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iPod touch How usable is the touch/iPhone Safari?
- Thread starter r-sparks
- Start date
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i think its good, just that you need to know its limits
it can not download files
it can not display flash or embeded videos
it can not set homepage
it does not wrap the content to fit width of the screen
it is slow
it can view pdf
it can do multi-page view
it behaves pretty much like desktop browser.
it can not download files
it can not display flash or embeded videos
it can not set homepage
it does not wrap the content to fit width of the screen
it is slow
it can view pdf
it can do multi-page view
it behaves pretty much like desktop browser.
It can go right to the Youtube player from a web link and play the video, which is nice.
I really like it and agree with others - among the best mobile device web usage I have seen/used.
like th ebuit in google and with syncing to your bookmarks etc - very useful.
Only downside that I have is the incredibly short battery life when using. 90 minutes to 2 hours max is all I have been able to get. On Apple discussions - that seems the norm. Right at 2 hours - at first I thought it was my battery - but now having feedback from about 10 different web users - 2 hours seems to be it.
like th ebuit in google and with syncing to your bookmarks etc - very useful.
Only downside that I have is the incredibly short battery life when using. 90 minutes to 2 hours max is all I have been able to get. On Apple discussions - that seems the norm. Right at 2 hours - at first I thought it was my battery - but now having feedback from about 10 different web users - 2 hours seems to be it.
Excellent review
It's kind of funny with the family interrupting and stuff haha, just makes it more humanised.That's the first time I've seen the interface (touch or iphone) in action... all the more excited now.
Real men* type with 2 thumbs!
* kidding, I just mean people who may remember the Psion experience!
I think that a mac forum might be the only place I would condone using the word Pedantic....lol
It is truly awesome. Waaaaay better than using the PSP's web browser (wutshitcalled, hehe) using the thumb pad to move the mouse, and going from link to link, and having the page auto fit, ugh. I love the Safari browser. My only beef (besides no streaming and flash support) is the annoying links. I wish I could scroll through a page and resize it without having a link accidentally clicked and having to go back a page and waiting for it to reload. I would love it if all you had to do was double click them, that would fix most of my beefs.... Unless anyone knows anything about this..;
It would be nice if forums like this were to increase the font size of the page selector in the lower right corner of the page. It is very difficult to go to the next page when browsing this forum with the iPhone. I usually hit it right about 1 time out of 3.
Or even a big NEXT page link would be nice.
Or even a big NEXT page link would be nice.
There's no way I can watch this on my browser. Safari crashes and Firefox seems to get some way into the download before it jams-up. I wasted a lot of bandwidth finding this out
There's no download link on the site either. The solution is to use Safari's Activity window (Window -> Activity). Start the download by clicking on the video window at the site, and then watch for a rapidly downloading file in the Activity window. Then double-click the entry in the Activity window. This will cause the file to start downloading normally, and you can close the DivX site window.
This way you can also play the file in VLC, rather than the crappy DivX player
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A100a Safari/419.3)
mobile safari is more than usable it has crashed A few times but I am sure that these will be fixed over time I've had auto correct not work a few times but it seems to be okay when typping this message on my touch and given I have not had the touch that long I am vetting quite quick on typing with two thumbs
mobile safari is more than usable it has crashed A few times but I am sure that these will be fixed over time I've had auto correct not work a few times but it seems to be okay when typping this message on my touch and given I have not had the touch that long I am vetting quite quick on typing with two thumbs
Some sites are a real pain to use - it renders text so small that having to find the 3 pixel boundary to click on the password field can be a nightmare (unless there's a way to set the default zoom - I'd have it at least 4* its current default). It's made worse because it doesn't have a password cache.. you have to login again each time.
No streaming video, except youtube.. so no way of watching live TV on the thing, or even the BBC news clips.
The keyboard is a nightmare unless you have tiny fingers.. it's an artform trying to get it to produce the right letter and typing passwords is therefore a bit random as you can't even see what you typed! Pens etc. don't seem to work as a stylus for some reason as they'd be ideal.
On the plus side the rendering is perfectly OK... the large(ish) screen on the touch makes things look quite nice for a portable device.
Of the two I find I still use the N95 browser as it has all the missing features and is easier to navigate, plus has a proper keyboard... only problem with that is the screen is about half the size - so if I could get level of browser functionality into the ipod touch it'd be perfect.
No streaming video, except youtube.. so no way of watching live TV on the thing, or even the BBC news clips.
The keyboard is a nightmare unless you have tiny fingers.. it's an artform trying to get it to produce the right letter and typing passwords is therefore a bit random as you can't even see what you typed! Pens etc. don't seem to work as a stylus for some reason as they'd be ideal.
On the plus side the rendering is perfectly OK... the large(ish) screen on the touch makes things look quite nice for a portable device.
Of the two I find I still use the N95 browser as it has all the missing features and is easier to navigate, plus has a proper keyboard... only problem with that is the screen is about half the size - so if I could get level of browser functionality into the ipod touch it'd be perfect.
All of these could potentially be changed, which is why all the things I don't like, I don't care about.
if you manually open a new page (not opened by previous page's link), yes, indeed, it will be a blank page.
All of these could potentially be changed, which is why all the things I don't like, I don't care about.
This is why I think the touch is marked out compared to other similar devices. Apple will constantly work on and refine the firmware. With other companies, what you get when you buy the device is all you'll ever have. Take my Nokia 6680, for example. I believe there's been one firmware update since it was manufactured, and I'm told I have to go to my nearest reseller to have it upgraded.
I also think we have to bear in mind that the web browser is Safari. Most major sites already optimise for Safari, so the site will probably work. If not, because the iPhone/touch are major product releases, many site devs will hack it to work. This can't be said of a weird third-party browser that might make it onto a mobile device, some of which are feature-packed but will never see widespread support because they're minority products.
I'm on the brink of being sold on a touch. If it was any company other than Apple, I'd think twice. Indeed, I have in the past almost bought various wifi-enabled Linux devices. But I know that Apple will give a decent level of support. And I know that because Apple is such a huge brand, there will be a lot of international hacker interest and pretty soon there will be a handful of good third-party apps out there. And, because it's OS X we're talking about, they'll be *good* apps!
Incidentally, does mobile Safari feature the capability for Input Manager-like plugins? There's obviously some room for hacks/improvements that Apple might overlook in their desire to keep things extremely simple.
Double-tapping the space bar will give you a period, btw. Or just touching and holding the 123 button and dragging your finger to the period and letting go.
Run-ons hurt my head.
Apple historically haven't done that with ipods - they'd rather you bought the new one.. eg. compilation support and gapless playback was never added to the ipod photo (in fact they stopped producing firmware for it when the video was released).
They'll fix the bugs I'm sure, but new features.. not so sure. We might have to wait for the device hacking to give us that.
You seem to know your way around the touch.. is there a way of deleting the whole line from the search/url bar rather than hitting delete a couple of dozen times?
i do NOT agree with that, you are mixing firmware update to "function expansion", when a PDA/smartphone provides a open platform, 3rd party developers are always updating their product and improve them. better and more flexible, more frequently than apple's single provider mode. for example: operamini on palm, wm, bb.
I think the earlier iPods were largely single-function devices. They were media players and, although they had an operating system, it wasn't sophisticated.
The iPhone and touch both use a stripped down version of OS X, and they're multifunction devices that can do a variety of things (browse, play music, email, calendar...). Effectively they're miniature computers.
This is why I think they will be developed further via firmware updates although I agree that we'll have to wait and see. Whatever the case, the evidence is already thereUK iPhones have an updated firmware compared to the US releases.
On my Macs, I've seen many updates of OS X. Each introduced bug fixes and *minor* feature enhancements, such as better RAW image support.
To be clear, we are talking about *minor* feature enhancements here that might be delivered via firmware updates.
If Apple were to release Widgets for mobile Safari, for example, that will almost certainly be a feature of iPhone2/touch2. But we might see usability tweaks added to Safari on existing iPhones/touches courtesy of firmware updates. An example is the addition of a period button the main text keyboard, so that you don't have to switch to the symbols keyboard to end a sentence.
Bear in mind how modern software developers work. Often they have to release what they consider incomplete or even buggy software because of time constraints. However, they *know* they can fix the products via software updates nowadays. I think this might have been how the developers of iPhone/touch OS feltit's not perfect but we can tweak it later.
I do not think its proper to compare software update of OSX to firmware update of iPod,
rather, there is a firmware update, indeed, for macs too. if you noticed, that can be a proper comparison to iPod's firmware update.
I, obviously, would like apple to improve their products through whatever ways they can, however, single provider mode, IMHO, will never be able to compete with open platform developing mode.
Im not sure how we define "Minor", and I do NOT agree that nowadays developers mostly push their products out of the door when they are "not perfect (as they perceived at that stage)". I just simply think its not true. If indeed apple's products give you this impression, then I think You might need to look around and make a more comprehensive view and pick up some confidence in today's developers.
Except the firmware on a Mac doesn't contain the OS. It merely controls low-level functions, such as booting the OS.
The iPod touch/iPhone "firmware" is the OS as well as the low-level functionality. I think it's likely we'll see some additional functionality through firmware updates.
However, Safari, Calendar, Notes, etc are APPLICATIONS - they could be considered to NOT be part of the OS. I think there's a few possibilities here: 1) Apple includes such enhancements with firmware updates. 2) Apple makes them available for download (possibly at a price) through iTunes. 3) Apple doesn't release any updated Applications. Personally, I'm hoping for 1 or 2.