Quick Today Widget Access in iOS 9?

In iOS 8, Apple introduced widgets in the Today menu of the notification shade, and this was met with both criticism and delight on the part of users. On the one hand, iOS finally had third party widget support. On the other hand, they aren’t easy to get to.

As such, I wonder if Apple will implement some sort of quick gesture to pull down the notification center into the “Today” screen for widget access in iOS 9 (or whatever it ends up being called). Perhaps they could use the two finger swipe down gesture from Android that is used to access the Android quick toggles, since that is not a mapped gesture in iOS yet.

Of course, we must consider that Apple has so far focused on one-handed used in iOS, and a two finger pull down requires two hands no matter how hard you try. Perhaps there is another gesture that they could use, then. Or, an alternative would be that this is only a feature on 5.5" screen devices and above (iPhone 6 Plus, 6 Plus S, iPad). Those devices require two hands to operate anyway, so this wouldn’t be a major concession.

This is a feature that I have sorely missed, and is something that I think holds back the utility of the widgets in iOS. Most of the time I want to have notifications on pull down, meaning that an extra swipe is required to see widgets.

One reason why Apple may consider doing this is that the next generation iPhones (and the current generation iPad Air) are rumored to include 2 GB of RAM. This should theoretically allow Apple to keep the widgets updated better, making them more useful, and making the experience of a quick pulldown to widgets gesture work well and smooth.

Let me know what you think about the subject via comments. If you liked this post, consider giving it a “recommend” and share so that others can see it.

Microsoft HoloLens Disappoints

Did anyone actually expect anything else?

So, the Verge was on the scene at Build and reports in the video below about Microsoft’s HoloLens…

And guess what? It’s disappointing. Shocker.

It’s a cool idea, sure, but it just fundamentally doesn’t work, or at least doesn’t deliver on what it promised.

The screen is not immersive in the way that the press videos used suggest. You don’t see a full field of view world with your augmented reality imposed on all of it, rather you see your world with a small square of AR on it. It’s enough to immediately pull you out of the AR, and you stop believing any of it.

Also, as anticipated, the interaction gestures are still questionable. There are all sorts of air taps and voice commands, the former of which have consistently been shown to be frustrating on every platform that has tried to use them.

Beyond Microsoft’s shortcomings, the biggest question of this device is why would I want it? The use cases are cool in a tech demo, but I don’t think it improves anyone’s life experience in any way. Their biggest pushes are for 3D CAD modeling and gaming. For anyone who has ever done serious 3D CAD modeling, you would know that this headset would be basically impossible to use unless you used it solely as a monitor with dedicated mouse/keyboard/modeling tools plugged in. That would be entirely pointless.

On the gaming point, I think full VR has a much better gaming angle. The AR minecraft demo strikes me as a cool parlor trick, but not something that gamers would actually want. It’s not really any more immersive than screen gaming, and your world would end up very limited.

So color me not interested in HoloLens. But definitely let me know what you think about it in the comments.

via Medium