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Ituning the Interface World
June 22nd, 2007
So the other day at WWDC, Stevo showed off some of Leopard’s new features. I’m impressed, but one thing stood out. A lot of apps now have an iTunes-like interface. Safari’s new Web Inspector which was released a couple days back, also sports the same look. I began to ponder, maybe this was because the iTunes interface is the greatest interface ever. No, that can’t be the case, it’s a good interface I’ll admit, but it has it’s shortcomings. It’s a pretty brilliant move by Apple and the developers of the various apps, the iPod is now so ubiquitous, that everyone who has one has come in contact with iTunes at some point. Making interfaces common across the board, reduces the learning curve significantly, especially when an iTunes-like interface can accomplish similar things across the board. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple roll out the next version of iPhoto with an interface more similar to iTunes. Whether this strategy will translate into dollars for Apple remains to be seen. The other factor to also consider is whether this homogenization of interfaces will take it’s toll on usability.
