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On the mac, applications like Delicious Library and Disco have pushed the bar of what a user expects from software. Software user interfaces are visually stunning, users feel emotionally engaged with applications. Users value ease of use over complex more powerful applications.

And then the iPhone arrived, shit got real. Tapbots (amongst dozens others) raised the bar even further. Suddenly users were going out of their way to use gorgeous applications over vanilla ones. One of the primary factors that developers attest increase sales of iPhone applications is an awesome user experience. A nice example of this is the Convert App. Technically it didn't do anything more than the other million converting applications - but it was super slick.

Using software can be.. enjoyable?

Can you imagine going from using Tweetie, ConvertBot, or even the native iPhone applications each day and then being thrust into Windows? Have you seen how low the bar is in terms of design - the example of the Microsoft Office icons spring to mind:

Users who were used to the traditional windows "get out of the way" UI conventions are now in a world of beauty, they feel emotionally connected to applications, and they like it.

Beauty isn't just drop shadows in appropriate places. When I say gorgeous I mean designers have sat down and made every pixel in the optimum place in terms of User Experience.

One of the best examples of the width and depth of UI we're experiencing are twitter clients on the iPhone. As John Gruber wrote early last year:

There are several factors that make Twitter a nearly ideal playground for UI design. The obvious ones are the growing popularity of the service itself and the relatively small scope of a Twitter client. Twitter is such a simple service overall, but look at a few screenshots of these apps, especially the recent ones, and you will see some very different UI designs, not only in terms of visual style but in terms of layout, structure, and flow. I’m not saying it’s easy to write a good Twitter client. In fact, that’s the point — that it is not easy to write a good client for something as small in scope as Twitter hints at just how hard it is to write a good app for anything, let alone something truly complex.

I think the iPad will push this even further. I hope that users expect remarkable interfaces for all applications, and that developers blow their users minds. This is the benefit of how the iPad is designed, with its closed platform and app store distribution channel, we'll see a similar effect as to what drives software - only (eventually) on a much larger scale (in terms of price points and distribution.)