While I had that document open, I began picking through some of the guidelines, noting that I could think of apps that violated many of the sections. There are developers that spam the store with nearly identical copies of applications, apps that are nothing more than a UIWebView, and a number of others. This is my shame list. It documents a number of egregious oversights, inconsistencies and irritations by Apple and by (some) developers alike.

Section 2: Functionality

2.9 Apps that are “beta”, “demo”, “trial”, or “test” versions will be rejected

For some reason, however, separate “lite” or “free” versions are allowed. A quick search for “lite” yields multiple pages of apps, including some approved within the past month. This is not a new rule, yet it is consistently ignored. Apps like Twitterrific and Astronut approach this the correct way: by offering an in-app purchase of the full version.

2.12 Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected

Google’s applications are almost universally websites-in-an-app. Facebook is treading this fine line. These are not low-key, independent developers, but some of the most-downloaded apps on the store.

2.20 Developers “spamming” the App Store with many versions of similar apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

Oh really? Kosher Penguin’s apps, for instance, are almost exclusively of this kind. They were approved for sale between July and September of 2011 and are still available. Terrible.

2.22 Apps that arbitrarily restrict which users may use the app, such as by location or carrier, may be rejected

I already pointed out that the official Daily Show app can be purchased in Canada, yet the video content — the reason most people would buy the app — only works in the US. One could argue that the app itself is not restricted by location, or that it isn’t “arbitrary” because it’s a licensing issue. I disagree. The app should not have been approved for sale anywhere but the United States, or the international version should not give the impression that there is video content available.

Section 5: Push Notifications

5.5 Apps that use Push Notifications to send unsolicited messages, or for the purpose of phishing or spamming will be rejected

5.6 Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind

I already whined about this on Twitter. Glaring and repeat offenders include Hipstamatic, Soundhound and one of Jamie Oliver’s apps, apparently. While Push Notifications are arguably never unsolicited as users are required to explicitly allow receiving them, the spirit of these notifications present themselves as unsolicited spam.

Section 8: Trademarks and Trade Dress

8.5 Use of protected 3rd party material (trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, otherwise proprietary content) requires a documented rights check which must be provided upon request

In a past article, I noted multiple instances of Google profiting from applications on the Android Market that use third-party trademarks without permission. Apple’s store isn’t entirely clean of this, though it’s decidedly less pervasive. For example, LightBike 2 is an obvious knock-off of Tron, the intellectual property of which is owned by Disney. Yet it’s been offered for sale since May in defiance of this policy.

Apple is currently attempting to get an incredibly weird Steve Jobs doll removed from the market, citing California law that protects the image and likeness of public figures. But one can add Justin Timberlake to your photos with an app. The photos are almost certainly unlicensed, and the concept of the app is legally dubious at best.

Section 10: User Interface

10.1 Apps must comply with all terms and conditions explained in the Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines

10.6 Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good, it may be rejected

I’d need time on a geological scale to list all the apps that violate these guidelines.

Section 12: Scraping and Aggregation

12.3 Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links, may be rejected

See 2.12 above for applications that are just framed websites. This guideline is so vague that it could include RSS readers.

Section 15: Violence

15.1 Apps portraying realistic images of people or animals being killed or maimed, shot, stabbed, tortured or injured will be rejected

There are a large number of realistic first-person shooters available on the App Store from developers small and large.

So what was the point of this post? Was it to point out that things are not always consistent? (Now that I’ve noted that nugget of wisdom, I’m sure I could knock you over with a fucking toothpick) Was it to show that Apple is some draconian overlord, or that developers are stupid, or that the App Store is a cesspool of vile, barely-usable and irritating apps?

No. Rather, it’s to note inconsistencies and problems with the current process of app approval in relation to Apple’s own guidelines. Overall, Apple has proven that it can maintain a safe, easy and convenient place for users to buy apps. They’ve done a fairly good job. There are just a few chinks in their armour.

1. An Apple Developer account is required to view this document. To allow for easy reading, I’ve mirrored a copy here (PDF), which is broadly similar to the one Engadget mirrored if my copy disappears for some reason.

In recent memory, Apple has been rather slow to introduce necessary (or “necessary”) features to iOS devices; copy and paste, and multitasking are two of the more notable examples. But, as it has been said time and time again, Apple tends to implement these features in a more logical, more intuitive and better way than the contemporary best version. In the last few weeks, Amazon has introduced a digital locker, and Google just announced Google Music Beta. Both are cloud-based music storage solutions (marketing speak be damned). And now Apple seems poised to jump into this field with a service of their own.

The current crop of cloud storage spaces work beautifully for documents, bookmark syncing and photos, all of which tend to be formats measured in kilobytes or just a few megabytes. Music and movies tend to reside in libraries measuring several gigabytes. While I would like to be enthused about Google Music Beta, it requires the user to upload their library. A 1,000-song library, using Apple’s estimations, is about 8 GB. Assuming a typical home user will have a 1 mbps upload, this will take over 18 hours of solid uploading to initially sync their entire music library. That’s simply far too long. Any time music is added to or removed from your library, Google’s tool will automatically make the necessary changes in the cloud. It’s good that it’s automatic, but it still takes time. It’s 2011. Why does online storage have the same (in)convenience it did back in 1995 with FTP?

Amazon does a way better job. Any time you purchase a song through Amazon MP3, that song gets added to your Digital Locker. This also goes for movies and TV shows purchased through those Amazon services. And yet neither solution helps me much, because I am Canadian.

In fact, anyone outside of the US cannot appreciate either of these solutions. Neither Amazon nor Google sought licensing from any record label to begin their cloud locker services. You can argue ad nauseum about whether or not they should be required to get this permission, but the fact remains that they’re treading on their (lawyers’) interpretation of American fair use laws.

In summary, then, the current state of cloud music storage relies on American fair use laws and individual users to manually upload their music files. Wouldn’t it be nice to change that?

Unlike Google or Amazon, Apple sells digital music in 26 countries. Apple has a much greater advantage in ensuring that the service they provide will be available in all of (or a majority of) the countries the iTunes Store is available in. Conversely, Apple has a major disadvantage if this service were to only be available in the US.

How will this service work, then? Will the user be required to upload all of the individual music files they own, à la Google Music? This is slow and cumbersome, as established. Will all tracks purchased from iTunes automatically be made available in the cloud? This has the potential to exclude large amounts of a user’s library if that user has ripped music from CDs or purchased it from other services such as Amazon MP3 and Beatport. As an example, while I have a substantial music library, only around 500 songs in it have been purchased from the iTunes Store, significantly less than the number of CDs I’ve ripped.

It would be in Apple’s best interest to allow access to all songs purchased through iTunes by default, but also allow users to add their own music to the bucket. The problem, as ever, comes back to the record labels and local laws. Since Apple cannot determine whether or not you actually own the songs you’re uploading, they might be granting you storage of your enormous library of pirated music. This would, to put it mildly, displease the record labels.

It’s a tricky and complex issue. Not providing users with the ability to upload their own files is grounds for user dissatisfaction, but allowing them this ability will piss off the record labels. And when record labels get pissed off, ordinary people tend to suffer most.

Before I begin, some quick housekeeping notes:

1. This post builds upon some rather fantastic posts by other writers, but with my perspective from the ground up. I have a small selection of others’ posts in the footer, and I highly recommend reading them.
2. I’ve broken this down quite a lot more than usual. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, I’m sorry.
3. This is not an iOS v. Android comparison, nor is it necessarily iOS-centric. It’s the platform I am most familiar with, so it’s easiest to talk about at length (however, aspects of other platforms will be also discussed).
4. The post begins with a quick primer^[1]. Don’t skip it, though — I rather like it in-context.

Enthusiasts v. Normal People

Everyone is an enthusiast, a know-it-all and a devotee of something. Some people are crazy about music, others about fly fishing. I, for instance, am a bit of a nut for cars and photography. I’m not an expert in either field, but I respect and admire both. Let’s start with photography.

Professional photographers would scoff at the default camera app in the iPhone. It’s far too simple, and far too imprecise. There’s no way to adjust the ISO, the exposure or the white balance. But most people don’t care about adjusting those things. They open the camera app to get a quick snap of the events of that moment, and that’s it. For most people, the default camera app is all they need. For enthusiasts, alternative apps exist (such as Tap Tap Tap’s fantastic Camera+, which offers much finer control).

Let’s talk about cars^[2]. Normal people want a reliable car that doesn’t look too ugly to get them from point A to point B (and maybe the elusive point C, if they’re feeling frisky). They care about the comfort of the seats, the quality of the stereo and the colour of the paint. Non-human-beings like myself want to know whether or not the engine is direct-injected, what kind of transmission it has and the power distribution ratio (if it’s four-wheel drive). I’m an enthusiast who actually cares about that sort of thing, but if I were marketing an average car, I shouldn’t expect an average customer to deal with those sorts of decisions.

In both cases, an average consumer simply wants the best outcome possible, with the fewest nitty-gritty detail decisions. They just want their photos to look good, and their car to drive well.

Multitasking on iOS

To begin, let’s state the obvious: iOS doesn’t multitask. It does something I like to think of as task juggling. Sure, a few of Apple’s applications do true multitasking: emails and SMS messages and sent and received in the background, and new events on an Exchange calendar get automatically pushed to the device. But third-party apps aren’t allowed to do true multitasking.

There are a few multitasking APIs developers have access to. Pandora can continue to stream music in the background, Flickr can upload your snapshots, and Skype can receive incoming calls. Despite the initial whininess by some pundits, it actually works pretty well in most apps for most users. Apps that don’t really do any of these things (say, a game) get put into a “sleep” state when you switch away from them. When you switch back, it restores to the state it was in before you had to answer your modal iOS notification.

This implementation has a huge upside: it helps keep battery life high by only running the most relevant background processes. It also offers a downside: applications can’t periodically refresh. That means your Twitter client, RSS reader and Facebook will refresh next time you switch to them, but not while they’re sitting in the background. Some clever people have devised some clever hackish workarounds, like Boxcar which shows push notifications for Twitter and Facebook.

These two rudimentary paragraphs are probably obvious to those who are tech-savvy, and were probably boring. They’ll tie into the overall story, though, so keep reading.

iPhone v. iPad

This method of task-switching works pretty well in the single-task, single window environment of a phone. Imagine trying to juggle a couple of instances of Safari on a 3.5-inch display. It’s hopeless. Despite its 10″ display, the iPad also adopts these UI conventions. The larger screen, running at the same resolution of desktop displays of not-that-long-ago, is dominated entirely by one application, no matter the mental real-estate that application occupies. Watching a movie, writing a tweet and editing a document are all done at 1024 × 768.

When writing a blog post, I often have a few Safari windows open, a plain text editor and my Twitter client. I’m often referencing them all, and it’s easier to keep them all open on my XXL canvas (since tidied). A computer OS treats these as separate tasks — its definition of task is an application process. My definition of task is “the thing I’m working on.” Since a modern desktop architecture supports multitasking and multiwindowing, I can adapt and treat them as one task, even if the OS doesn’t. This is in stark contrast to the iPad, because it lacks both. Another example of this would be my web development setup. Again, it consists of multiple windows for various discrete tasks, even though it’s only one thing I’m working on.

On a phone, users don’t want to micromanage tasks. Every time I use someone else’s iPhone, their multitasking tray is full of every application they’ve ever launched. This is OK, because none of them are actually running on an iPhone (Android also puts unused applications into sleep mode, and Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have multitasking).

On the larger screen of the iPad, this doesn’t work as well. Multiple OS tasks may be one user task on that kind of device, and iOS only supports single-window tasks. Viewing only one app at a time is inelegant and inefficient. If you have an Android tablet, a Finnish company has developed an application called Ixonos, which allows you to have multiple windows open at once. But if you watch the video, it also proves itself as inelegant and clunky. The controls are far too small on a 10″ screen^{[3] [4]}.

Clearly, it’s your fault

I briefly mentioned my web development setup above. It usually consists of a Photoshop window or two, a tabbed plain text editor, Transmit, and a couple of browsers to test in. It’s a setup that works really well on my desk, but is hopeless on a 10″ tablet (let alone the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s much smaller 7″ screen). But, and this is important, it isn’t the OS itself that makes web development on a tablet a horrible experience^[5].

As I pointed out above, it isn’t just multitasking and multiwindowing (or the lack thereof) that affect the user experience. Even if the iPad had multi-both, it’s just too small to switch between all of those windows. In this case, as usual, it’s up to the user to delineate what is, and what is not appropriate for a tablet.

When Apple introduced the first iPad, they told people exactly what the tablet’s focus would be. They showed off the web experience, email, productivity, multimedia, books and games. It’s casual computing for average people. When Apple introduced the iPad 2, they didn’t change their focus one bit. The addition of cameras are the only slightly broadening factor, but even they fit into the scope of a casual computing device (the rear camera is an crappalicious 0.7MP). The increased RAM and the faster CPU are only there to enhance user experience when running and switching apps, not to provide the ability to run many at the same time, on the same screen.

Something about average users?

Average people (my dad, not my IT pro dad) understand the multiple windows ∴ multiple apps paradigm. They would be absolutely comfortable with a larger-display tablet. The trouble with a large tablet is that it further grains the market, because it’s niche is confusable with that of a consumer laptop. Instead of a simple tablet → consumer laptop → power laptop product line, it becomes something closer to simple tablet → power tablet and/or consumer laptop depending on what you’re doing with it → power laptop (never mind that the MacBook Air throws a wrench into Apple’s own product line).

I didn’t bring up the MacBook Air arbitrarily there, by the way. I see this hypothetical future iPad XL (or whatever) as being the Air of the tablet line. The Air is very specific: it’s a lightweight, go-anywhere MacBook that drains power from the battery through a pipette. In much the same way, an iPad XL would be the combination of the OS X desktop experience and the iOS touch interface. It’s probably the future.

Footnotes

1. It’s pronounced as rhyming with “trimmer”. The word that rhymes with “rhymer” is the stuff you put on walls before you paint. [↑]
2. This section is clearly inspired by John Gruber’s post linked below. [↑]
3. For your convenience and mockery, here is a mockup of an iPad with multiple instances of Safari running. You can even try syncing this image to your iPad to see just how awful that is. [↑]
4. Clearly a 15″ screen would be much more friendly to a multi-window tablet OS. Don’t mention those “tablet” convertible laptops, though. Windows is not a touch OS, no matter how many shells and skins are applied to try to make it one. [↑]
5. That said, I have heard rumours that one of my favourite web development environments is getting a “lite” iPad counterpart. [↑]

Further Reading

1. Frank, Steven. I need to talk to you about computers.
2. Gruber, John. Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad.
3. Quintana, David. Mobile Multitasking.

iPad 2 — count on it

The event is very clearly about an iPad upgrade. Put all your money on that, if you can find a friend stupid enough to match your bet.

iOS 4.3 — count on it

A new iOS device means a new version of iOS. 4.3 has been in developer beta for a couple of months now, and it seems like it’ll be the version shipping on the second-generation tablet.

Random House on iBookstore — very likely

Random House, the world’s largest book publisher, announced today that they’re switching pricing models to the same kind Apple uses. It would be a major boon to the store (whose name I’m not comfortable typing more than once).

iOS 5 preview — maybe

Apple has done next-generation iOS previews in the March/April timeframe for the last three years. It might make sense to combine them into one event. If there is iOS 5 talk, I’m betting on a revised notification system, new voice controls and a new Maps application. None of the NFC stuff will be announced.

Developer show-off — sadly very likely

Five-or-so developers show off their apps in a clumsy manner. Oh, the joy and the suspense. Note that I like the idea of such an opportunity, but most developers that have demoed their apps over the years are lousy public speakers.

Steve Jobs — unlikely

I don’t think he’ll make an appearance. It’ll be a Phil Schiller/Scott Forstall show. PC Magazine points out that he might appear via FaceTime, which would be unlikely, but possible.

Mac OS X Lion — somewhat likely

On the one hand, it’s very clearly an iPad event. On the other hand, they recently issued the developer preview. I think they’ll save it until WWDC.

MobileMe changes — very likely

White iPhone 4 information — you’re joking, right?

Update: on further thought, this might actually happen.

White iPad — more likely than the iPhone

Quick note: I want to claim this before anyone else does. I think the second-generation iPad might have a carbon fibre internal frame and back, and I think the back will be painted. Think flatter, bigger iPhone 4. This way, they can do both the front and back in white or black.

CEO Steve Jobs defined the Retina Display of the iPhone 4 as a display that exceeded the resolution of the human eye from about a foot away. The magic number in that case was about 300 PPI. However, an iPad isn’t usually a foot away from the eye — it’s more like three feet away. If the pixel count were quadrupled, therefore doubling the resolution, it would be 264 PPI. That’s pretty close to 300 PPI, and probably comfortably above the magic number for three feet. But.

But, as I pointed out last time we chatted, that’s still more pixels than almost as many pixels as are currently in their 27″ Cinema Display. That display is fine when powered by a beastly graphics card, plugged into a wall. However, the iPad is powered by batteries and last I checked, the graphics capabilities weren’t rated as “beastly.” And I still think that such a display is prohibitively expensive to manufacture right now.

Engadget still thinks that the display will be ultra-high-resolution, and in theory I should believe their sources (on account of having none of my own). Their sources are usually correct, and there’s some evidence for such a display in the current SDK beta. The iBooks app has a double-resolution wood grain texture, the inclusion of which probably got someone fired. Furthermore, 9 to 5 Mac points out that Apple themselves want developers to include iPad@2x images. And holy crap, would you look at this: is this the display? Uh, no,

John Gruber checked his sources and it seems that I’m correct. Gruber slips that there are high-res iPads currently testing, but he believes they’re for a 2012 launch. He also points out that the new iPad is likely to have a screen manufacturing process similar to the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch — this is something I’d guess would happen also.

No surprises, then.

PS: This is wrong.

Apple made a bit of a splash with the launch of the iPhone 4. One of the most lauded features is its “Retina Display” – Apple’s name for its 326 pixel-per-inch screen. It is the highest-resolution display currently shipping in a consumer product, and is roughly equivalent to the quality of a printed page. It is with this display that Apple made two very intelligent decisions: the first was that they placed the display in a product they knew would be a hot seller in a competitive market. This ensured that it would be a feature consumers would be exposed to on a regular basis, and would be something they’d demand in competitive products.

The second intelligent decision was to double the resolution by quadrupling the amount of pixels on the screen. That ensured that apps designed for previous versions of the iPhone would be perfectly doubled in both directions, reducing the need for interface designers to have to re-think the display. A 1px-tall line became a 2px-tall line, but appeared at the same physical size. This kept upgrading custom interface components to the new resolution relatively simple. And so, as the first anniversary of the iPad’s introduction draws near, rumours are swelling that the next iPad will gain one of these gorgeous displays. “Ridiculous,” I say. And, if I do say so myself, I think I might be correct. It just won’t.

The iPad currently has a resolution of 132 pixels-per-inch (PPI). Compared to a regular computer monitor, it looks great, but next to an iPhone 4 it’s positively coarse. Since the iPad is the same size as a magazine page, it would be amazing to make it look as good as one. Many have pointed out that a 300 PPI display of the same physical dimensions as the current iPad’s would have a resolution of 2,325 by 1,746px. That’s 4,059,450 pixels: more than a 370,000-pixel increase over the 27″ Cinema Display. They see this as the biggest problem: no display like this is known to exist. However, I see this as a minor technological hurdle compared to the massive headache this will cause for developers everywhere.

Remember how I pointed out that one of the most intelligent things Apple did with the iPhone 4 is to double the pixel dimensions in order to keep the physical dimensions the same? A 2,325 by 1,746px display would force developers to re-think their apps. Old apps wouldn’t work on the new display, as they would draw half-pixels that can’t exist. The apps would be blurry, not just pixellated, and entire layouts would have to be reconstructed from scratch. In order to work around this, the second-generation iPad would require a 2,048 by 1,536px screen. However, this would yield a resolution of 264PPI – still high, but far below Apple’s own definition of a Retina Display.

The only solution I can surmise that would allow Apple to build a 300PPI display into the iPad, call it a Retina Display and still be gracious to developers is to shrink the physical dimensions of the screen. A display that is 6.8 by 5.1 inches (8.5″ diagonally) would match all of the desired qualities. However, Apple has been clear that they think the 10″ (9.7″ if you’re being pedantic) form-factor is ideal. There is no single solution that would allow all the boxes to be ticked.

Oh well.

I’ve been reading a lot on the blogonet, the twitscape, the pipe-o-tubes, the internet about just how delayed Cultured Code is with their implementation of OTA syncing for Things¹. Though I typically would understand CC’s predicament here, I don’t see their forthcoming implementation as successful (not that I know much about it). To the best of my knowlege, Cultured Code is currently writing their own backend for syncing between devices. This will require a massive amount of storage space, countless new staff to maintain it and a bulletproof uptime record. Somehow, I just don’t see yet another startup doing this. Why not leave it to the professionals?

Dropbox is likely the best way to store and sync files between devices. It has a ridiculously good uptime record, is impossibly fast and provides plenty of storage for each account. It’s nearly flawless and, best of all, they have an API for developers to use to integrate it with individual apps. My favourite on-the-go writing app is Plaintext, and it uses Dropbox so I can edit the same files wherever I am. It’s simple to set up and it hasn’t failed me. Cultured Code wants to reinvent the wheel. Why?

The one reason they might want to choose their own servers is that they have complete control over stability. This is understandable, but completely unnecessary. Cultured Code can only control so much, and a safe compromise could have been made with Dropbox. There’s one file that needs to be synced OTA, and it’s almost certainly under 1MB (my library file is a measly 200 KB at the moment). Why not rely on a service that plenty of people has, and that consistently delivers files around the world on a nearly constant basis? Cultured Code should stick to what they’re best at: writing damn good software.

Before I jump into the next part of this post, I have an unrelated complaint. Does anyone else think the noisy background on a few of Apple’s pages looks entirely out of place?

I figured now was a good a time as any to write up just a few predictions (most of them obvious) as to the condition of Apple’s lineup for 2011. This could get dry, but it’s 2:44 PM on a Wednesday, so what the hell else could I think of?

At some point between January and March, the iPad 2 (iPad Strikes Back, The Pad Reloaded, The Two Cameras… whatever) will be released. Count on a flat back with a structure made of composites for lighter weight. Perhaps it will have a carbon fibre back that’s painted black, to match the iPhone 4 in a way. It will almost certainly have a front-facing camera; a rear camera is less likely (have you ever held up an iPad in a way that you would a camera?). It will probably have a new chip (A5, or whatever), more RAM and higher capacities. Some have commented on the possibility of a white one – I see this as likely if the rear is painted, and less likely if it’s only the screen bezel that would be white. Look for a post about it nearer to the announcement date.

April will bring a preview of iOS 5. I wouldn’t be surprised to see wireless syncing in this update, but I doubt Apple’s NC data centre will be used for this. Can you imagine waiting for a 1 GB movie to sync with broadband upload speeds between 1 and 3 Mbits per second? I’d rather move each 1 and 0 to my phone manually with a toothpick and a bottle of gin (to ease the pain).

June will, as ever, bring a new iPhone. It will probably have roughly the same industrial design as the current generation, perhaps with a near-field-communication chip (this won’t be announced as part of the iOS 5 preview, even if it’s in the next-generation iPhone). Maybe there will even be (gosh-gee-golly) a white one. Look also for Mac OS X Lion around this time with a few more surprises than were showed at the sneak peek in October.

Speaking of a white current-generation iPhone, I’m betting on it being a limited-edition version in the spring, perhaps only available in a 32 GB configuration. Who knows? It’s a mythical piece of tech, spoken about only in hushed whispers by the elders huddled around a campfire. Whatever. Moving on.

September will bring the usual back-to-school iPod refresh. The Classic will probably be dropped – I haven’t seen an iPod Classic in use by anyone in about a year. The usual thinner, lighter theme will prevail, as ever. Now that the Nano is essentially a Shuffle with a screen, it will be interesting to see if they merge the two product lines. It wouldn’t be a surprise either way.

Of course, updates to the Mac lineups will be sprinkled throughout the year. MacBooks will probably acquire some amount of flash memory, to which the OS and contents of RAM will be written to, but with a regular hard drive for file storage.

As for myself, I will keep up my standards of posting almost an entire year apart in 2011. Hope that’s alright with you.

1. I wrote that sentence so I could use the acronym HTML entity. That’s how I roll.

As you can see in the photo above, I’ve gone through three mice in about two years. They haven’t broken, but trying to find one that matches what I’m looking for is a challenge, to say the least. The first was the black Logitech. It isn’t anything special, but when I bought it — no, it wasn’t interesting then either. It’s as featureless as the Photoshopped faces in Flair, though it does have side-scrolling. I abandoned Logitech when we got our iMac – the bundled mouse was the worst I have ever used. Mighty? Hardly. The ergonomics were nice and the lack of visible buttons was clever, but there were two things that just about any Mighty Mouse owner can attest to. Firstly, the buttonless design meant that you had to release all fingers from the surface before attempting a secondary click — if you left your index finger touching, it would register as the primary button. This was quite irritating, but not nearly as annoying as the scroll ball. Apple chose to make this (quite ingenious) feature out of a soft-touch plastic. This felt nice to the finger, but attracted dirt, dust, lint, hair, bugs and other little things, causing the scroll ball to jam, preventing scrolling in one or more directions and generally causing a nuisance. Apple’s solution? Rather than switching to a harder surface for future models, they suggested that users flip the mouse over and rub the ball vigorously on a clean, hard surface. If that isn’t an afterthought, I’m not sure what is. As I said, abysmal.

After getting irritated at the rats’-nest of wires around my desk, I concluded that my next mouse must be wireless. Owing to only having two USB ports, it would also have to be a Bluetooth wireless mouse, not just an infra-red one. And it’s almost as if nobody makes them. Apple made a wireless version of the Mighty Mouse, but I’d rather repeatedly punch myself in the testicles than own one of those. In the end, I settled back on a Logitech, because I don’t learn lessons when things are horrid the first time around. This mouse simply will not stay connected for any considerable length of time. It has a tendency to disconnect in the middle of moving it, and doesn’t stay paired. In addition, the battery life on it was dismal, at best. So you can imagine my relief when, in mid-October, Apple added a few new products to the store.

I was lucky enough to pick up my Magic Mouse on release day. I tinkered with one of the store models for a few minutes and was sold. The design of the mouse perfectly blends older styling (the glossy white top) with the newer Apple aesthetic (aluminum lower with black rails on the bottom). It looks new and innovative, without being vulgar. My only complaint, design-wise, is that Apple chose to use plastic instead of glass for the top surface, making it susceptible to scratching. It’s better than the original iPod nano was, but I’ve only used mine for a little over six months and it has plenty of battle scarring already.

The ergonomics of the Magic Mouse are a different story, in that they polarize people. Depending on the size of your hand, the mouse might be either perfect or uncomfortable. It happens to fit in my hand quite nicely, but your mileage may vary. After using it for six months, it doesn’t feel any less comfortable than any of my previous mice. That said, if you’re interested in the mouse but aren’t sold on the ergonomics, you can stick a ten dollar breast implant lump of silicone on the surface.

Never mind the aesthetics or the ergonomics — what you really want to hear about are the multi-touch features. If you’re used to an iPhone, you’ll be instantly familiar with the feel of it. The use of multi-touch in the Magic Mouse is exclusively limited to momentum scrolling. With one flick, you can travel about a third of the way down chocklock.com, which is great for any long news article, your iTunes or iPhoto libraries, or the evolutionary timeline. That said, having the entire top surface as a scrollable area can be frustrating when working quickly in Adobe’s Creative Suite – it’s easy to accidentally zoom into the document.

However, if you’re used to one of Apple’s multi-touch notebook trackpads, you’ll be disappointed. Only a single multi-touch gesture is available (using two fingers to go back and forward). There is no way to activate pinch-to-zoom, three and four finger swipes, middle click or anything else you might be used to. Happily, there are a variety of third-party software solutions available, including Mouse Wizard ($5). But, and I must emphasize this, these solutions reveal why Apple chose not to add those gestures, for two reasons. The first is that they activate sporadically and unintentionally. It’s very, very easy to rest your hand exactly where the middle click gesture is located, perhaps activating Exposé when you least expect. The other reason, oddly enough, is that the gestures don’t always activate when it is your intent. Pinch to zoom, for instance, requires your fingers to be each within an approximately half-inch-square area, which means that if you miss it, you’ll scroll through the photo instead of zooming. Truth be told, I’m not thoroughly disappointed that these gestures are missing.

There are two other issues I should cover. Firstly, the Bluetooth connection is fab. It has never, ever dropped its connection or pairing (I did post a tweet where I whined that the mouse wasn’t pairing, but it was because my batteries were dead. I’d link that tweet, but Twitter’s search-by-date-range is broken). Battery life is decent, however I’d highly recommend purchasing a pair of rechargeable AA batteries. I’ve found Duracell’s pre-charged NiMH batteries to work well in the mouse, and they’re inexpensive.

Overall, then, the Magic Mouse is a truly fantastic product. There are some flaws, but for me, in my hands with my expectations, it ticks all the right boxes.

NB: The vast majority of this was drafted in December, however I thought it best to review the mouse six months after owning it, for a more balanced view.

At night:

The idea of placing albums, and indeed artists into categories came naturally with the invention of the record store. You could walk to the jazz section and find The Rat Pack, the classical section would hold timeless Beethoven and Schubert records, and the rock section would have the “raucous” sounds of Elvis Presley (in the ’50′s) and The Beatles (in the ’60′s). It was a simple solution for rather simple music, and I do mean simple. At the time there were standards to uphold. There were no mashup albums, and the difference in perceived loudness between different rock and roll artists would be scoffed at in modern times.

The genre method has continued right up to this day. There’s still a genre column in iTunes, and just about every music store still has everything categorized in this fashion. But music has changed in the last 50-60 years. New genres have appeared seemingly overnight. There are a variety of electronic genres, for starters – everything from chill, ambient music to hard core trance. While Dashboard Confessional and Metallica are both rock, you’d be hard-pressed to find a tonal or stylistic similarity between the two. And don’t even get started on mashup artists like Girl Talk and Audiobytes for Autobots, who both blur genres until there’s nothing left but a sea of sound. With GarageBand, a microphone and a MySpace page, one can create a niche genre for themselves before they can think of a name for it. Times have changed. So should the method by which we sort our music.

Genres are much too vague. There are far too many catch-all genres (electronic, rock, jazz, pop, et. al.), and lines are being crossed all the time. For some artists, a simple “rock” tag will suffice. However, that artist then becomes the basis for what defines “rock” as a genre in your library. You may tag Bon Jovi’s collection as “rock”, but then later, stumble upon David Usher. And it is at this point where you will start to question the definition of “rock”, as relative to Bon Jovi. Is David Usher’s music hard enough? Is the tone right? Is it too hard to be “rock”, and more of a “metal” album? (no, it is not). Quite simply, it becomes difficult to tag such a wide variety of music with so few tags.

This is why I would like a new field in iTunes. I mean, we can keep the genre field, because it’s great for getting a broad overview of an artist or album. But there should be a new field, called “Tags.” In this field, you could write a list of tags, similar to how you would tag a blog entry, a photo on Flickr or a video on YouTube. You could write whatever you want in the tag field – everything from “indie”, “jazzy” and “rockin’” to “upbeat”, “gibson les paul” and “recorded in New York”. In this way, you can search your library based on the keywords you choose. Your music library is freed from the constraints of genres and moved into a more accurate, more correct way of categorization.

I think I should send an email to Apple now…