We spend so much time looking at web-applications these days that we tend to ignore desktop apps. Still, every once in a while there’s room for pleasant surprises, and today was one of those days with the release of CSS Edit 2.5 (by Macrabbit) and Coda (by the guys at Panic).

I guess it is a little weird to be singing praises to desktop applications when it is a known fact that access-anywhere is the killer feature, but even with Ajax or RIA environments like Flex, there’s (at this point) no way to get the same kind of “gratification” from web-apps. The web still doesn’t manage to compete with the responsiveness and the constant look and feel of a great desktop application. This is unfortunate, and although changing at a rapid pace, its just not there yet.

Developing for the web and developing for the desktop are two very different concepts (although Adobe’s Apollo and Joyent’s Slingshot are blurring the lines), but there’s a lot to learn from the world of the desktop.

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I was just browsing the BMW website for a few car models (partially motivated by Diego Rodriguez’s “Jolie-Laide” post at metacool) and was astonished at how wrong it felt. I look at it and can’t stop thinking about how un-BMWish it feels.

You can actually try my experience yourself - hit bmw.com and try to find the price for the BMW Z4 Coupé. It’s not about finding it (you will, I’m sure), but about how long and how many clicks it takes. A shame, really.

BMW does great cars - so when you drive a BMW, you expect a great experience. Same thing should be true for navigating their website - which is probably the first step into the BMW experience for many people curious about the brand and their cars. If that feels wrong, what impact does it have on the potential buyer?

On car dashboards and site navigation

No matter how complex the inner works of a car are, you get on the seat and the dashboard will be clear and simple. It’s actually a bit like magic - how so much complexity can be cut down and streamlined into a few buttons and meters. Everything is “right there”. Websites should feel the same way.

How does the navigation of your web-application or website compare to a car’s dashboard? How easy or hard is it to get to the complex functionality? How much complexity is hidden away? I can’t see myself pulling levers and sub-buttons in a car dashboard, and neither should we all with websites.

Final notes

Naturally this post isn’t about picking on a brand - heck, I’d probably shell out the money for the car if I had it. It is about the disconnect between the attention given to the driving experience and the site experience. And it’s definitely not a problem of BMW alone - almost all car brand websites share this problem.

They’re still about making cars but if they’re designing experiences (and they are), they might as well take the next step and provide the full package.

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You can review mapping interfaces for as long as you want, but only when you actually need them do you get a feel for how great (or how crappy) they are. Today, Yahoo! Maps got my attention with their new mapping interface (which, I’ll admit, I hadn’t paid much attention to before).

First off, it is obvious that they get “flow”. Yahoo! Maps looks and acts like a RIA. It doesn’t take your input, show you results and look “static”. It allows you to interact with your routes, add nodes or traffic information dynamically and once you’ve got the perfect route or map, it gives you immediate print access.

The reason it stands out from both their old interface and the current offerings from Google and Microsoft is because it looks and acts both simple and effective. It doesn’t get in your way, it doesn’t make you “guess” what to do. When you try it out, you know what you’ll get. It feels like a desktop application.

This feeling isn’t easy to obtain with web-apps. You are operating in a clunky piece of software (the browser), using technologies that browsers often interpret in different ways. But these days, there’s a lot you can do to improve the feel of your application. Technologies like Ajax, Flex or Apollo let you get desktop-like experiences. That, and meticulously planned interaction with the page. Personally, I want to see more applications like the new Yahoo! Maps interface.

You’d have to be under a rock or away from a connected computer not to read or hear about how people are excited about the Apple iPhone - I know I am. The truth is, if things are as good as they seem, they’ve done it again, and I may have found what I was looking for.

Why Apple read my mind

I have been looking for the smart smartphone for a long time, and the reason why I didn’t buy one before was because all existing solutions presented me with a scary mix of bad interface and frustrating feature/pricing combinations. The iPhone seems to deal with both just fine.

Now, this doesn’t mean the iPhone is cheap (it isn’t), and it sure isn’t going to be for everyone, but for $499 (or $599, depending on your storage requirements) you get a pretty compelling solution to be connected. And you get the fantastic user experience Apple’s gotten us used to to boot. In fact, I highly recommend looking at the phone demos just to get a taste of what Interaction Design really means.

Wishes and concerns

As I said in my “ultimate connected device” post a while ago - where I hinted on the real need we have for something like this -, a phone like this can become a platform for just about anything if developers are given the right tools. From what I’ve seen in the iPhone demos, the phone will support widgets like the OSX dashboard already does.

But I’d love it if Apple took the next step of allowing people to actually build fully functional applications based on the software and hardware platform they built. Widgets are fine, but if there’s direct access to the full capabilities of the phone the possibilities become virtually endless.

All this being said, I only have one concern about the phone - the battery life. I would need to have real test data to confirm my worries, but 5 hours of active use may be a little too short for some people. Ah, we’ll see. Truth is, I’m excited as hell about this product - Apple’s designers and engineering teams need a round of applause.

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