More small observations from the goings-on at CES in 2011.
In the SlashGear.com video with Mike Lazaridis
we can see some interesting new navigating gestures Mike uses. Note that
these aren't available on the SDK yet:
While swiping sideways between running apps without minimizing
them so the Navigator is visible, he can flick an app upwards
to terminate it. This is similar to how you close them in the
shuttle bar area in Navigator but it's new.
In the "between-app" view (as above), you can just drag
left or right to continuing moving between apps, rather than having
to swipe in from one of the bezels as you do in the current SDK.
He even shows holding position between two apps while they both
keep rendering.
Obviously you can also just swipe from the bezel but
that's really needed only to enter this new "switching mode".
(This wasn't Mike, but my own observation on the simulator.) You can
not only swipe up to expand the icon area, but you can swipe up
again to minimize it. Not sure that will make it through to the
production unit since it might be too inconsistent for user comfort.
In the Navigator, in the category selection area above the app icons,
there are arrow icons that you use to maximize or shrink the icon area.
In many of the CES demo units you can now also see a little "pencil" icon
at the left edge. CrackBerry.com's latest video shows that you can use
this to reorganize your app icons in the Navigator.
In the beta SDK a minimized app had a red X close widget in the upper
right corner. In the demo units
it has moved down to follow the app title (a good move).
The three simultaneous ray-tracing demos running side-by-side,
with Mike interacting with them in realtime, pretty much prove that this
baby kicks any wimpy Star Trek gadgetry in the teeth. Take that,
24th century technology!
Someone pointed out in one video that along the top is not just
one but two microphones... stereo. In theory that could be a big
help for noise cancellation, though I don't know if the stereo
nature of it will be exposed up through to the AIR APIs.
Mike L. mentions that the "USB connection can drive Ethernet", so
they either have or intend to have driver support for some
USB-Ethernet adapters. This is good for anyone thinking of driving
serious business presentations out the HDMI without risking wireless
glitches (assuming your source is on a network).
(For anyone who hadn't heard, by the way, the HDMI output
can technically function as an independent display, which would
totally rock for business presentations, or just for letting someone
watch a video on your TV while you surf the web.)
Mike commented that running his third instance of the ray-tracing app
would start to slow down the system, so clearly they have the multicore
support functioning in the demo units now. Or, at least, in his!