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By the title I thought this would be a review of (GPS) navigation apps. 'iOS Basics" should have been a clue, eh.

Quote: "This makes perfect sense in the real world, but coming from a computer, where scrolling down on a trackpad or mouse actually scrolls the window down, it can be a bit disorienting at first."

Not so. It makes no sense at all. I had no problem moving from a Microsoft scrolling mouse to an iPhone UI. None at all. Both scrolls make sense because both map real world behaviors to their digital counterparts.

My problems came when Apple unilaterally changed mouse scrolling behavior. Now my mouse scrolling had no real world counterpart. The only rationale was inside the minds of consistency-obsessed twits at Apple.

Keep in mind that different behaviors on different devices are a good thing. Having handle bars on a bike is a good thing. Bikes need to be handled very different from cars and having a different UI makes adaptation easier. The same is true of sailboats and planes.

The problem with Lion is that those altering the UI were trying to force experienced bike riders to adapt to a steering wheel because of some delusion that making them the same would make them easier. That's not so. Each device has its own best way of doing things and works best when that best way is used.

As the old saying goes, "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Inkling, on 25 October 2011 - 07:18 AM, said:

Natural scrolling makes a lot more sense on a trackpad. Perhaps Apple could have allowed natural scrolling for a trackpad and "traditional" scrolling for a mouse, but I get the sense that they see the mouse as a bit outmoded for most tasks. I haven't used a mouse in years, and so prefer natural scrolling.

Inkling, on 25 October 2011 - 07:18 AM, said:

And as another old saying goes, "A small mind is obstinate."

Have you even tried to adapt to the reverse scrolling mouse? After a couple days, natural scrolling becomes second nature and is no longer a problem. I suspect that the real problem is not the direction of the scroll, but rather your desperate need to troll the message boards to stroke your ego.

I've stumbled on this by accident, that when you pull up your multitasking bar and hold one of the icons, a (-) appears on each icon. What's the purpose of this? To close out apps? Does this affect speed of the phone at all? I'm sure this has been the case for a while, but I'm just now noticing this.

ChristianJ.Sweattszsp, on 25 October 2011 - 12:48 PM, said:

This will allow you to force-quit a running application. (You don't really need to worry about this unless you have a misbehaving program.)

This article is incorrect in saying that apps need to run in the background for notification to work. Incorrect. Notifications run independent of the app, and all notifications will work even if all apps are manually quit. Please update the article. Thanks.

johngettler, on 26 October 2011 - 07:19 AM, said:

Actually, the section in question is talking about the various ways Apple allows apps to "multitask". In that regard, push notifications are a type of app backgrounding.

:Tap, hold, and drag: For some functions, such as highlighting text, copying and pasting, or deleting and moving apps, you'll need to tap and hold down on the screen. When you do this on a piece of text, it will highlight in blue, and editing handles--vertical lines with blue dots--will appear on either side of the highlighted area. You can tap, hold, and, while holding down, drag your finger to increase or decrease the selection. Dragging also comes into play for moving objects in apps, drawing, and swiping and flicking."

technically its not a tap but a press and hold..

2nd, how do you remember all this stuff?

3rd, its not so much the hardware that needs to support gestures but the software too?