“Skimming” Apple
The coolest feature that Steve Jobs demonstrated to us this morning was “skimming.”
This is where you have a picture under which exists a whole pile of other pictures.
On Flickr you see these all the time. Click on a picture at the top, like this one shot by Steve Keys:
What do you get? More photos, right?
But skimming lets you see the photos below just by running your mouse pointer across the photo without visiting the page below it. The picture just changes as you drag to show other pictures. It’s one of those things you need to see demonstrated. I’m sure over at Apple.com you’ll see lots of video of this. The new iMovie makes a lot of use of skimming. So does iPhoto and .MAC’s new Web Gallery.
It’s one thing I saw and instantly asked “why doesn’t Flickr have this?”
More analysis to come. In the meantime every blogger who was there is going nuts over on TechMeme. Apple sure does know how to get the world’s attention.
Powered By 
August 7th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
“why doesn’t Flickr have this”…Probably because it takes some heavy programing and all the underlying OSX tech like CoreAnimation, etc. Could one even pull off anything like this online? They could maybe simulate the look like Justin.tv tried with CoverFlow but that absolutely pales in comparison. Online generally can’t compete with the power of the desktop and won’t for quite some time. Not to say there won’t be hybrids.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
PXLated - yes, skimming is online as part of the .Mac Web Gallery. This and the carousel are just beautiful.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
William…So it is the same on .Mac as on the desktop apps?
August 7th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Looks like they’re using flash, wonder what happens if you visit with an iPhone?
Have you tried it Robert?
http://gallery.mac.com/emily_parker
August 7th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Finaly got the demo downloaded…EVDO is extremely slow in this area tonight…and see what the skimming is supposed to do on the web gallery…ain’t working for me though. Really cool if it actually does it like the demo.
It does beg the question why others haven’t done this in some form or fashion.
Even though Flickr has a lot more features, the Apple presentation makes Flickr and the others look rather dated.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:21 am
Its all AJAX apart from the carousel (Which is Flash)
August 8th, 2007 at 7:29 am
“Its all AJAX”…Cool
September 12th, 2007 at 1:25 am
[...] ausprobiert habe, fällt mein Urteil nun doch anders aus. Es gibt coole Features wie das Skimming oder der bequeme YouTube-Upload. Für blutige Anfänger ist das sicherlich klasse, aber [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I absolutely love this feature!
June 12th, 2008 at 5:50 am
I made this: http://yzx.se/developement.php?show=c&id=1
It’s working but not really functional
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:45 am
Sounds very cool. Where can I see a demo?