iOS is the operating system that runs on Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.⁶ It’s designed to allow direct manipulation of the interface with touch, including gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch. It usually receives a major update every year.

Apple’s apps are sold in the iTunes App Store, which is available on Apple’s mobile devices and on Mac desktops and laptops. Apple also has a Mac App Store, which is a marketplace for buying apps for the Mac OS (desktops and laptops).

iOS apps are divided into the following types, depending on which devices they run on:

• iOS universal—This is Apple’s term for apps that are optimized for all screen sizes, including iPad. Buy the app once, and you can run it on all your Apple mobile devices. In the iTunes store, these are designated with a small plus sign and the sentence “This app is designed for both iPhone and iPad.”
• iOS iPad only—These apps are available only for the iPad and don’t have a version for iPhones or other devices. In the iTunes store, these will say, “compatible with iPad.”
• iOS—Some iOS apps are offered with different versions for iPhone and iPad (with different prices). Other iOS apps are designed only for the smaller screen of an iPhone or iPod Touch. These apps can also run on iPads in a small window, which you can tap on to double the size and fill the screen.

When selecting apps, the best choice is a universal app, if one is available.

Android is an open-source operating system by Google that runs on many different brands of smartphones and also on game consoles, televisions, and other electronic devices.⁷ It’s designed to allow direct manipulation of touchscreens with touching, swiping, pinching, and reverse pinching. It is updated frequently, and the versions have nicknames such as Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and KitKat.

Android apps are sold in the Google Play store,⁸ as well as many other marketplaces. The Google Play store is the most popular store and probably the safest from viruses and other malware. Experts recommend avoiding unknown sources of Android apps because of the threat of viruses. Amazon also has an Appstore with a smaller selection of apps for its Kindle tablets and its Amazon smartphone. This is a safe source and the best to use if you have an Android-powered Kindle tablet or an Amazon Fire smartphone.

There aren’t as many apps available for Android as for iOS, but there are usually good alternatives if an app that runs on iPhones isn’t available. Often app developers will create their apps for iOS first because people who own Apple devices tend to spend more money on apps. Many of the best apps are available for both platforms.

Google’s Android is often loved by people who like to customize and tweak their devices. It has many options for adjusting settings, and it’s a good option for those who want to experiment with new mobile technologies that aren’t yet allowed on Apple’s platform. The trade-off is that it’s a little less user-friendly and a little less secure.

Apple’s iOS is often preferred by people who want the easiest and most elegant user experience. Apple has a Volume Purchase Program to make it easy for educators to buy apps for an entire classroom,⁹ and many educational institutions have selected Apple’s devices as their platform of choice.

For a good explanation of the pros and cons of each platform, see “Pros and Cons: Why I Switched from iPhone to Android, Part 3” by Andy Ihnatko.¹⁰ Keep in mind that he is a tech guru with lots of experience on both platforms. He discusses fragmentation, malware, stability and reliability, apps, price, power management, and camera (he prefers the iPhone camera).

Often, people will have more than one mobile device, such as an Android smartphone and an iPad. So it’s good to know about the best apps that can be used on both platforms.

It’s helpful to know the difference between a native app and a web app.

A native app is an app that has been designed to run on specific mobile devices (such as an iPad) and is purchased or downloaded from an app store. Native apps can take advantage of special features of mobile devices in ways that mobile web apps cannot (though this is changing).¹¹ They are well integrated into the user experience of the device, filling the screen and offering aspects of the interface that can’t be experienced when running an app in a browser window. Native apps are easy to find and install—just go to the app store on your device.

Mobile web apps are apps that run inside a mobile web browser. They are built with standards-based technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. An advantage of these is that once the app is launched on a modern mobile device with a modern browser, it runs the same way on any platform. Mobile web apps aren’t always easy to find; you need to know that they exist, and you need to have a direct link. Then you can save the bookmark on your home screen for easy access in the future.

To see an example of this difference, you can try Google Maps. Download the native app from your app store (if you’re on Android, it will be pre-installed). For the web app version, visit this link in your mobile web browser: http://maps.google.com. Compare your experience of using it in the native app to using it in your mobile web browser.

If a developer creates a paid version of a mobile web app, there isn’t one central place to buy it as there would be if it were a native app. You’ll have to enter your credit card into whatever payment system the developer provides. This is part of the reason that native apps are more common right now. It’s very easy to find them, install them, and purchase them. Either Apple or Google will have your payment information already on file so you don’t need to pull out your credit card each time.

Most users don’t care whether an app is native or mobile (and may not even realize there is a difference). It’s good to understand this difference, though, when thinking about app ecosystems.¹²

One of the best user experiences is offered when you can use the same app on all of your different devices, with everything in sync.

Here’s an example. Evernote is a very good app for organizing your notes.¹³ You can enter notes by typing, speaking into your smartphone, or using the camera to take a photo note. You can organize your notes into folders and also add tags. This makes it very easy to find all of your notes in one place. Evernote has many other useful features and is free for basic use.

Evernote provides an integrated ecosystem because it has versions available for any device, such as Mac OS X, Windows Desktop, Windows 8 (Touch), iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. It also has a web app version at http://evernote.com. You can download native apps for free for all of your mobile and desktop computers. You can use the web app when you are on a public or shared computer. As long as you’re signed into your account, you can access and create your notes.

As you can imagine, this is extremely useful. It means your data is available from anywhere you have online access. You can also choose to keep as many of your notes as you like stored offline on your devices. Evernote syncs between your devices so that your notes can be accessed from anywhere.

This type of ecosystem is something that the best apps have and is something to look for when selecting and evaluating apps.

In the future, with the increase in wearable technologies such as wristbands for tracking your fitness,¹⁴ we’ll see this ecosystem approach connecting devices beyond desktop computers and smartphones integrated into clothing, accessories, cars, household devices, and more.

Best practices for multi-device user experiences are discussed in the book Designing Multi-Device Experiences, by Michal Levin.¹⁵ The author frames it usefully as “3Cs”—“consistent: each device acts as a solo player, creating the entire experience on its own,” “continuous: multiple devices handle different pieces sequentially, advancing the user toward a common goal,” and “complementary: multiple devices play together as an ensemble to create the experience.”¹⁶

As you can see, the word ecosystem is useful when describing our experiences with technology.

Just as in desktop computing—where most people are familiar with certain core applications, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and the like—it’s important to be familiar with core apps for mobile as well.

Certain apps have emerged as popular, stable, useful, and long-lasting. I would define an app as “core” if the following are true:

• It has been around for more than a year, and usage is growing.
• It is part of an ecosystem that offers a native mobile app, a web app, and possibly a desktop app.
• It offers easy ways to send information into and out of the app.
• It covers a basic, useful thing that people want to do with their mobile devices.

In chapter 4, you’ll find my list of about twenty core apps that are good to be familiar with. They are the apps I always install first on a new device.

If you would like to go beyond those twenty apps, get my book, Apps for Librarians: Using the Best Mobile Technology to Educate, Create, and Engage.¹⁷ It’s a guide to over one hundred quality apps in a wide range of topic areas, with many examples of how librarians can use these apps.

If you are an academic librarian you may also find useful my e-book, Best Apps for Academics, a guide to the best apps for academic work in the areas of productivity, reading and annotating, research and reference, taking notes, writing, studying, collaboration and sharing, presenting, lecturing, and publishing.¹⁸ Along with the app descriptions, it contains many examples of how academics are using these apps. It’s also useful for school librarians who work with secondary school students. Both of these titles will save you time by recommending the very best apps for particular tasks so you don’t have to wade through the millions of apps available in the app stores.

If you would like an easy way to keep up with news about apps, you can subscribe to my e-mail newsletter, Mobile Apps News, http://nicolehennig.com/mobile-apps-news. It comes out about twice a month and makes it easy for you stay current with the world of mobile apps.

We’ve all heard the term GUI, which stands for graphical user interface. Now there is a new term, NUI, for natural user interface.

A graphical user interface relies on metaphors, such as desktops, folders, or trash cans, and pointing devices, such as mice or trackpads. The graphical aspect was developed in contrast to a command-line interface. Having menus where you could select from a list of choices, rather than having to remember obscure commands, was a step forward in ease of learning. We take these concepts for granted if we grew up using a GUI, like the Mac or Windows operating system, but it was a system that we all had to learn at some point, and it’s not easy for someone unfamiliar with computers to learn for the first time.

With natural user interfaces, the goal is for your interaction with the computer to feel natural, such as touching something on the screen to move it as you would with a physical object. Another interaction that feels natural is talking to your device, using speech recognition technologies. It puts the human first and makes the computer adapt to us, rather than the other way around.

The movement toward natural user interfaces is a boon for everyone, especially those with vision or hearing impairments, or mobility issues. This is because it makes your task or content central, with the interface almost invisible, so that devices are easier to use. With the advent of all these new ways to interact with computers, some say that the keyboard and mouse will become obsolete.¹⁹

To learn more about natural user interfaces, read the excellent short article, “The Future of UX/UI: The Natural User Interface,” by Alex Chong.²⁰

Another important aspect of app literacy is developing an understanding of how apps take advantage of the capabilities of mobile devices.

An example of a mobile app that takes advantage of the device’s capabilities in a unique way is RoomScan, an app for automatically creating a floor plan of a room.²¹ With this app on your iPhone, you walk around and tap the phone on each wall of your room until you hear a beep. The app automatically creates a floor plan, accurate within about half a foot. (The Pro version lets you specify exact distances). This app takes advantage of the built-in GPS and gyroscope to do its magic.

There are many such apps that do tasks not easily done with a laptop. That’s why it’s not such a useful question to ask whether a tablet can be a laptop replacement. The answer is always, “It depends.” Deeper knowledge of the wide array of serious work that can be done with mobile devices, out in the field, away from your desk, shows that mobile devices are complementary to laptops and may not replace them for everyone.

The following features, available in most smartphones and tablets, are worth understanding. If you are evaluating apps, it’s good to examine how the app makes use of these features.

Jailbreaking is a process that changes the system on your iPhone in order to allow the installation of third-party apps from non-Apple stores, such as Cydia.³⁵ This is not the same as “unlocking,” which means changing your smartphone to allow it to work on multiple carriers.

Even though the word jailbreaking sounds scary and illegal, it’s not (on smartphones). Here is what you need to know:

• In 2010, the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress deemed that it’s fair use to jailbreak a smartphone.³⁶
• These rules get reviewed every three years, and in 2012, the Library of Congress updated the ruling to exclude tablets. The word tablet was considered too ill-defined to allow the exception because people might conclude that it’s allowed to jailbreak portable gaming consoles, e-readers, and laptops. So as of 2012, it’s not legal to jailbreak your iPad.³⁷
• These rulings are something to watch since they are reviewed every three years.

If you jailbreak, you can take advantage of some very useful apps that add functionality, such as turning your iPhone into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, for no extra charge other than the one-time cost of the app ($20).³⁸ You can also experiment with new technologies that aren’t yet available on the iPhone but may be used in the future. Sometimes a jailbroken app innovates in a way that Apple later adopts after more testing.

It’s fairly easy to do, and if anything goes wrong, you can easily restore your iPhone to its factory settings by resetting it in iTunes and restoring your files and apps from a backup.

Since the information on how to jailbreak changes with each update, I recommend searching for the latest information at the time you decide to try jailbreaking. Search for “how to jailbreak an iPhone” or something similar. Find the newest articles from trusted sources, like Macworld.³⁹

Be aware that jailbreaking will make your iPhone a bit more geeky and less user-friendly since it adds more options with some ugly settings screens and so on.

Whenever Apple comes out with an updated version of iOS, you won’t be able to update your phone (and stay jailbroken) until there is a jailbreak for the new version. This can be from a few weeks to a couple of months later. So you may not be able to benefit from certain fixes or new features right away.

Like most choices, jailbreaking is a trade-off. You get a wide choice of useful apps, but you need to be a bit more of a techie and have the patience to deal with some not-so-user-friendly interfaces for finding and installing jailbroken apps.

Even if you have no desire to jailbreak your iPhone, it’s good to be aware of what’s possible and why people do it. If you or someone on your staff has this experience, you can recommend the best apps and tools to a user who is interested in doing this or has a need for a specialized app available only on Cydia.⁴⁰

Some people keep an older or secondary device just for the purpose of this experimentation while still having access to their main device in a non-jailbroken state. And remember, if something goes wrong, you can completely erase your device and re-install everything from a backup you made before jailbreaking.