This is the inevitable Apple Tablet post. Barring any last-minute explosion in Silicon Valley caused by the white-heat of tech journalist speculation, Apple should reveal their hitherto mythical Tablet device next week.

All the rumours seem to point to it running some form of iPhone operating system, and that iPhone OS 4.0 will be revealed (there’s a really good Gizmodo UI speculation article on this). But what’s really interesting me is how could a Tablet fit into Apple’s existing home setup, where iTunes is the media hub? And what this could mean for the iPhone?

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This isn’t so much an app review as an excursion into the hinterland of the unfinished iPhone user interface. There are always tweaks – and sometimes wholesale changes – to be made to an operating system’s interface. But on mobile devices these changes face higher scrutiny, as there are usually more constraints on the end-user being able to install workarounds to better suit their preferences. This is especially true on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

So this is a look at an app that provides a different way of navigating your iPhone, borrowing from Exposé and Spaces on the Mac’s OS X. But, because it radically changes the method of switching between pages of apps, you won’t find it in the App Store. This one is jailbreak only.
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Ever since the App Store threw open its doors and waved in the general public to have a snoop around, I’ve been on something of a quest. This isn’t a quest for gold, the fountain of youth or a crystal skull. It isn’t even something I would expect to take long enough to be described as a quest. I simply want to find a ToDo app that works the way I want it to.

The usual method I (and, presumably, most others) use to choose apps is to wander around the App Store seeing what takes my fancy. “Oh look”, I might say, “an app to calculate the weight of all my socks. Just what I need.” Or, maybe “Ah, an app to synthetically replicate the expulsion of gastric exhaust – my life is complete.” But this is different. This time there is a very clear idea in my mind what the app should do and how it should do it.
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How do you market a film these days? Billboards, newspapers and TV channels are everywhere. But none of them are right in front of your face all day; you don’t constantly check them. The same is not true of your mobile. It’s your most personal device, your conduit to the outside world. It’s a marketer’s dream location.

And the best way to get that promotion on people’s phones? Make them want to install it themselves. I’m going to look at two movie tie-in iPhone apps have been released recently: The Unborn and Watchmen. Just how well do they deliver, for the film studios and for the consumer?
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Here’s an interesting document I found about iPhone development, via Guy Kawasaki on Twitter.

Ten23 Software built PhotoKast from scratch in a month. It says plenty about the iPhone’s development environment and distribution channel (not to mention their tenacity) that they were able to do this.
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It’s now been more than a year since the Apple iPhone was launched onto the world stage, to mass acclaim, seven months since it was available to buy in the USA and three months since it’s been out in the UK. Having played with the iPhone first in August last year, I could see the huge leap forwards in terms of user accessibility and the fabulously quick and easy means of syncing and updating, and I genuinely thought that Apple could be onto a big, big success story. But has this happened?

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