Catching the Red Herring: Multitasking
I've been, like many, reading reviews about the iPad. There is something that has irritated me a lot about the coverage: technology reporters seem to have been subsumed by technogeeks instead of good writers. Not only that, I'm starting to think that the technogeeks are no longer educated people in CS or ICT, or even informed consumers. Instead, the entirety of what used to be respected technology related journalism seems to have been subsumed by ... to put it in a word ... wankers.
I actually have a lot of work to do, so I cannot put as much time into this post as I would like, but for my HCI students and my peers in the academy and industry, I feel it important to point the following thing out: the media is lying to you.
There have been two issues that have stood out as complaints in every article I have read about the iPad: the lack of multitasking and the lack of Flash.
The Flash story will be one for the ages. It is likely to be resolved within 5 years once both Apple and Adobe assure themselves that they can each make bajillions of dollars. The problem is not with the platform (either the iPod/iPhone or the iPad). The problem is with corporate politics. I'm sure that we can all think of corporate wars that have kept one or more technologies off of a particular platform. Look at the console gaming world for LOTS of proprietary hardware/software that people aren't sharing to play nicely. This is what will occur more often as we move more and more away from general computing devices to specialized computing devices (and we are headed that way quickly in my opinion).
Now, the second red herring: Multitasking. There are a lot of really wrong reports out there on the web. 'They' are frankly, lying. I'm beginning to wonder if any of the people at Engadget or any number of other technology sites have even tried the iPod/iPhone platform. I was sure that they were wrong, so I went and did a little test.
I asked a friend of mine, lets call him S. Daries. No ... that's too obvious. Staton D. Yeah that will work. He was saying that he couldn't listen to music and surf the web on the iPhone like he can on his Android. I said to him: Name me a bunch of tasks that you want to be able to do on the iPhone.
Task set 1:
Play music
Read email
I asked him how he would do it on his Android phone. It consisted of opening an application. Typing in the name of an artist, then choosing the song. Then, bringing up the mail client and reading email.
On my iMac I did the following: Opened iTunes which automatically opened with a maximized window. Searched for an artist. Played Appetite for Destruction. Pressed the icon for my email client. My mail client came up, hiding half of the iTunes window, and I read my mail.
On my iPhone I did the following: Opened iTunes Opened iTunes which automatically opened with a maximized window. Searched for an artist. Played Welcome to the Jungle from Appetite for Destruction. Presed the home key. Pressed the icon for my email client. My mail client came up, hiding half of the iTunes window, and I read my mail.
In both cases the music kept playing.
The difference: 1 button press. Assuming response times are equal (which they aren't but let's say that we do as the iPad comes close in processing power). Taking a standard GOMS analysis technique, we're talking about 0.2-0.5 second difference.
He asked me if I could do that with a non-apple app. So I opened the Twitter client TweetDeck which is notorious for developing its own widget set. My twitter feeds opened up and Slash kept slashing his way through Appetite on the iPhone.
He asked me if I could then return to the mail client. Pressed home. Return to mail client and the email that I had been reading came up.
It was at this point my friend was astonished. "It would seem that I have been misled." said he. Wanting a better test he proposed the following (which is apparently something he does on his phone which was shocking given the complexity of the tasks):
Task set 2:
Play music
Open two documents in Google docs; a document and a spreadsheet
Open a wikipedia article for referencing something
Return to documents
I went through and did all of that on both the desktop and on the iPhone.
Desktop:
Open iTunes as above.
Open browser, navigate to Google docs.
Open document in tab one
Open spreadsheet in tab two
Open wikipedia via address bar in tab 3
iPhone
Open iTunes as above.
Press home
Open browser, navigate to Google docs.
Open document in panel one
Open spreadsheet in panel two
Press home
Open Wikipanion app
Press home
Open browser again
Now using the above - doing the same kind of analysis and assuming worst case of 0.5 seconds per button press we're talking 3 extra home button presses - so 1.5 seconds. However, in the case of wikipedia I had to type in the address www.wikipedia.org which is 17 button presses times 0.5 seconds.
But wait ... I used Wikipanion. Let's assume that I did it in the browser instead. Let's assume that both have Wikipedia bookmarked and organized in the bookmarks in a clever way so I can find them (which they won't be).
Ok, then it works out to about 1.5 seconds more to do it on my iPhone and open wikipedia in the browser.
However, the user satisfaction rating (using myself as a very unscientific example) goes WAY UP when I use Wikipanion Wikipanion is a customized application that allows me to find information in a much more targeted way and then formats it perfectly for the screen, and so my user experience is, in general, increased. After all, that's why I have that app on my iPhone. I liked it ... a lot.
So there you have it. I'm losing 1.5 seconds of my life. However, I'm willing to bank on that if there are well developed applications that improve the user experience (either satisfaction, or any number of other characteristics), I will be willing to make that trade. Indeed, I'd even suspect that I gain that much back just because of the better formatting for the screen on Wikipedia.
Once again, it occurs to me that multitasking is possible on the iPhone. It just isn't the multitasking you are used to. More to the point, I think that Apple has made a conscious decision to not allow passive multitasking like twitter feeds and such because they alter the user experience so much. However, that's research for another day.
So to all those guys out on the interweb ... there is my opinion. Mine has hard (well not so hard but more than "it suxx0rz") data attached to it. I've shown you mine ... show me yours!
As an aside, amazingly Google docs was slick as all get out on the iPhone, which i didn't expect (note, I couldn't figure out how to edit documents - if someone knows how let me know).
I actually have a lot of work to do, so I cannot put as much time into this post as I would like, but for my HCI students and my peers in the academy and industry, I feel it important to point the following thing out: the media is lying to you.
There have been two issues that have stood out as complaints in every article I have read about the iPad: the lack of multitasking and the lack of Flash.
The Flash story will be one for the ages. It is likely to be resolved within 5 years once both Apple and Adobe assure themselves that they can each make bajillions of dollars. The problem is not with the platform (either the iPod/iPhone or the iPad). The problem is with corporate politics. I'm sure that we can all think of corporate wars that have kept one or more technologies off of a particular platform. Look at the console gaming world for LOTS of proprietary hardware/software that people aren't sharing to play nicely. This is what will occur more often as we move more and more away from general computing devices to specialized computing devices (and we are headed that way quickly in my opinion).
Now, the second red herring: Multitasking. There are a lot of really wrong reports out there on the web. 'They' are frankly, lying. I'm beginning to wonder if any of the people at Engadget or any number of other technology sites have even tried the iPod/iPhone platform. I was sure that they were wrong, so I went and did a little test.
I asked a friend of mine, lets call him S. Daries. No ... that's too obvious. Staton D. Yeah that will work. He was saying that he couldn't listen to music and surf the web on the iPhone like he can on his Android. I said to him: Name me a bunch of tasks that you want to be able to do on the iPhone.
Task set 1:
Play music
Read email
I asked him how he would do it on his Android phone. It consisted of opening an application. Typing in the name of an artist, then choosing the song. Then, bringing up the mail client and reading email.
On my iMac I did the following: Opened iTunes which automatically opened with a maximized window. Searched for an artist. Played Appetite for Destruction. Pressed the icon for my email client. My mail client came up, hiding half of the iTunes window, and I read my mail.
On my iPhone I did the following: Opened iTunes Opened iTunes which automatically opened with a maximized window. Searched for an artist. Played Welcome to the Jungle from Appetite for Destruction. Presed the home key. Pressed the icon for my email client. My mail client came up, hiding half of the iTunes window, and I read my mail.
In both cases the music kept playing.
The difference: 1 button press. Assuming response times are equal (which they aren't but let's say that we do as the iPad comes close in processing power). Taking a standard GOMS analysis technique, we're talking about 0.2-0.5 second difference.
He asked me if I could do that with a non-apple app. So I opened the Twitter client TweetDeck which is notorious for developing its own widget set. My twitter feeds opened up and Slash kept slashing his way through Appetite on the iPhone.
He asked me if I could then return to the mail client. Pressed home. Return to mail client and the email that I had been reading came up.
It was at this point my friend was astonished. "It would seem that I have been misled." said he. Wanting a better test he proposed the following (which is apparently something he does on his phone which was shocking given the complexity of the tasks):
Task set 2:
Play music
Open two documents in Google docs; a document and a spreadsheet
Open a wikipedia article for referencing something
Return to documents
I went through and did all of that on both the desktop and on the iPhone.
Desktop:
Open iTunes as above.
Open browser, navigate to Google docs.
Open document in tab one
Open spreadsheet in tab two
Open wikipedia via address bar in tab 3
iPhone
Open iTunes as above.
Press home
Open browser, navigate to Google docs.
Open document in panel one
Open spreadsheet in panel two
Press home
Open Wikipanion app
Press home
Open browser again
Now using the above - doing the same kind of analysis and assuming worst case of 0.5 seconds per button press we're talking 3 extra home button presses - so 1.5 seconds. However, in the case of wikipedia I had to type in the address www.wikipedia.org which is 17 button presses times 0.5 seconds.
But wait ... I used Wikipanion. Let's assume that I did it in the browser instead. Let's assume that both have Wikipedia bookmarked and organized in the bookmarks in a clever way so I can find them (which they won't be).
Ok, then it works out to about 1.5 seconds more to do it on my iPhone and open wikipedia in the browser.
However, the user satisfaction rating (using myself as a very unscientific example) goes WAY UP when I use Wikipanion Wikipanion is a customized application that allows me to find information in a much more targeted way and then formats it perfectly for the screen, and so my user experience is, in general, increased. After all, that's why I have that app on my iPhone. I liked it ... a lot.
So there you have it. I'm losing 1.5 seconds of my life. However, I'm willing to bank on that if there are well developed applications that improve the user experience (either satisfaction, or any number of other characteristics), I will be willing to make that trade. Indeed, I'd even suspect that I gain that much back just because of the better formatting for the screen on Wikipedia.
Once again, it occurs to me that multitasking is possible on the iPhone. It just isn't the multitasking you are used to. More to the point, I think that Apple has made a conscious decision to not allow passive multitasking like twitter feeds and such because they alter the user experience so much. However, that's research for another day.
So to all those guys out on the interweb ... there is my opinion. Mine has hard (well not so hard but more than "it suxx0rz") data attached to it. I've shown you mine ... show me yours!
As an aside, amazingly Google docs was slick as all get out on the iPhone, which i didn't expect (note, I couldn't figure out how to edit documents - if someone knows how let me know).