So it took me awhile, but I just read a CE Pro story about an integrator mimicking the look, feel and operation of Apple apps in Crestron panels and even the back end (app downloads).

Figure it might make a nice story. If you're doing something like this ... please share!

Embracing Apple Apps in user Interfaces

I didnt really understand the article when i first read it. At first i thought everything in the article was "connected" but now after reading it again it looks like they are doing 2 things that are applesque but they are not "connected".

#1.Their GUI is like iOS.
#2.They built an iOS app for their client login.

"David Frangioni, owner of Miami-based Audio One, is embracing the app concept in his system designs and converting its client portal into a downloadable app for customers. "

Does this have anything to do with the GUI or is it just them saying they created an app that lets clients login to their site?

"Audio One has developed high-end integrated Crestron systems with interfaces that mimic the look of Apple apps. Clients can drag and point on the panels just like they would on their smartphone or tablet. When the client selects a specific icon, it reveals another layer of icons if applicable. "

Drag and point? Not sure what this means. Are they saying they can move the icons around on the screen like you can with a smart phone? If so HOW?

I love iOS and i am not alone. Entry level PC sales are way down thanks to the iPad. The GUI is very good but most of it is based on existing "technology". This GUI is from a Crestron ST-1550C. I created well before the iPhone was born.



I don't claim to have created this style of navigation but i was using it back before any control system had a wi-fi touchpanel so.... long time ago. The "main menu" home page design has been around a long time. It's basically an adapted PC/Mac desktop GUI where you have source/device icons instead of application icons like you would find with windows or mac os. I have text under an icon and when you press one it jumps to the device/sources menu or to an additional page of icons in a multizone setting.

With larger touchpanels we are allowed to create a fixed navigation menu. This helps remove a button press for clients. For example... lets say you are on the alarm menu page and you want to get to lights. With a "main menu" GUI you hit Home then lights. With a fixed navigation bar you just hit lights. This removes a button press and helps categories "apps" (sources or devices).

Last year i put this graphics kit together for a programmer friend of mine. I basically straight copied iOS on purpose. If you scroll thru the first 3 portfolio pics you can see that we made it so the iPad/TPMC-8X and TPS-6L all have the same UI. Copying iOS works very well for our systems because we were already using a similar navigation style. [Link: crestrontemplate.com]

Core3 UI, it only works on the TPMC based panels but it lets you drag icons and do simplistic gestures.

Seeing as how Apple uses a different kind of touch screen than Crestron you really CANNOT mimic the usage at all.

I use these templates in ipad/iphone projects.

[Link: ntdesignsonline.com]

And who has the rights to these designs?

Apple and Microsoft or a combination of both. Apple had the first icon based GUI as far as i know.



The problem with this patent nonsense is that pressing a button to make something happen has been around since electricity. Apple may have brought it to the computer and maybe windows made it popular and then a dozen companies altered improved it until apple brought it to the iPhone.

At the end of the day... pressing the "DirecTV" icon is no different from flipping the first light switch IMO. Gesture control existed before touchpanels. We used our hands to turn lights on and shoot baskets and drive cars in real life long before it was brought to technology.

Tahoe is great. I had a client tell me that Horizon was the best GUI he had ever seen. NTDesigns provides a great product.

Steve Jobs writes of first seeing the mouse in use at a Xerox facility, and he knew that was the wave of the future. Since it's hard to imagine a mouse being used just for text, I'll bet Xerox used icons, too.

The Xerox Star came out commerically a few years before the first Apple (1981), and is regarded as the father of all modern GUIs.



The very first mouse-based GUI was the Xerox Alto in 1973:

I am left non-plussed by so many of these designs. Swipes work really well on small panels. On larger panels they are much less necessary save for the few devices that have large databases to scroll.

Here we find gimmick being praised as if it makes using a system better. iPads may have an indeterminate number of apps loaded on it and those apps may need to be grouped together. But do touch panels meet this requirement? Do buttons need to be remapped? Or is this a trick that will titillate and then pass, much like a speaker with a bright tweeter or a display calibrated well into the blue color space?

I have yet to meet a touch panel design for the iPad that is as attractive, intuitive and visually exciting as what Crestron's graphic designer has developed. Top and bottom navigation bars make navigation simple and intuitive--which Mac has already pointed out. The best GUI is one where only the buttons needed at that moment pop up. Only Kaleidescape has understood this. Why have the red/green/blue/yellow buttons on screen if they serve no purpose?

The GUI being praised is so pedestrian as to deserve obloquy but it is being praised by our trade rag. What makes this design different from any other for any other panel? "Please select" is not found on any iOS GUI with which I'm acquainted. Hell, it's not on any Windows GUI but somehow it's thought we need to help a client to make a selection? Ugly background with Apple-like icons that are in most GUI templates. Thus the ability to use swipes and move buttons around are the "iPad-like" features being championed?

Even EJ's ugly color space is better thought out.

On smaller panels it would be ever so helpful to have the ability to use swipes. On larger panels it's nice but hardly essential. What the iPad offers is space and resolution at an attractive price point. You have the space and resolution to add non-functional enhancements just to make the GUI more attractive. Here we have a gimmick rather than a GUI improvement. It's neither more attractive nor is it inherently a better way to navigate. It is a retread of the old without any thought to the end-user save for the "cool" enhancements that are not integrated, as far as I can tell, into the design to enhance the user experience.

Alan

I've always loved that term. I brings to mind: Yeah, but were you actually minused by them? (or minussed, I guess)


Yay! Someone said it, and early on!


Excellent question. I've always cautioned customers not to buy speakers that impress them, but rather speakers that don't seem like there are speakers in the room. TVs set to Torch Mode can become boring or irritating in time, especially when you realize you're almost waiting for red to actually drip off the screen.


This is a great sentence. It reminds me of a phrase I heard on the Tim Conway Junior show, where a visitor to New York mentioned seeing "prostitutes in the vestibule." Ah, words for the sake of words!

I totally second all the rest of what Alan has to say.

Does anyone else share the opinion that trying to mimic iOS is a bad thing BECAUSE: Crestron panels don't work the same way, not even the Crestron Mobile App.

They are in the process of changing this with the new Core 3UI, but things people are used to on iOS, swiping lists, pinching/expanding/ press and hold etc CANNOT be done let alone processed by Crestron, so then why give two different user experiences or try to mimic when we can't?

From a recent job: We installed a TPS-6x for the client, they test out the ipod interface. There are 5 lines of text for the menu and 4 buttons next to this text saying Home/Page Up/Page Down/End....client still tries to swipe the list.

Our stuff doesn't work like iOS lets not confuse our clients

I am in agreement with your statement... But...


This is the issue. 5 years ago i didn't have clients trying to swipe and zoom their touchpanels. Today its instinctive and they have this "its broken" look on their faces when nothing happens. I have to teach some of them how to use a crestron touchpanel because it doesnt work like the iPhone when they barely tap things.

I personally HATE animated crap. Scrolling swiping zooming etc. It comes in handy on the iPhone because the screen is small. At home why would i subject myself to using such a tiny screen? With an iPad i have 10" 1024X768 to play with. There is plenty of room to put everything on one page and there is absolutely IMO no reason to be page flipping and scrolling lists etc with gesture control. Its never 100% accurate and leads to user frustration.


LOL same here. I responded to each part of your post and i didnt read this until after i mentioned the same thing above. They cant figure out what to do.


I agree with your sentiment 100% but the issue is that our clients are learning touchpanels before we get to them now. I literally hate getting emails asking me if TACTICAL has fly out menus and scrolling lists built in because i HATE that stuff. I know how it ends up working in a real world scenario and it never improves the user experience. But now i feel like i have to do it or i will become the "problem" or the "guy who doesnt get it".

Very cool! What makes this so very amazing is that Xerox is probably the only company not suing anyone right now and they are the ones who created the icon driven operating system.

Wow... you really stepped in it with that comment.

Trying looking up XEROX PARC