Victoria Crosby

Size does matter. Particularly when it comes to both the size of the target and the spacing between actions. It’s considered best practices to allow 2mm between touch targets for mobile web design. Here’s a screen shot of the Android and the iOS’ native contact apps. You can see how much better Android has done at providing me with the space I need to search. I am not sure about you, but I have tried to press that teensy weensy magnifying glass on the iPhone and hit the A or the B more times than I can count. Apple is not the only one guilty of this design oversight. In fact, it’s pretty common. I hope touch targets and the space around them will get a little bigger in the future.  As far as I know, the average thumb or finger size has not shrunk much recently.

The New iPad is beautiful and packaged with 4G LTE will help with speed in terms of its connectivity but make no mistake- the A5X chip with “quad-core graphics capacity” is just that- better graphics. They’ve improved the GPU (graphic processing unit) to deliver high resolution display and not the central processing unit. I don’t want to be the one to pour cold water on such an exciting new mobile device- but it is surprising to me- particularly when Apple is pushing the tablet to be a flagship for what it calls the “post PC era.”

If mobile technology is to replace the PC, it needs to be more than pretty. It needs to be as fully functional, powerful as your laptop, and we’re still not quite there.