons (some rather less than appealing to look at) splattered all over the screen.

If you've tried out the new Apple TV software, what do you think of it? Designed fine, or design crime?

Source: @yipe, @aral, LinkedIn via 9to5Mac

Depending on how an app was designed and developed, updating for an iPad 3 Retina display could take days or weeks

Flash forward — After lining up for hours, or sitting at home all day waiting for a courier to arrive, you finally have your hands on an iPad 3 with its amazing Retina display. A display with over 3.1 million pixels. All of them difficult to distinguish, because they're so damn tiny. Text is crisp. Photos look are amazing. This thing is gorgeous.

You launch your favourite app and notice things aren't as amazing as they were a few seconds ago. The app in question doesn't contain Retina image assets -- the pictures that make up the user interface elements are at the iPad 2's screen resolution, so things look as blocky as they did on your previous iPad. What's going on?

Custom UI vs standard UI

A regular graphic (1x) will simply be rendered with four pixels per point on a Retina display, unless proper Retina (2x) resources are in place to take advantage of the higher density

When creating an iOS app, developers can choose to use Apple's supplied UI (user interface) elements, they can create their own, or they can use a mixture of the two.

If they choose to only use Apple's in-built elements, then the onus is on Apple to ensure everything is designed to take advantage of the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPad 3's Retina displays. No additional work needs to be done by the developer. Apps like this will look great on the iPad 3 on day one.

For designs using entirely custom elements, every single part of the user interface needs two images created — one for the previous, non-Retina size, and another at the new, double resolution Retina size (these contain "@2x" at the end of the filename). A simple app may only contain tens of images, but most of the prettier iOS apps also contain a large amount of individual images to construct their overall design. Some of the apps I've worked on have well over 300 images, so by the time we've finished creating the Retina assets, that's doubled to over 600 images.

Depending on the designer and developer involved, each image may take up to a few minutes to create. Multiply that by the images required and it can often be a daunting, awkward, repetitive task. This also assumes the artwork was created using vector layers and layer styles in Photoshop (or a similar, freely scalable method). If it hasn't, there's a good chance everything will need to be rebuilt from scratch, using vector layers and layer styles, turning a few solid days' worth of work into something that might span weeks.

Thankfully, the transition from iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 has taught a lot of iOS designers to work in ways that make creating two sets of images easier. If you're a designer looking to learn ways to improve your workflow when building non-Retina and Retina images, I've written articles on Designing for Retina and automated exporting.

Preparation is the key

Some developers have made the assumption that a Retina iPad was on the horizon, and have already included Retina images in their apps. However, I suspect the vast majority haven't, even if they have the images on hand — being double the width and height also means the images are bigger in file size, which may push the total app size over the 20MB 3G download limit (apps bigger than 20MB can't be downloaded over 3G networks).

Why doesn't iOS just use vectors for everything?

From the app Consume, an example of a vector interface element set up in Photoshop

If the issue is that pixel based images look blocky when they're scaled, why aren't vector based image formats, like SVG and PDF, used for iOS? Sometimes SVGs and PDFs are used in iOS development, but only rarely -- they're not the method Apple recommends. Vector formats tend to be far more resource hungry, especially for photorealistic icons, due to the amount of layers that have to be drawn independently to create the final visual. Mobile devices just don't have the grunt or memory to draw everything on the fly.

That's ok though -- think of the bitmap images used in iOS apps as pre-rendered vectors. The tools developers use to create the initial design should be easily scalable, but the final assets used in the app should be bitmaps, because they offer better performance (everyone loves silky smooth scrolling).

Patience

Good developers will know what's required of them, but may not want to start the arduous task ahead until the iPad 3 is announced (keep in mind that until Apple announces, we don't really know anything for sure). So please be a little patient if your favourite app doesn't take full advantage of the iPad 3's Retina display on launch day.

Marc Edwards is the founder Bjango and co-host of the mobile design podcast, Iterate.

Facebook have begun to roll out their new profile design: Timeline, to iPhone through the mobile optimized version of their website. The redesign features most of the important features of Timeline.

• Viewing and changing Cover Images.
• Scrolling back through time - from birth to the present day

Other features are missing, like the ability to add 'life events', or change the date of photos to have them listed accurately in your timeline, but overall the interface is really nice.

The new timeline interface is only viewable on profiles that have enabled them on the normal website. Timeline hasn't rolled out on the iPad, or the native app, but no doubt it will be soon.

Source: m.facebook.com

Cameron Daigle's "is the iPad just a big iPhone" user interface presentation from PodCamp Nashville. Note, the second slide is a gigantic "NO."

[via Daring Fireball]

Sebastiaan de With -- aside from gritting his teeth and almost blinding himself in one eye while reproducing the incomprehensibly pin-striped logo above -- has bent his design-focus and Cocoia blog towards an analysis of Apple's new iPhone 3.0 user interface:

Sometimes, I’m considering if other companies in the cellphone / personal media player market have caught up to Apple’s care to details and design sensibilities, but then things like these make the reality very obvious to me:

Apple’s still the leader of the pack by several tail lengths.

If you're into the details of user interface and design, give it a read and let us know what you think about the look and feel of iPhone 3.0.

Back before my iPhone was torn from me (sniffle) for the Round Robin, Twitteriffic was (and will be again) my mobile Twitter client of choice. Since TiPb has also been looking into App development and iPhone UI lately, this all added up to make Craig Hockenberry's post today on furbo.org especially interesting. Hockenberry talks about the importance of making choices in development, about what features to add and what to leave out, and perhaps most importantly to us, in variety of different approaches:

There will always be more than one way to solve a problem: a developer’s personal preferences will inevitably seep into the implementation. Having many choices for a Twitter client means that developers don’t need to create a “one size fits all” solution. In essence, users get to choose a developer whose preferences match their own.

If you're at all interested in a behind-the-curtains peak into what makes a good app great, be sure to read the whole article.

Also, let us know if you're currently using Twitterrific, if what he mentions was already obvious to you, or if you're using another Twitter client, what you're using and why you prefer it?