January 2011
1 post
“The direct-touch and on-screen physics taps into our genetically programmed...”
– Mike Elgan for Wired
November 2010
1 post
“But is a smaller size really worth using? I don’t know about you, but surfing...”
– Smoking Apples
September 2010
2 posts
“…when a company reaches a certain level of success, many of the business...”
– Why did Apple give in? | Textio
“How much do you think sending that “Sent from my iPhone” notification pleases...”
– Hate The iTunes 10 Icon? Think You Can Do Better?
August 2010
4 posts
“If we get conceptual design right than what naturally falls out is the...”
– Simplicity Is Not Overrated – It’s Misunderstood This guy runs research at an analyst firm, and he takes down Don Norman in this piece. Also, “function vanishing point” is the greatest phrase EVAR (Adobe, Microsoft, I’m looking squarely at you.)
“Aside from playing videos and gaming, another purported benefit of Flash is that...”
– Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right And this is three years after the initial no-Flash outcry. Glad to see Adobe’s been workin’ real hard.
“Whether Apple Inc. uses the glass in its iPod is a much-discussed mystery since...”
– 1962 glass could be Corning’s next bonanza seller - Yahoo! News Worst kept secret since the iPhone 4 itself.
“You know what academic paper the Macalope would really like to see? A study on...”
– The Macalope Weekly: They’re on to us! | Tablets | MacUser | Macworld
July 2010
5 posts
iOS 4: Calendar & Packages →
I was hoping that date data detectors would work in iOS 4, with calendar access available, but I had no idea that a shipment tracking detector was added. (It’s on on the Mac.) You can either tap the link and go right to Mobile Safari or tap-and-hold to get a choice to cancel.
Car and Media Theft
The MPAA runs these anti-theft ads before movies. The reality might be that most people don’t want to steal cars. But if I bought a car to go to my friend’s house and then found out I needed a new car to drive down his street and then another car to go to his driveway … or I could steal one that looked and drove the exact same as the one I bought and most likely wouldn’t...
iPhone 4 Teardown - iFixit
Apple has gone a step further and tuned the phone to utilize whichever network band is less congested or has the least interference for the best signal quality, regardless of the actual signal strength. Early reports suggest this feature, while buggy in its early stages, will greatly improve the phone’s reliability on AT&T’s fragile network....
Marco.org: The misnaming tic →
People frequently screw up names in the same ways. Mac often becomes “MAC”. I don’t know why. Names of other computer-related products aren’t usually accidentally capitalized. Nobody says ITUNES or EXCEL. The iPod Touch1 gets hit hard, too, by people calling it the “iTouch”. These are often…
I think a lot of people think “Mac” is an acronym (or they confuse it with the...
iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo and Vice-Versa →
Ducking hilarious.
June 2010
22 posts
Jon Lech Johansen: ‘Google’s Mismanagement of the...
Developers and users are getting fed up and it’s time for Google to clean up the house. http://nanocr.eu/2010/06/27/googles-mismanagement-of-the-android-market/
Even more lesser-known nicknames of fictional... →
The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains (The Web... →
“Ray: With Windows, we set expectations that we’re not snooping on users. Walt:...”
– [cough] FaceBook! [cough] Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie live from D8 — Engadget (via dougscripts)
Apple Myth
Third, the “conventional history” of Apple rising to dominance only to fall victim to their own unwillingness to cooperate is a myth. Apple was never the market leader in computers. People remember it that way because Apple had, as now, a disproportionate mindshare. The numbers disagree. http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/Entries/2010/5/21
The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains
Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain....
Resolving the iPhone 4 Resolution →
Touch Content Creation — Cocoa Therapy
Beginners will instead just backspace through perfectly good text to get to a typo, until they learn the magic of the left arrow key: it’s like a backspace that doesn’t delete! This is not to reiterate the “iPad is for young/old/dumb people” cliché, rather to point out that keyboard-based text manipulation is not a natural interface, that we should consider the idea that there might be alternate...
Me: And what version of Windows are you using?
He:... →
I Thought Microsoft Had a Monopoly On This? →
“Soneira added that we might not realistically need anything better than 326...”
– iPhone 4’s ‘Retina’ Display Claims Are False Marketing | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Apple's "Retina Display": What Does It Mean? →
For those of us with less than 20/20 vision, we’re all good.
tina-fashionista:
(via dirtylittlestylewhore) →
Photo →
Technical Terms →
Client: ”I decided I want one of the illustrations you already did for my logo and I am going to use it for the background on my checks.”
Me: ”A logo is usually a simple graphic used to represent your business, in your case, the book series and characters. The illustrations are a bit too…
“Yes, Apple has rejected some apps for seemingly arbtrary or selfish reasons and...”
– Steve Jobs single-handedly restructured the mobile industry cdixon.org – chris dixon’s blog
TotalFinder →
Somebody finally “fixed the fucking Finder”. Best system hack since Aaron gave System 7 the Copland appearance.
“And to my mind, holding a 10” screen a foot from my face in a dark room is more...”
– lonelysandwich - iPad TV You must read this whole post.
“Consider the Mac a hammer and the iPad a screwdriver. Just because we’ve...”
– Pilky.me
“Angry when he championed the press as crucial to democracy, and implied the iPad...”
– Steve Jobs at D: A Master… - John Battelle’s Searchblog Right, because barfing out one’s opinion on the web is really comparable to the effort that pamphleteers went through, and Nick Denton of Gawker infamy is at all comparable to Thomas Paine.
“Companies that focus on what the latest technology can do, and who owns that...”
– Apple’s Lesson: Be Cool With Capital - The Source - WSJ
May 2010
3 posts
“The Internet is an open range where anyone can compete in any way they like. But...”
– The Macalope Weekly: Flash back | Phones | MacUser | Macworld
clientsfromhell:
Client: “The cost is very high, we can save costs by getting our guy to design it.” Web designer: “That’s possible, would save some amount of money.” Client: “Yeah, he’s an illustrator but I am sure he can do web-design, it’s all the same art stuff anyway.”
“ The Adobe campaign is a disingenuous, dishonest campaign that Adobe should be...”
– Galen Gruman.
April 2010
4 posts
“That’s why you should be an artist before you are PS user… there...”
– A comment on this blog post (which is amazing, btw): John Nack on Adobe: Video: Selecting hair with Refine Edge in CS5
“Remember when tech pundits used to lead the charge for change, and get excited...”
– What can we learn from the “moderated” Windows SuperSite blog? - The Small Wave.
“3. The ads look and behave a lot like apps; the early and very popular lighter...”
– Hill Holliday Blog » Apple iAd Team Visits Hill Holliday, Shares Details
“I think it’s fair to say that most people involved in interaction design tend to...”
– ignore the code: iPhone OS 4.0
March 2010
4 posts
“Only after a decade of choosing to poorly support the Mac with its proprietary...”
– The fallacy of Flash: why Adobe’s ideological war with Apple is bankrupt — RoughlyDrafted Magazine
“It was to be a significant departure from the flat, dull look of the OS’s of the...”
– How real? - Neven Mrgan’s tumbl The post is excellent, but I think he’s not giving enough influence-credit to the software reflecting the hardware of the time. The pinstripe texture looks like the front of the iMac G3s, and fell out of favor/prominence when dropped from the hardware; now...
Marco.org: Overdoing the interface metaphor →
We’re often told that we should design our websites and software to mimic real-life objects. The iPhone strengthened this idiom, and Apple has been driving this home hard for the iPad. But it’s not absolute, and it’s not always the best idea. My favorite counterexample is the typical calculator…
I’ve always maintained that software should be informed by reality, but not limited by...
Marco.org - News flash →
Valid point: [Publisher] should consider doing it some other way because this will alienate some readers.
Invalid point: [Publisher] should do it my way because all content deserves to be free/ad-free/full-RSS/single-page.
January 2010
3 posts
“Anyone who has ever taught a friend or relative how to use a computer from...”
– Marco.org. No one is wondering why I complain so much about the technology I love so much, but here’s the reason why.
“But primarily because (and here I need to put on my Sean Connery voice, a la...”
– Andy Ihnatko. Andy’s talking about why he thinks the rumored tablet will have no hardware keyboard support. This is definitely the reason the iPhone doesn’t have physical keyboard support, but also the long-understood reasoning behind the Mac having one mouse button: it forced software...
“If it sounds overdramatic to say the iPod changed the world, consider this: In...”
– Arik Hesseldahl for BusinessWeek
December 2009
14 posts
Google’s ‘Meaning of Open’ →