A closer look at the iPad user interface

It may have only been based on observations from the on-stage demos, but our piece on the new features that we can expect to find in the iPhone OS 3.2 earlier this week still gives a good indication of what the iPad has in store.

Software developer Frasier Speirs has gone a step further, though — he’s combed through a stack of iPad promotional videos and photos and distilled the new UI conventions into a set of iPad interface photos on Flickr.

Each of the 53 photos is annotated with a few of Speirs’ observations and he’s picked up on a lot of the smaller interface elements that probably only a software developer would spot — subtle navigation cues within applications, the way elements appear and disappear other subtle aspects that give some insight into what makes an Apple operating system different from, say, Windows.

UX Magazine has done something similar with Apple’s User Experience Guidelines from the iPad SDK. These include such recommendations as apps working both portrait and landscape orientations, making apps look more true-to-life (like the iBooks bookshelf) and using elements like ‘popovers’ to display auxiliary information rather than moving it to a separate screen.

Multi-finger gestures also get a mention — something that the iPad’s larger screen now makes possible (and, again, covered in our earlier piece), while the need to downplay file handling and the need to ‘save’ files is also emphasised.

The SDK makes it clear that, like the iPhone, Apple has some very clear ideas on how its wants users to interact with the iPad. The overriding impression is that Apple doesn’t want the iPad to behave in the same way as a traditional computer (instant-on, instant app quit via the Home button, and so on), which could be a major factor in its success — or the reason for it flopping...