I was reading Marco’s latest post about Instapaper for iPad last night, and as I saw the screenshots of the new version I realized something: developers seem to see the bigger screen of the new device only as a way to put more information on screen, rather than a way to lay out information in a different way.

Don’t get me wrong, of course with a bigger screen you’d like to insert more interface elements and stuff - the point is, you don’t necessarily have to. Instead of focusing on how to fill that space with elements that would be located in a different window otherwise, why not thinking about how to explore new ways to present information?

In my opinion, this is one the problems Apple had to face since the first day the iPad came to life: does more space automatically mean more information? Or perhaps we should reinvent our interface guidelines and define new concepts? I think neither Apple itself has come to a final solution for this. Take the Mail.app for example, and switch to the landscape mode: there’s a split view that combines both the list of messages and the single message. Basically, they are the views we’ve gotten used to see on the iPhone, combined in a single window. As you can see, in this case Apple just decided to put more information on screen and whether it’s no doubt a good implementation (or at least it should be, basing on the videos and pics we’ve seen so far) they clearly opted for the easiest solution. On the other hand, the portrait view (which has been prominent on the iPhone until now) shows one of the most interesting “new features” of the iPad: popovers. A popover provides an easy and effective way to display more information, pretty much like the landscape view does, using a different controller, with a different interaction. You just have to tap on a button (thus the contextual nature of popovers) to make the same list of messages appear on screen. I read a couple of interesting posts about the contextual factor in popovers, and I have to agree that if you really want to use them - you should make them contextual. What I fear most, in fact, is that developers will use a single, giant popover per-screen (where by screen I mean a “zone” of an application like - say - the inbox) to display a truckload of information all together.

But still, let’s look at the bigger picture: when the iPad goes in landscape you have more information, when it’s in portrait-mode you have less.

I’m not saying that “more information” is bad: I’m trying to understand if this automatic screen=information association makes sense from a user perspective, and if it will still make sense in a couple of years. Does my father need an iPad? Sure he does. Can he get any benefit from a touch interface? Of course. Does he really want to have all the information in one screen, or would it be simpler to tap across the various parts of an application? I don’t know.

What really differentiates the iPad from the iPhone is the thin line between user approach and device capabilities. The iPhone succeeded (partially) because of its small screen, which of course needed a focused UI that forced many devs to create a streamlined user experience. The iPad mantains some of the iPhone UI conventions but moves them into a bigger context, which may lead developers to be afraid of leaving something out.

The biggest challenge in developing for the iPad is facing the horror vacui caused by its screen. Now I understand why Apple calls them “Human Interface Guidelines”: there’s nothing more human than fear, both digital and not.