Gizmodo has a great (and lengthy) article by Jesus Diaz on why the interface of the impending Apple tablet will be just an extension of the iPhone interface: The Apple Tablet Interface Must Be Like This.

Here are a few of the main points:

• Desktop computer interfaces are somewhat flawed by nature: they try to do everything within the context of a single interface.
• Jef Raskin’s vision of an “information appliance” fits better with people’s natural expectations of how things should work; that is, an information appliance is a device that fits a specific purpose, such as playing music, making a phone call, or playing a game.
• The iPhone interface is exactly such an interface: individual apps have very specific purposes, and when you launch an app it becomes the interface. While you’re using that app, it takes up the entire screen and the device essentially becomes an information appliance for the specific purpose that app fills.
• Tablet-like devices in the past have failed for a couple reasons:
  1. The technology wasn’t good enough to make a truly compelling interface (resistive touch screens, vivid color displays, raw processing power, connectivity to the Internet and other devices and people, etc.)
  2. Even when the right technologies became pervasive, the interface design was inappropriately based on that of the desktop computer.

I won’t make any predictions on what differences there may be between the tablet and the iPhone, but I do think Jesus has it right: the natural interface for the tablet is for it to be similar to the iPhone.

This blog was created for my communications practicum on new media strategies, but I hope to provide some actually useful and interesting information rather than just meet the class requirements. If you have specific things related to new technology, online marketing, or web development that you’d like to hear about, please comment and let me know. In the meantime, I’ll post things that are interesting to me and things that are relevant to my learning.