iPhoto ‘11 User Interface Design Looks Great on the iPad

Apple’s iLife software suite that came free with every new Mac has always been used as a Unique Selling Point of a Mac. Two of the iLife have since made the jump to iOS, namely iMovie (on the iPad and iPhone) and GarageBand (on the iPad), albeit not for free. The question is when would they port iPhoto ‘11. I always found the native iOS Photos app to be lacking in features. In all fairness it was conceived more as a photo browser, though, but some editing capabilities would be welcome.

A Gizmodo blogger decided to try the next best thing, which was to run iPhoto ‘11 on the iPad via remote desktop software. The result showed that the user interface design of the Mac app is definitely iPad ready. This tells us two things, the first of which is that Apple clearly has transmedia user interface design nailed. Transmedia user interface design is the creation of UI designs across different types of screens (i.e. desktops, smartphones, tablets, etc.). The second thing it tells us is that the speculated merging of Operating Systems into unified OSes that work across devices might be closer than we think.

The latest Mac OS X has already paved the way by incorporating iOS functionality and user interface design elements. One of these is the new Full-Screen Apps view that iPhoto has implemented. When viewing iPhoto in full-screen mode on the iPad through the remote desktop one can be fooled into thinking it is an actual iPad app. From the icons to the layout everything about the user interface design is already optimized for iOS touch operation. This is surely not happenstance. Considering that the ‘Mac’ has been dropped in OS X these new full screen apps could just be the fist port of call to a unified OS and user interface design.