{"id":17431,"date":"2012-03-06T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T19:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnack\/?p=6106"},"modified":"2012-03-06T12:00:06","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T19:00:06","slug":"aching-for-better-ios-app-integration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/06\/aching-for-better-ios-app-integration\/","title":{"rendered":"Aching for better iOS app integration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Disclosures: If I had any inside info, I obviously couldn&#8217;t share it here, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnack\/2011\/06\/what-im-hoping-for-most-in-ios-5.html\">I&#8217;ve been hopeful\/disappointed<\/a>\u00a0on this subject before.]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Poor integration leads to bloated apps:<\/strong> if jumping among apps\/modules is slow, customers gravitate towards all-in-one tools that offer more overall efficiency, even if the individual pieces are lacking.<\/p>\n<p>Today I saw Neven Mrgan <a href=\"http:\/\/mrgan.tumblr.com\/post\/18779655182\/ipad-3-and-photography\">writing<\/a>, of iPad photo apps,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[I]t\u2019s just so much more convenient to stay in the canonical photo store; importing and exporting photos to and from another app is clumsier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I experienced the pain, over and over, on my trip to Guatemala. \u00a0Having taken just my iPad &amp; Camera Connection Kit, I was eager to put a variety of photo tools to the test. \u00a0Moving among apps was far &amp; away the crappiest part of the experience. \u00a0For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;d review images in Photos, where I can see them nice and large. But I can&#8217;t say &#8220;Open in App X,&#8221; so\u2026<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;d leave Photos, launch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snapseed.com\/\">Snapseed<\/a>, bring up the tiny, default image browser component, navigate to the same point in my photo library, and then try to pick the same image I&#8217;d just been looking at in Photos.<\/li>\n<li>After editing, I&#8217;d hit Save, and images would go into the Camera Roll (not Imports, where I&#8217;d been browsing them). \u00a0Thus I couldn&#8217;t see the edited images alongside the originals.<\/li>\n<li>After repeating the process many times, I&#8217;d go to <a href=\"http:\/\/flickrstudioapp.com\/\">Flickr Studio<\/a>, then carefully &amp; laboriously add photos from various albums. \u00a0(The app doesn&#8217;t let you re-order images, so I had to dive into the albums again &amp; again just to get the sequence right.)<\/li>\n<li>At last I&#8217;d upload.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This really, <em>really<\/em> sucked. \u00a0Far more desirable:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Browse the images in the browser of my choice (Photos or something else&#8211;one that could, say, flag\/sort\/whittle down images, local or remote).<\/li>\n<li>Tap one or more images and say &#8220;Send to App X&#8221; (to build a panorama, composite in PS Touch,\u00a0apply a tilt shift blur, whatever)&#8211;no manual navigating to the other apps, no navigating back to the photos.<\/li>\n<li>Be able to save, return to my browser, and see the edited image alongside the original.<\/li>\n<li>Hand off one or more images to the sharing tool of my choice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s not bloat\u00a0PS Touch with every damn filter we can think of; rather, let&#8217;s have a great way to pass data back and forth, so that apps can function as plug-ins to one another. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.photoapplink.com\/\">PhotoAppLink<\/a> is a nice start, but we need something universal.) \u00a0And let&#8217;s not all bloat our apps reinventing the image browser, integrating the same sharing services over &amp; over, etc. \u00a0There&#8217;s a far more elegant way to proceed.<\/p>\n<p>Tangential: Neven also writes,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The iPad is too big to shoot with; the iPhone is too small to edit on. Bridging the two is fine in theory, but in practice there\u2019s the hairy matter of extremely large file sizes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But why is it that my phone or tablet can send HD video streams instantly to my TV, yet they can&#8217;t send photos or video to each other (or to my Mac)? \u00a0To put a phone video onto my Mac, I have to upload the whole thing to something like Dropbox, then download it again; isn&#8217;t that kind of bizarre? \u00a0I really thought that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/161220\/2011\/07\/lion_airdop_screen_sharing.html\">AirDrop<\/a> would sort things out; hope springs eternal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Disclosures: If I had any inside info, I obviously couldn&#8217;t share it here, and I&#8217;ve been hopeful\/disappointed\u00a0on this subject before.] Poor integration leads to bloated apps: if jumping among apps\/modules is slow, customers gravitate towards all-in-one tools that offer more overall efficiency, even if the individual pieces are lacking. Today I saw Neven Mrgan writing, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17431"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}