Khoi shares some particular insight into the market, in comparing the initial iPad app, which was highly immersive, but much less viral than needed to drive success.

Users of Mixel for iPad spent a lot of time in the app, and those numbers were consistently outperforming our benchmark category in the App Store.

But over time it became apparent that the usage patterns for the iPad are very different than for iPhone, at least at this stage of the device’s evolution. By and large, people leave their iPads at home — they don’t take them to work — so it’s really difficult to get someone to engage with the network during the course of the day. You lose tons of opportunities to get him or her to interact with their graph, and that’s basically like starvation for a new social network.

And on the subject of users spending time with their device to craft something, and how this relates to building a mainstream audience:

Mixel for iPad tended to be pretty involved and, to our regret, required you to really work at it. It also became much more about creating art than we intended, and that resulted in a somewhat self-selecting user base. Mixel for iPhone, on the other hand, is so simple anyone can make a collage as you walk down the street. Anyone. The app does the hard work of making you look great.

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Shared Memories

I’m really excited about seeing apps where multiple users can stitch together shared memories. Mixel talks about combining collages with friends (“Your friends can add on to your collage!”), but it’s really just adding a comment to an existing collage in the form of a collage of your own, not making group collages.

I’d love to see Mixel go the Vyclone route, where you can see your friend’s photos taken in the same time and place as you and stitch together a view of the event from everyone’s perspective. In Vyclone’s case, they use video’s from multiple sources to automatically edit together one minute scenes.

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On an iPhone, it makes perfect sense to put the front-facing camera on the top when the phone is in portrait mode, because that’s the natural way to hold the phone.

When it comes to the iPad, it’s a little different, because it’s natural to hold the iPad in both ways.

Personally, I’d like to have the camera at the top in landscape mode, because that’s how I hold my iPad the majority of the time, and we expect video to be in widescreen these days. I know many people (probably Apple included) would beg to differ.

Where should the camera be in a perfect world? Dead centre, embedded in the screen pixels, as per this Apple patent, circa 2004. This would be the optimal camera position for either orientation, using software to rotate the image based on the iPad orientation.

Update!

I overlooked an obvious solution of putting the camera in the top corner of the iPad. This appears to be one of the few things that HP got right with its Windows 7 tablet.

References: iPad wireframe via oelna.de, Apple patent reference via New Scientist

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You know, those photos that ship with the iPad are fine, but I’m loving my Kipu wallpapers. They’re cute, uncluttered, and bright like sunshine.

Here’s how they look on my iPad:

I bet you want these for yourself now, right? No problem! Download them from our flickr wallpaper gallery. (They work in portrait and landscape mode, no matter how many icons you have!)

Download:
Full resolution Kipu iPad lock screen.
Full resolution Kipu iPad home screen.

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